Couch to Goggins 4x4x48 Challenge

A type 1 diabetics notes on learning to balance food, insulin, exercise & mind

https://www.gogginschallenge.com/

I came across David Goggins via some podcasts. I immediately liked his straight talk, his approach to challenging situations, and all his physical achievements. I am someone who draws inspiration and learns from people I know personally, but of late I started to read books on people and listen to podcasts. And after coming across Goggins, I was quick to follow him. I have been in a slump for a while now due to many factors, and have been struggling to get back into a rhythm. But then who doesn’t. Goggins had a challenge coming up and I decided to use it to kickstart myself.

The challenge was to run 4 miles every 4 hours, for a total duration of 48 hours. If one could not run, the suggestion was to do an equivalent workout for 45–60 minutes at the same time. That would be 12 repetitions of ~1hr workouts with a 3 hrs break.

I have Type 1 diabetes and a bad right knee, both for over 15 years. I had a complex surgery after a motorcycle accident and then went on to tear my constructed ligament again while playing soccer. Now with no ACL, my knee easily swells up during intense workouts when I don't plan and work up towards it. In the last few years, I have also been struggling with yo-yo weight reaching obesity numbers a few times, and currently at 212 lbs.

I was lucky to come across a few great people (references at the end) who managed their health so well. I learned a lot from them on, nutrition, metabolism, exercise, habits, and how to manage my diabetes improving my HBA1C from an average of 7.5 for over a decade to 4.8. Had also lost over 30lbs once. But with the current slump, I had gotten back to bad health. I was not fit or fat-adapted but I was confident that I could do this challenge because of the things I had learned and practiced in the past.

I planned a few things out in my head on the day of the challenge

• Ride my bike instead of a run as it is easier with my current weight & knee.
• Ride a fixed route, as I can focus on my health instead of route challenges.
• Stock a few things I can eat and drink, and stock glucose tablets.
• Keep a few ice packs in the freezer, fix my bikes, and continuous glucose monitors.

The rest I thought I will figure out along the way.

As you are reading through this you may feel that I look organized and ready for the challenge, but in reality, I was having butterflies the whole day. I was afraid I may sleep through one of the workouts, injure my knee, or maybe just not do it. But I knew that if I start, I will not give up, even if I make mistakes or perform poorly, I will keep trying, something I learned from my Dad. My wife shared a hilarious prep suggestion from Goggins which Lex Fridman/Andrew Huberman mentioned in their podcast on how to prepare for this challenge — take an SIU pill with a can of hard. What the heck is SIU? you may ask, and in Goggins own style —

“Suck It Up” and “Stay Hard”

Disclaimer: Health, Diet, Nutrition are sometimes religious topics for many. We and our circumstances are different and we need to personalize it for ourselves. Some of you need experts/doctor’s advice or you may be putting yourself at risk, please be safe first. The key thing I want anyone new looking at this is that you can learn about your health and learn from data and observations to make corrections and adapt along the way. You can achieve things while having chronic or other conditions with a little bit of learning and staying hard.

# summary

Below is the visualization summary of the data I noted down about my ride, food, insulin during the challenge

• March 5 & 6 was hard with constant lows, numerous corrections, varying glucose levels even though it was mostly in range.
• March 7 was great, as I had learned the patterns and adjusted food/insulin accordingly and the body was also adapting. The blood sugars were far more flat, and hardly needed any corrections, and insulin consumption dropped.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

# ride notes

• Decided to ride indoors at 8 pm, 12 am & 4 am, on my new unused stationary bike, and outdoors at 8 am, 12 pm & 4 pm, on an old creaking hybrid, in a fixed known route that I had done several times before.

• Waking up on time and ready to go sharp at the 4th hour was the key to this challenge, so setup up alarms on 3 different devices and left one in the living room in case I fell asleep in my bedroom.
• I ended up riding close to 79 miles (indoor not accurate) for a total of around 13 hrs. This pales in comparison to what some of my inspirational friends achieve in just 1 ride/day, but it was a big deal for me for where i am at. Did not care much about the total miles, but was really happy to have gone through with doing all the 12 rides on time and for at least 12 hours.

• I had initially planned to do 12 miles every repetition for my indoor rides. But when I started indoors it was a rude shock, even though I rode at 11–13 mph the total distance was only 6 miles. I know the cheap meters are not very accurate with the readings, but I thought speed and distance were directly proportional to some extent. Nevermind. So I quickly reduced my goal using by half. In the second leg indoors, with lack of sleep and knee pains, I halved my goal again to 3 miles. But I was glad to have stuck to 60 minutes of staying awake and fighting it out on the bike.
• My outdoor ride was great initially but then it took longer and longer every ride. It was primarily because of the low sugars, felt the lack of energy. The second day was far better after the electrolytes and the food timing. Riding out with my son was surprisingly fast, what usually takes us 90–100 minutes took at 88 minutes together.
• It was inspiring seeing David Goggins show up on his live feed before every ride, was hesitant on asking him a question directly, next time.

