Modern wearables pack the kind of technology you could only find in a doctor’s office a few years ago. Yet as advanced as they may be, most wearables focus on just two metrics - heart rate and movement. While they are lightyears ahead of the heart rate straps of the 1980s, they still cannot offer a complete picture of what is going on. If you are trying to quantify and assess your performance and recovery you need more information, which is where Supersapiens comes in.
With their constant glucose monitoring tech, they are among the first companies to quantify an entirely new metric for training: fuel. Because we all know that your car is not going anywhere without gas in the tank. Not many of us would drive a car without a fuel gauge, so the reasoning follows, why would you train without one?
Supersapiens Details• Live blood glucose mointoring
• 2 weeks' life per sensor - no charging
• Compatible with smartphones, Garmins and wrist monitor
• Waterproof
• Stores up to 8 hours' data
• Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) compatible
• MSRP: $150 USD monthly
•
supersapiens.com If you are a diabetic, you might be looking at this article saying, “Those look bloody familiar to me!” And you’d be right. The heart of the system is the Abbot Libre sensor, which is a mildly adapted version of Abbots’ medical sensor for diabetics. So before we go any further in this review let us get the big question out of the way - does the technology work? Yes.
The Supersapiens tech was originally designed as a monitoring device for people whose lives depend on managing their blood sugar. The sports versions are marked “not for medical use” and have the option to connect directly to your phone, so they are a little different and it is fair to assume they are produced to a slightly more relaxed standard, but it is a well-proven, dependable system. So for the rest of this review, we will be focusing on the more interesting question of why you might want it to work.
Getting StartedThe heart of the system is the Libre Sense sensor. Essentially it is a tiny needle that sits just beneath the skin for the two weeks the sensors work for.
Popping open the box, the initial setup takes a moment to figure out, but if you follow their instructions it is straight forwards. You need to clean the skin on the back of your arm first as the patch is going to be in one place for a fortnight. You then assemble the applicator and press the sensor on. Depending on the spot the sensation ranged from nothing at all to (unsurprisingly) a minor needle-prick.
If you are at all clumsy then the protective cover is worth using. Scraping a door frame as I walked through I accidentally peeled the first sensor I used off my arm and once they come off they cannot be reapplied - a frustrating way to bin €75.
With the sensor on the back of your arm, you then need to connect it to a device. Supersapiens say that compatible phones need NFC technology (the system contactless payments use) and enough punch to be able to handle the app. Unfortunately, the iPhone SE (2016) I was running did not make the cut. To run the test I had to upgrade to an iPhone 12 Mini and from then on it paired flawlessly. It is also worth noting that my Garmin Fenix 3 was also too old for the system - so if you are considering going down this route you need to make sure that your tech is capable.
Once you are set up and paired to your phone, you need to wait for an hour for the system to warm up. From then on you will have live updates of your blood sugar.
Using SupersapiensOn their website Supersapiens split the three areas they believe their tech is most useful for: prime, perform and recover, so from here we will split this review into those three categories to have a look at what the system might do for you.
PrimeWe all know that if we want to do a big ride we need to eat plenty beforehand. We have all learned that we should eat something which provides enough energy for us, but do we stop to think about what foods provide the best levels of energy? Many common foods can actually cause your blood glucose to spike, which means inconsistent energy levels.
That blood sugar spike is the same mechanism diabetes uses to damage the body, primarily through inflammation. While the effects are less dramatic in people who can naturally control their blood sugar, it is something we should try and avoid, both for our long-term health and our sporting performance.
The value of a constant glucose monitor is that we all respond a little differently. While you can find general guidelines as to good things to eat, if you are looking to maximize your performance you can use it to test and verify fuelling strategies. You can run a series of everyday experiments on yourself to have a data-supported picture of which foods work do and don't work for you.
To give a personal example, I eat porridge for breakfast with raisins and cranberries every day. The Supersapiens told me that something in that mix was causing a big blood sugar spike. On the first day, I tried the breakfast without the raisins, the second without the cranberries, and the third with neither. It turned out that it was the cranberries that were causing the spike. Since removing them I have noticed that I don’t tend to run out of energy mid-morning as often.
By following your glucose levels you can start to work into granular details of your diet too. For instance - how long should you give yourself after eating before sport? This is a very individual thing, we all vary in this respect. Ideally, you want quite a high level of blood sugar to get the most out of your body, so how long after feeding is that point?
For endurance athletes, this benefit is pretty straight forwards, but it can also be used for more intense disciplines, like DH. If you are honing in on every little detail to make those three minutes between the tapes as perfect as possible, surely you should make sure that you have the optimal amount of energy available?
