“I hated almost every minute of the marathon!”
Aucklander Tim Haslop, who has type 1 diabetes, entered the ASB Auckland Marathon and hated almost every minute of the run. But he raised more than $2,500 for diabetes and says the wider experience was among the best of his life.
Tim crosses the finish line at the Waitomo Trail Run, in the lead-up to the big one: the ASB Auckland Marathon.
Tim Haslop had always been more of a sprinter, playing sports that involved short bursts of intense speed, such as tennis and football. That was until Auckland’s second lockdown. Tim says, “I couldn’t go to the gym or play sport, so I started going on long runs just to do some exercise and de-stress.
“I wasn’t enjoying them. I was still thinking, ‘this is hell.’” But he liked how he felt afterwards. So much so that he set his sights on running a marathon. “And then I thought I may as well commit and use it for something good, rather than just do it for myself.”
He knew exactly what charity he wanted to fundraise for. At the start of 2020, he’d volunteered on a Diabetes Auckland Youth Camp, and loved it. “Diabetes NZ’s the only charity where I actually have skin in the game, and I want there to be those camps. It’s a cause I really think is awesome.”
Becoming a volunteer Tim had been on a short break between study and full-time work when he heard Diabetes Auckland Youth was calling for camp volunteers. He liked kids, and he’d enjoyed coaching tennis in the past. He also vividly remembered being a newly diagnosed 13 year old himself. “My confidence took a massive hit, without my even realising it at the time. And I’d think, ‘This sucks. No-one else has to deal with the stuff I do.’ At that age, sometimes it’s like: why can’t I just be like everyone else?
“But I had a family friend who I played tennis with – Scotch. He was an awesome guy, a couple of years older than me. I didn’t know he had type 1 until I was diagnosed.” Tim remembers how much that helped. “I thought, ‘This guy is actually like me and he’s going through what I’m going through.’”
As an adult, Tim liked the thought that maybe he could help kids on the camp in the same way Scotch had helped him. “Even just letting them see that people do live a good life with it.”
He was glad he did. “Honestly, volunteering at camp was one of the coolest things I’ve done.
They’re cool kids there. Everyone’s so nervous at the start. Some of them are terrified of stuff – for example, they don’t want to go in the kayak ... And then, by the last day, they’re all doing everything. They’re all mates. I was so stoked.”
Sheena Duffy Vakatale, Diabetes NZ Auckland Branch Manager, presents Tim with a fitbit. Along with Chris Hanna, Tim was Diabetes NZ's top fundraiser in this marathon.
Finding supporters
After choosing the ASB Auckland Marathon as his event, Tim set up a fundraising page on Everyday Hero. He aimed to raise $1,000, but he’d underestimated the support that was out there.
“I posted on Facebook, and my friends were awesome. I thought maybe two or three would get on board, but heaps of people were, straight away, giving good money … young guys giving 50 bucks, friends from uni, from sport, from school …”
He decided he’d see if his 10-person team at work would donate. He baked ANZAC biscuits and brought them along for morning tea, thinking he’d suggest to the team that, if they liked the biscuits, they could also visit his Everyday Hero page.
He left the biscuits in the kitchen when he arrived at work, and, unbeknown to him, someone from another work team on the same floor sneaked one. “Next thing, she sent a message to the whole floor asking, who baked these and why? My team’s 10 people, but the floor has more than 150 people. So I replied to the whole floor with the link to Everyday Hero.” All of a sudden, many more people from his work were donating.
Tim suspects he knows at least one reason why his fundraising was so successful. “I think if I was a marathon runner doing it for fun, I might’ve got a bit less traction. The whole point was to do something I actually hate. People probably appreciate when you’re actually putting yourself in the pain cave and doing something that you wouldn’t otherwise do.”
Training safely
Tim trained intensively. He found that, during the slow burn of a marathon, his blood sugar behaved differently from when he played sports like football. “And it’s not actually very easy to eat food while you’re running. You’re dehydrated, and so it’s hard to eat. But those little dextrose tablets were really good. And I used sports gels. They really picked me up.
“I never did trail runs by myself. I always made sure I was either with someone or running on well-lit streets with people around.” He worried about having hypos, and “I thought I’m not going to die for this. I’m not going to go out in the middle of the woods and have a low blood sugar and kill myself.”
Surprises on the day
Tim wore his pump, with a reduced basal rate for the run. However, it wasn’t enough. “I – probably naively – thought I’d have less blood sugar problems than I did during the actual run.”
He hadn’t run more than 30km during his training, and his low blood sugars had been easy to treat. But the race was 42km. He says, “For the last 10km, I was going low kind of all the time, which was stressful.
“One funny story … For the run, I was wearing a diabetes shirt and this woman on the sidelines was handing out jelly beans. She was handing them out to people in front of me, but as I got closer to her, she turned and started running away from me. I was like, what is this person doing? I knew I needed some sugar, and she kept running away.”
He finally caught up. “And then she was like, ‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t want to give you jelly beans because you’re in a diabetes shirt.’
“I thought, ‘Are you kidding? That’s exactly what I need right now.’ But always people mean well. People are just trying to do the right thing.”
The last hour
Tim says, “The whole last hour, I was pretty much just trying not to go low, which was easier said than done. I was thinking about it, though. Making sure that I didn’t do anything stupid and just blindly run.
“I was like, I am not going to kill myself for this. At the time, I thought about whether it would be embarrassing if I didn’t finish the race, having said I was going to do it. Then I thought, nah, it’ll be 10 times more embarrassing if I pass out and go to hospital. Literally, embarrassment was the first thing I thought of.
“There was one point where I was starting to feel dizzy. I stopped for a bit, walked, ate heaps of food, and started feeling a little better. I managed to run the last two or three kilometres.”
“An art to it”
Looking back, Tim says, “It was harder than I expected to get the blood sugars all good, but still doable. Definitely doable, and I’d be better at it, I think, if I did it again. There’s definitely an art to it.
“I’d eat before going low, and make sure I was eating during the run. And I’d stop to test more, rather than waiting until I felt a bit crap. If I’m going a bit high, I’m going high, but at least I’m not going to be passing out on the side of the road.”
So, are there more marathons on the horizon for Tim?
“As much as I’d love to say it’s no harder for someone with type 1 to run a marathon than for anyone else, it is – definitely. There’s things you’ve got to think about and physical things you’ve got to do to keep yourself alive when you’re doing it.”
He doesn’t think he’d run another marathon any time soon. On the other hand, “I’d definitely love to do a half Iron Man … that’s obviously the natural progression …”
Then again, he thinks he also needs to give his friends a break from donating. “Maybe later this year or the year after … ” He’d recommend the experience of fundraising to anyone. “Just literally do it, because you’ll feel better having done it. It was a highlight of my year. It’s not all about you when you’re fundraising, but you actually will have a good experience from it.”
“Honestly, volunteering at camp was one of the coolest things I’ve done ... I was so stoked.”