Living on the Edge

I am away this week for work. The location I'm at and the timing of it worked well with Doug and I squeezing in a trip to Ottawa last weekend. We arrived late Friday evening and left on Sunday morning. Not much time but enough to squeeze in a trip to the Byward Market and the Art Gallery...and a run down the Rideau Canal.

We woke up Saturday morning and pulled on our running clothes. The Weather Network said 0 degrees with a bit of wind so I pulling on my running pants, long sleeved shirt, vest, hat, ear warmer thingie and gloves.

Ottawa is a lovely town. The Rideau Canal runs right through it and has beautiful paths on both sides for running, walking and cycling. The Canal heads straight for the downtown and takes you right by the parliament buildings. In the winter, when the canal freezes, it is used as a mode of transportation and Ottawatawans(?) actually skate to and from work. As we ran along, we spotted the cabins and warming stations that had already been set up along the riverside. The thin layer of ice forming in the more shaded areas of the river gave a hint of the freezing to come.

We made out way past Carleton University, past the University of Ottawa and into the downtown core. We saw the Ontario parliament buildings and the Château Laurier. I spotted a statue that my sisters and I climbed when we were kids. At 5 kilometres, we crossed over the river and headed back down the other side. We lopped along at a decent clip, a little faster than I would do on my own but not so fast that I couldn't hold it.

At 6.5k, I heard a faint beeping noise coming from my pocket. I knew I wasn't running low on insulin so the beep meant low battery. The cold weather had taxed my already aging energy source to the point where I wasn't sure it was going to make it home.

Damn!

Who the heck carries spare batteries (and a quarter?) with them? Not I. I picked up the pace a little bit. We only had 3.5k to go so it's not like it would have been that big of a problem if I didn't get insulin for that time. My biggest concern was that, as far as I know from reading the manual, if the battery is completely dead for so many minutes (5?), all of the stored data on the pump (oh, like my basal rates and bolus calculations) are lost.

Forever.

My battery has been stretched to the max twice - both times during long cold runs. Neither time did it completely die on me. But it got close enough to freak me out a bit.

Apparently not enough to actually write down the pump settings though.

Someday I really have to do that...