The app shows where your current blood sugar is in relation to normalized target ranges.
The snapshot feature lets you quickly compare your levels from today to yesterday - handy if you're keeping an eye on recovery or effort.
You also get weekly insights.
PerformIt is worth noting that the UCI has banned this technology in competition. This may seem an odd decision to those who don’t follow road cycling closely, but it is probably a good thing. Take the Road World Championships, usually something like an 8-hour race for the men. Fuelling is a critical part of the skill of racing, especially over a huge day like that. If a rider gets it wrong, the critical moment may come and they have no energy to respond.
To excel at endurance racing you need to learn to manage your body through the day. With a constant glucose monitor, you can be notified of your blood sugar levels beginning to dip before you would be able to feel it, meaning that to be perfectly fuelled you simply need to watch a number, no skill required. This reduces the one factor racing needs to be exciting - unpredictability.
If you have done your homework in the priming phase you can then choose what to fuel yourself with based on how you respond to it. For instance, while the sugar spike from cranberries was a bad thing at breakfast, out on a ride when I may want to raise my blood sugar levels as quickly as possible, that could be a positive thing. One thing the app does help you start to understand is that you need different blood sugar levels for different situations, and correspondingly you can start to match different foods to those situations.
In the saddle, it was very interesting to see how different intensities affected blood sugar levels. In early summer I took on the climb above our village affectionately known as “The Death March” - a long, exposed fireroad where the gradient always seems to be against you. Keeping an eye on both my blood sugar and heart rate, I could see that if I let my heart rate go too high my body would dump sugar into my blood to respond, which would be followed by a big crash in glucose.
A week or so later I tried riding a road climb while strictly controlling my heart rate. That constant heart rate meant I could do the 25km climb with no spikes or crashes. However, what I discovered after was that riding like this (without food) meant that I severely depleted my glycogen stores and it took a few days for them to recover and be able to ride again.
RecoverThe Supersapiens app tells you that there is a 30-60 minute “insulin-independent” window after exercise to replenish your glycogen. In other words, they give you permission to stuff your face in the name of optimal recovery, which I definitely approve of.
It was during this phase I had my biggest epiphany with the Supersapiens. For years I have noticed that when I take a rest week, after two to three days I crash heavily for three days or so. It has always been one of those things I knew I had to accept, but it always frustrated me. By monitoring my glucose I learned that this is due to blood sugar - after two days' rest, my blood sugar levels fell off a cliff and took around three days to normalize. It may not offer a practical advantage to me at this stage, but understanding what is happening and why made it far easier to accept.
LimitationsThe biggest limitation with the system, for me, is the memory in the sensors. They can hold up to eight hours of data, which is not enough. Most of us know that eight hours is a good amount of sleep, especially if you are training hard, but when you start thinking practically about it, you see that it is not long enough. For eight hours’ sleep, sleep specialists tell us that we should take something like 40 minutes without screens before bed, then you need to factor in the time to fall asleep (20 minutes is considered optimal), then time to wake up in the morning (apparently avoiding screens for an hour first thing is a good thing to do). So for eight hours’ sleep, you should be looking to put your phone down for 10 hours, leaving you with a two-hour gap in the data.
It is hard to avoid the cost question, too. A monthly membership package costs €150 per month, which is a lot of money. They also offer tailored packs for 10, 14, and 18 weeks, which correspond to popular training blocks.
If you are sitting there thinking that sounds expensive, chances are that this is not the product for you. For many, this level of data will change their training forever. When I was stuck into a serious block of cardio I was doing mental arithmetic trying to figure out how I could afford to run the system year-round. Then, over the summer, I checked out from my cardio program for various reasons and lost interest in glucose monitoring. Much of how you feel about Supersapiens will likely be tied to how seriously you train - if you watch a major road race these days, even the support staff are using Supersapiens.
That said, the way Supersapiens helps you learn, maybe you don’t need it 24/7? For instance, a monthly pack is €150, which is around half an annual Whoop subscription, but in that month you could experiment and use that information to inform the rest of your season, or life.
Pros
+ Revolutionary metric for serious athletes
+ Huge potential for changing general health, not just sport
+ Discrete
Cons
- Expensive
- Limited storage means it always needs to be near a device
- Requires current devices to function
- Too much information?
