A Full Week Of Elite Winter Training With Enlite And Smart Guard

I've completed and can now reflect on my first full week of 'elite' Winter training which I participated in whilst wearing the Medtronic MiniMed 640g insulin pump, Enlite sensor and the Smart Guard system. For those who have missed my earlier blogs on this innovation, the way that it all works is that the pump (which delivers insulin) connects wirelessly to the Enlite sensor, which transmits data such as glucose levels and details of how quickly they're moving. This then enables the pump to act, which is where Smart Guard comes in to suspend the pump from giving insulin. Which is a particularly useful thing to have whilst doing sport, because it potentially lets you blood test at the start and the end of the session, whilst letting Smart Guard work its magic during the activity. So here's a rundown of my week's training and how the Medtronic MiniMed 640g behaved.

Sunday - Sand Dune Training

My first training session, that took place on the Sunday was a sand dunes session. It was quite a heavily exerting type session, with plenty of repetitions and jog back recoveries. The pump got a little confused at the start of the session because of the mile long jog warm-up that caused my BG to drop rapidly. But once I'd calibrated it, it worked well for the remainder of the training session. 

This week Monday, Wednesday and Friday were circuits sessions that involved explosive continuous movements, with short recoveries that were dynamic in nature. This meant that I really put the Medtronic MiniMed 640g pump and enlite sensor to the test because whilst doing these types of sessions you tend to get quite hot and sweaty. I'm also angling my body in all different directions, but the sensor remained attached and the signal was not affected. There was no movement from the sensor or the adhesives used to keep it down, in fact I forgot I was wearing it whilst completing the circuits. There were also no problems with the data from the Enlite sensor being transmitted and Smart Guard kicked in when my glucose levels began dropping.

Tuesday and Thursday's sessions this week were back on track and aside from the sand dunes session at the start of the week, they're particularly taxing because we've been on a rest period since the season ended. These were also the types of sessions where I noticed that Smart Guard detected my glucose levels dropping most and kicked in to suspend the insulin flow. Psychologically this had a massive impact on my thoughts during training, because having the safety net of Smart Guard meant that I could focus on training, rather than spending a large amount of time worrying about what my glucose levels were doing. This also helped me identify the pattern that my background rate was too high whilst I was at training because normally I would have been having tea during my rest period, rather than running, at this time of night. So check out next week's blog to see how the pump behaved with the addition of temporary basal rates.