I ride different types of session: steady ones, music rides with more pace, cooldowns. The obvious question: do they affect blood sugar differently?
What the data show
From my own sensor export.
How I calculated this
For each session I took the reading immediately before and the lowest reading in the ninety minutes afterwards. The difference is the decline.
This is a rough calculation. It does not account for what was eaten beforehand, how high the starting value was, or what came after.
The result
Steady sessions and music rides barely differ: nine against ten mg/dl on average. That is less than I expected — and the spread within each group is larger than the difference between them.
What stood out was the starting value: before the music rides it sat about ten points lower. That is probably because I ride those in the morning and the steady ones more often after a meal.
Eight and eleven sessions are too few for a comparison. With numbers that small a single outlier decides the average. For a reliable answer I would have to create the same starting conditions — same time of day, same meal beforehand — over many weeks.
What I take from it anyway
Both forms lower the reading. Which one I ride seems to matter less than whether I ride at all.
That matches what I see with the walk after meals: the biggest difference lies between movement and no movement, not between two kinds of movement.
Key points
- Eleven steady sessions, eight at higher pace.
- Average decline: nine against ten mg/dl.
- The spread within groups exceeded the difference between them.
- With so few sessions a single outlier decides the average.
- Whether I ride seems to matter more than what I ride.
Single observation, not a study.
Sources
This entry is based on my own sensor readings. Where studies are mentioned, they are linked in the text. Continuous glucose monitoring: FreeStyle Libre 3.