Pinkbike's Take![bigquotes](https://es.pinkbike.org/246/sprt/i/bigquotes-left.svg) | There is no question that for some constant glucose monitoring is going to be life-changing. Equally, many people will likely read this review and wonder why on earth anyone would go to these lengths. It opens up a whole world of experimenting with your metabolism and learning about yourself that will be intoxicating to some. It all depends on how big a part of your life training/health is. Certainly, Supersapiens have put together a solid system that can give some truly unique and important insights, even if the tech maybe could do with a minor tweak or two down the line. —Matt Wragg |
(a memorable experience to whizz down pretty singletrack with a web of sap lines just overhead)
I used to hate mosquitoes, but I'm starting to feel a certain kinship.
Anyway, my personal opinion, while pretty cool technology that has become much more accurate and affordable in the last 10 years, for a non-diabetic, probably a very niche market. It's going to give most people information they're not really going to anything with in an tangible sense. As you say in your last sense, you found out your glucose was lower during rest days...and then you didn't do anything with that information. Like often it tells you that you ate a donut and your glucose went up...which duh. Or your glucose is lower cause you haven't eaten in a while...which duh. And from experience managing diabetes, there is often a large disconnect between having the information and then actually altering behavior. That is one of the almost universal truths among humans
Interstitial fluid doesn’t mean it will always be a 15 min delay or bad information.
- Dexcom has a 4 min delay and is approved by health Canada and the FDA to make a treatment decision without calibration or double checking with a test strip, while libre 1 is not (test strips required to verify and calibrate on numerous occasions.)
- Libre/SS can only be worn on the back of the arm. Dexcom can be worn on the lower abdomen, back of arm, upper buttocks in pediatrics (worth a shot for adults too).
- Dexcom will alert you when you are high, low, AND when your glucose is rapidly changing, preventing 70+% of low BG events.
- Libre/SS have never proven to reduce A1C.
- More relevant to athletes and people without diabetes: people using Dexcom have demonstrate more time in range than those using libre.
For people without diabetes, it would a good idea to wear Dexcom temporarily to see what activities, food items, stress, hydration levels, levels of exertion, etc and how your blood sugar is impacted.
In competition the advantage becomes more obvious, with timing carb intake and avoiding low BGs/bonking.
guidelines.diabetes.ca/cpg/chapter9
How do you use Dexcom and how does it impact your riding?
Saying that, it isn't a bad system at all, but there are several others that can do similar.
Like this Sapiens thing - there are many ways to skin a cat/monitor blood levels...
The literature says otherwise: have a look at the DC update on isCGM(libre). Proven to reduce severe hypo incidences but not A1C guidelines.diabetes.ca/cpg/chapter-9-2021-update
Dexcom works most smartphones, which most people carry around anyway. Receivers are a thing of the past.
Maybe SS/libre is slightly better than test strips, but there is a hell of a lot better.
People in Iran and china have figured out how to use Dexcom with their iPhones or Samsung Galaxies, surely you can too.
www.dexcom.com/en-GB/compatibility/dexcom-g6-app
A dietician would then be able to advise on how proceed. Could be hydration, fat/fiber/protein : glucose ratios, stress (cortisol), hydration, etc.
For example, if you spend too much time in Zone 3 and beyond, you will likely have a cortisol release, thus increasing BG.
It’s actually 150euro per their website and later in the article so $170 usd at current rates.
I just have to laugh that people with such a poor understanding of basic nutrition would entertain understanding glucose monitoring.
Unless it gets bought by SRAM, works in the Metaverse and can be overlaid on my Hammerhead with all other data. Then I’m in. $170 would be a deal.
While I appreciate that elite athletes want to benefit from marginal gains of niche tools this device is providing metrics for biological processes most people (non-diabetics) can’t really influence easily. Learning and comprehension are interesting and fun but I don’t believe most people need or can benefit from this.
I’m wondering what the goal of this company really is? They don’t make the sensors so they don’t make much money on them. And the app is free right?
So, its likely your data is the product…
Probably way more direct benefit adding more carbon parts onto your bike…
You’re wrong. Dexcom app runs on any iPhone and many Androids (and you can build your own app for androids that are incompatible out of the box). There hasn’t been need to use a receiver since G4, which was superseded 5 years ago.
Visit the Looping forums (those of us who really need reliable and accurate data) and agreement G6 is hands down the best system out there is almost unanimous.
Ask your Endo or CDE for a Dexcom sample.
Libre 1-2-3/Sense is only approved to worn on the back of the arm.
The site-specific approval is only because that was the location used in the trials used for FDA approvals, not because there’s any reason to suspect it doesn’t work elsewhere.
My son almost always wears his Dexcom on his upper arm.
