My name is Claire, I love living life and I completed one of the worlds toughest Ironman events, Ironman Wales! I also have type 1 diabetes and recently diagnosed with hypothyroidism and I am an IRONMAN!
The main reason for writing this blog is to inspire, inform and make you smile. I want to share my experiences as it may help you or someone you know. I will discuss my successes and my not so good days of training, diabetes management and life at middle age in general. I am a registered Dietitian now, but I was still studying during my ironman training. I will be sharing my experiences of managing my own diabetes before, during and after exercise.
I developed diabetes when I was 27 years old and pregnant with my first child. I didn’t want to have diabetes and tried to ignore it for the first few years. When I was 35 years old I became interested in triathlon, and this gave me the motivation to try and manage my diabetes. I trained and competed for years with poor diabetes management. Feeling sluggish because I had high blood glucose or exhausted because I had low blood glucose. This has helped me to become tough and resilient but not a method I would recommended.
It is only recently that I have truly accepted and embraced that type one diabetes is part of me and it is never going to go away. I researched information and attended training courses on exercising with type one diabetes. With my new knowledge I have so much more confidence. Good diabetes management allows me to train and compete in normal blood glucose range and I feel amazing, awesome and powerful.
I still make mistakes and have high or low blood sugars but I don’t get down about it there is always another training session. Experiment, practise and give it a go! Check out my page ‘How I manage Type 1 Diabetes during exercise’ for more information.
In April 2022 I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism after I got over the initial ‘why me? Its not fair’ I accepted it was just another condition I would learn to manage and I will….
I first signed up for Ironman Wales 2019.
I had a good year of training until August 11th 2019 I collapsed unconscious during a training session. I fractured my jaw, lost most of my front teeth and could see my kneecap through the hole in my knee. So my IMW dream was over for that year. They thought it was my heart but after many tests no abnormality was found. At the time of my collapse my blood glucose was in range too. A mystery ? So signed up again for IMW 2020!
2020 we all know what happened that year.
So I sighed up again for IMW 2021.
IMW 2021 is cancelled.
O no, I am not going to lie I did start to feel down, but I just signed up a again for IMW 2022
2021 A year of training again but it never happened!
You can see posts of my training on my page ‘2021 The Year It Never Happened Page’. I have shared some of my my training sessions, blood glucose patterns, nutrition and stories of success and diabetic disasters. During this year my diabetes management slowly gets better.
My circumstances will be different for my training for IMW 2022.
I am going back to Cardiff Metropolitan University to become an NHS Dietitian. I have been inspired through the pandemic to move into a role in human health. I have worked in education in animal health and biology for the past 30 years mainly in teaching roles, so this will be a big change and one that I am so excited about. I will be studying full-time, working part-time and Training for IMW.
My Journey to Ironman Wales 2022 