• My knees and thighs hurt like hell during the night of the second day, and I was constantly stopping and icing my knees during Ride 7–10. But the worst was my butt :) when indoors I used a pillow and outdoor rode on my thigh many a time. Need to train well to avoid this next time.
• It was a mental battle, a few things played on in my head constantly — maybe I can miss this workout, 1 mile is good enough now, 45 minutes is good enough, I can stop at 58 minutes, and so on. But even though I stopped a few times in between, I slowly rode on and made sure I went through the 60 minutes.
• Riding out was easier in a lot of ways, as there was no other alternative than to finish my loop, mind is fresher being out, and there are rest times when going downhill, or traffic stops, but indoors on a stationary bike was tougher on the mind and the legs.

# food and glucose notes

• The first two days were crazy with constant corrections with glucose tablets and also made mistakes of taking more insulin. This is what happens to me when the body is not fit and/or fat-adapted. It is a constant battle with highs and lows because it is just not easy to balance insulin-exercise-food in realtime when on a high carb diet and doing tough workouts. That said you do need some amount of carbs, when doing some extreme aerobic workouts, this was not that extreme but because I was not fit and used to the rigor, my body behaved as though it was.
• The total calories consumed from start to finish was ~4500 calories over a 48 hr period, and it turned out to be a 50–30–20 Fat-Protein-Carb split, it was not planned, just it turned out this way based on my past learnings and habits.

• Observed something interesting repeatedly, ate carbs like banana/orange before the bike ride so that I don’t go low. It usually takes me ~30 minutes to start seeing the rise in my sugar. But this time it did not work that way, during my ride I kept going low, it looked as though my body functions were just focused on supporting my ride, and food did not metabolize like usual. As soon as I came back home and sat down after the ride, my BG started to rise sharply. It could also be because of my lack of fitness my body was in a state of shock the whole day. I remember reading about this before, need to investigate this more.
• There was hardly any knee pain on the third day, thanks partly to the electrolytes, missed taking it the previous two days, added extra Magnesium for the muscle soreness. It helped with the general tiredness too. (I have been on and off taking measured electrolytes for the past 4 years, especially when on a low carb diet, so I could easily see how it made me feel different). Protein shakes also worked great in giving energy during the ride and helping me stay level on my blood glucose. Need to make these two fixed during any such endeavors in the future.

I felt good as I was reaching home from the last ride. Was happy that I went through with this and completed it. In reality, it was a struggle on the first 2 days physically and mentally. I was able to do it easily because of my wife being there all the while, handing me the sugar tablets and ice packs during the ride, cooking me nice omelets, waking up along with me during my rides most of the time, and nudging me on gently. One night my son kept an alarm on his watch and woke me up. My daughter provided great comic relief by holding onto me whenever I left home and being the drama queen and crying and asking me not to go, but when I am at home she is busy lost in her own world. My son joined me for the last ride which was special. My wife set up a surprise party with the kids, balloons, a cake, and a rock for my desk. The helmet in this photo is gifted by a friend of mine who is an inspiring biker that I look upto.

Few people I would like to thanks, I got first introduced to learning how to manage my diabetes via Sami Inkinen of VirtaHealth who pointed me in the right direction of some amazing people who work so hard on learning and managing their health, all my friends at TypeoneGrit and the decades of learned wisdom of Dr. Bernstein who wrote the diabetes bible, The Diabetes Solution. The fitness, diet, and habit-building techniques I learned at Ketogains. I will write a different post mentioning all the wonderful things I have learned for these folks.

Key Takeaways

• Learning how proteins, fats, and carbs metabolize is the key. And then creating a predictable menu for such days and rehearsing it during practice would be ideal.
• Being fit and fat-adapted, and eating high protein foods does a world of good for me while doing activities like this and in general.
• Glucose tablets/liquid is compulsory for a diabetic to carry when doing anything physical like this, they could save your life. I just carry tablets.
• Ice therapy is amazing for injuries, inflammation. I need to invest in a better ice pack for my knees. Low carb also reduces inflammation, I have done controlled experiments to observe this for my knee and gum aches.
• I always drop my Basal insulin prior to such activities. I drop it around 30–80%, how much depends on many factors. If I don't do this I will be battling lows all through, and when low they energy also goes low.
• Electrolytes work like magic, I tend to forget it sometimes.
• Our body is an amazing machine, adapts super fast, and learns to meet the moment, and with the latest devices like a CGM, and our current understanding of nutrition and metabolism, we can pretty much do anything being a T1D, with a little bit of learning, planning, and practice.
• The SIU pill worked wonders when I was questioning myself. The mind is everything, learning to train our minds to suck it up sometimes and fight off the inner voice or past bad habits is something that can be learned and practiced.
• I usually do things like this alone, but among all the bike rides the most I enjoyed was the one with my kid. There is something about doing physical feats with someone else for the mind and body, I definitely perform better, I compete with my 8-year-old :)
• This time I just got off the couch and did it, lucky to have not injured my knee. I plan to do this again when I am fit and fat-adapted and note the difference it makes then.

I dropped 3lbs in 48 hrs, which is mostly water weight, but the best part of it is I got a kick in my butt, a shock to my system, a restart of my healthy eating and exercising, and a bit of confidence back in myself. This is the way! The rock that my wife painted for me will be a reminder of what I could do on a weekend, no matter what shape in life I am in. Looking forward to doing this again next year and hope you will join me!

Would love to hear your feedback santosh.mano@gmail.com