Try Dexcom, actually having your BG pushed to your phone/watch without having to scan is game changing. Alarms only give you so much, set them in a tight range and they drive you mad because they always go off, but slacken the range and they don’t actually make you change your behaviour. But when you can glance at your wrist and see that your BG is 6.3 and on a downward trend lets you intervene with a small snack before you go low, or 7.5 and on an upward trend lets you correct before going high. Even better if you integrate it in a closed loop system.
isCGM (Libre 1-2) has shown to decrease time in hypo, yet no consistent differences in A1C, compared to test strips. guidelines.diabetes.ca/cpg/chapter-9-2021-update
Dexcom alerts you on your phone and or receiver for hyper/hypo, and rapid changes. No scanning. Imagine finding out that you will have a low 20mins prior.
Followed up by: "Live Valve Energy" --- Hook our proprietary energy goo-filled Camelback straight into your arm via IV and this revolutionary tech will automatically pump it into your bloodstream as needed.
diatribe.org/%E2%80%9Cbionic-kids%E2%80%9D-put-artificial-pancreas-through-rigors-summer-camp
Seriously, nowadays there is a glut of possible information devices that has - at most - use only for the seasoned pro.
Everyone else would profit from really ancient wisdom like hydrate and eat properly. Most riders don’t even do that.
And a sensor telling me when to eat? Please, farming out your brain to computers is NOT the ticket to greatness.
I've been surprised how long it's taken for this to happen though, the sell to Triathletes and Marathon runners should be easy. Never bonk again.
I'm borderline uncomfortable using it though even as a T1 diabetic, its a lot of single use disposable electronics and battery, as well as the huge plastic applicator. Each application is a massive pile of waste, for a 2 week (or less if you knock it off) period. Hard to justify.
TT bikes still seem to sell at a much lower price used than other bikes. Always get the sense they were impulse buys.
That's straight crazy talk. The Breck Epic would like to have a word with you...
Triathletes also seem to have the least realistic expectations of bike shops and mechanics!
People like Froome, MVDP or Minnaar are NOT that athletic. The single most athletic cyclists across the whole board are BMX racers. I could give it to Fabien Barell, Gee Atherton, Rachel Atherton, Chris Akrigg, maybe Nino, but the list won't be long. Just because you have strong legs and can put tires between two rocks in the middle of a loose turn at 40km/h doesn't mean you are athletic. Average collage football player is far more athletic that pretty much any cyclist out there.
And fyi please refer to us as ‘cisglucosers’ normal is offensive.
I do agree that it would be nice for the industry to focus on getting the right technology in the hands of the patients who NEED it first.
In fact, a minority of the t1d community is using CGM.
What about the people without type 2, who are not fat, and think they are consuming a healthy diet?
Luckily there is plenty of peer reviewed literature on glucose variability and incidence of cardio vascular disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. A CGM would help a lot in knowing what that variability looks like.
What concerns me is non-diabetics causing a shortage in stock for diabetics. I saw this when I was going through ketoacidosis and was looking for test strips, but I couldn't find any because keto diets were popular. Regular people, who don't really go through ketoacidosis, had bought up the stock because they wanted to test for ketones! I can see something similar happening here...
You and I, and probably most people who ride bikes, know that pizza has a lot of carbs and fat, and that an apple has few carbs and fibre. We learn through trial and error or formal education that eating certain foods will help us avoid bonking and other foods won’t, in turn teaching us what a carb is and where to find them.
People with weight issues, who are on their way to t2d, can gain a lot from seeing in real time how a glass of Tropicana orange juice does the same damage as a glass of coke, or how going for a walk after dinner keeps things at bay. This information becomes extremely valuable to helping them reduce their eventual impact on a healthcare system, in turn reducing the their long term consumption of healthcare resources.
As for the technology I have a little trouble not shaking my head at this as a supreme luxury for sport, when I'm lucky to get it for my very real health needs. But that's a whole social welfare in America debate for another day! Lol.
What I'm really curious about is how much variability is there in a 'normal' person when exercising or eating. As I asked above, what was the level of that spike after the cranberries?
My suspicion is that it's not enough to feel the effects and I say this because a couple years ago we put one of my glucose sensors on my wife and even after eating sweets it spiked to less than 120md/dl and never went below 65mg/dl which is well within perfect.
As for anyone that is not a highest level athlete or has hypoglycemia issues I bet this is so far at the pointy end as to be useless for most users.
Interesting tech though, and my Dexcom glucose sensor allows me to perform at a higher level because I can see live data and take action before severe lows.
