Running Low

I am into week four of my half ironman training plan and so far so good.  I have been putting a lot of miles in the pool, on the treadmill and road and on the bike!  It is definitely a challenging schedule, but I am loving it.  I find that I like being pushed and I am already seeing improvements in my performance, particularly in the pool.

I have only had a few lows during and after training which I am pleased about.  My insulin requirements have decreased due to the increase in activity, which has also resulted in losing a couple of pounds.  Luckily over the last few years I have been learning a lot about how my body reacts to intense activity and have found things that work for me - most of the time.  Of course since Diabetes is generally a total ass, it likes to throw me curveballs to try and catch.  Last week I had such a curveball thrown.  

I can usually feel a low coming on during exercise and can treat it before it gets out of hand.  Usually a few glucose tabs and swig of juice and I am good to keep going.  Last week I had one of those weird lows that crept up on me with weird symptoms and hit me pretty hard. 

I was about 20 minutes in to my 45 minute recovery run.  I was feeling great and just chugging along at a nice and easy pace.  My blood sugars before the run were where I wanted them to be, I had no insulin on board and had decreased my basal by 50% for 1.5 hours.  So there I was, running along listening to my play list when I started to notice my legs felt kind of numb.  They were moving just fine, I just could not really feel them.  It was like they were fuzzy.  I remember thinking in my mind, wow this is kind of nice, running without really feeling my legs.  Then I thought about how ridiculous that was and it was likely a sign something was not right.  As all of you know that have had low blood sugars, the thought process can slow down and we don't always make great decisions.  I knew something was not quite right, however I just kept running because.....why not?  After nearly 5 minutes of this I realized that I was sweating a ridiculous amount for the effort I was putting in.  This finally convinced my sugar deprived brain to stop and test.  2.6 mmol - ack!  I got off the treadmill, treated the low and waited it out.  By then I was shaky, dizzy etc.  all of the fun stuff.  

I only had 15 minutes left of the run to complete and could have easily called it a day.  Nope!  My stubbornness, and by then anger at having stupid Diabetes, had me back on the treadmill after I was recovered and I ran the final 15 minutes.  

I now know that if my legs start to feel numb or fuzzy I should stop and test!  Anyone else experienced this kind of low symptom?