Before I ran on insulin…
…there was martial arts on insulin. My first sports love was karate. I discovered it in college by accident, after declaring myself “not athletic” due to years of warming the JV volleyball team’s bench (seriously…JV. For three years. I decided not to embarrass myself my Senior Year). Turns out, I had picked a sport to play based on it’s level of popularity with the “cool girls,” and not something I was actually good at. But in college, when I signed up for karate class to earn a few credits, I found out that I am an athlete, and that a sport I excelled at did indeed exist.
Karate taught me so many things, but perhaps most importantly, it showed me that I could kick ass - literally - and physically push myself to the limit while still being in control of my diabetes. Succeeding in the ring taught me there was nowhere my diabetes couldn’t go- I just had to figure out how to do it. After getting in to karate, running followed, as did hiking and biking and surfing and international travel (technically not a sport, but challenging with the ‘betes sometimes). The word karate means “open hand,” representing the fact that the art form uses only the body and the mind to defend oneself - not weapons. And although I have some “diabetes weapons” these days in the form of my pump and CGM, it really does come down to just your own body and mind when you’re going to battle with this disease. As I head into the physical challenge of my half marathon this weekend, I will call on my countless karate lessons that showed me I could do so much more than I ever imagined.
My practice of martial arts is more informal these days - boxing and kickboxing classes that focus more on the workout and less on technique. Although there’s no grandmaster yelling commands in Japanese, or a thick belt knotted around my gi-clad waist, the feelings are still the same: you rely on yourself in martial arts, and you build strength with each repetition, each lesson, each success and each failure. Just like with diabetes.
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Good Luck this weekend!!