Oh, and as someone that needs to wear medical devices on my skin I'll say it can be a real drag. They can itch, the wire in your skin can hurt, they can get ripped off or sweat off, it's all a bit of a hassle. So it's hard for me to imagine anyone agreeing to do this for such slight performance gains.
Many people without diabetes will notice a decrease in performance from high BG, even if it’s only slightly above 180. One of the biggest factor would be all of the people with over reactive pancreases, who have lows from consumer gels/candy to bring their BG up in the first place. More common than you think.
Regardless of sport or diabetes, everyone can benefit from reducing their glucose variability.
peterattiamd.com/are-continuous-glucose-monitors-a-waste-of-time-for-people-without-diabetes
As for the hassle, yes, not wearing one is definitely more comfortable than wearing one. But you can easily increase adhesion and prevent itch with a variety of different products. Pain at the site is just poor placement and should not be tolerated.
But yep, Omnipod and using Loop with a Riley-Link. For me it's a game changer and makes life better even if it's a lot of work. I'm certainly looking forward to dual-hormone pumps in the next few years that can allow me to have literally perfect blood sugars.
As for painful sites I think it's an occasional reality for a lot of users based on what I hear online. And sure, I can throw it away but I'll likely not get reimbursed for it and that gets really expensive. And I've had a comfortable site turn uncomfortable at a time and place it wasn't convenient to switch the sensor, besides the two hours without data.
And I get that above 180 you'll see effects but at least when I had my wife wear one for ten days it literally never went above 130 and she tried eating crazy sugary foods to spike it.
I'm sure that would be different for someone that is 'pre-diabetic' but then again there will likely more beneficial health interventions before something like this.
How do you find it combined with sport? I'm wary about pulling out the canula in a crash, or snagging it while I'm climbing. Is that a realistic concern? Are the better control upsides worth the downsides?
But I would also like to know how a active person who crashes from time to time handles this setup
Now that I'm just punting it's not as critical, but then again the race to beer at the top can be real .
www.garmin.com/en-US/newsroom/press-release/wearables-health/people-with-diabetes-can-now-view-dexcom-cgm-data-on-their-garmin-smartwatch-or-cycling-computer
Dexcom will alert you before you’re high or low and give you the value without even having to open your phone. Or your mother across the country can tell you for you, if that’s your jam.
It will be interesting to see libre 3 when it’s available and what clinical evidence it can provide.
Xdrip+ also brings the benefit of being able to calibrate the readings with fingerprick tests, which I've found makes it way more accurate.
If you aren’t striving to be an elite athlete, this will leech what little fun you had left when the power meter went on your bike.
But-this will make a waaaay bigger difference than any lighter bike parts or ceramic bearings, so if you always train and never just ride-worth every penny.
I’d still say this technology is the next step to optimal training. And I don’t want to optimally train anymore……
The libre 2 requires scanning. The libre sense sensor transmits data without scanning. However, libre sense is not approved for medical use. This begs the questions of its accuracy and reliability.
I understand that the functions are different across countries.
Here in Canada, libre 2 has BT but needs to be scanned to view the result causing an alarm.
Libre sense is not Libre 1. Libre sense is not approved for medical use, likely why they are able to bypass the mandatory scan. Libre sense also has a smaller BG range view. It’s not designed for people with diabetes.
Libre 3 is a different story. Likely won’t be in Canada for a while.
No doubt libre is better than using 10-20 test strips per day.
Ask your Endo or GP for a sample and try both at the same time. See if one alerts you more or less than the other for lows/highs.
www.freestylelibre.com.au/products.html
Since Libre haven't had similiar event. I cannot recommend it enough to diabetic bikers!
On a side note: I understood that in Slovenia social security covers only first genaration of Libre, which cannot be connected to a phone (and alert your low glucose levels) but in US they already have have 3rd generation that connects to the phone, waking you up if yor glucose level is too low.
www.richroll.com/podcast/cyrus-khambatta-robby-barbaro-499
I'm assuming you meant dried cranberries. Most dried cranberries you can buy have sugar in them whereas raisins usually don't. This might be part of the reason you saw a difference between cranberries and raisins.
I've bought dried cranberries from here for years and while they have cranberries without sugar, they're almost ten times as expensive. No idea why. This is US based. No idea where you live.
nuts.com/driedfruit/cranberries
Stop the sensor on your phone or reader. Wait 20 minutes, and then just pop the transmitter back in. Start it with the same code that you have, but manually punch the numbers in. Usually can squeeze 4-6 extra days out of one, your body will start to reject it eventually and it'll start erroring out, that's when it's time to change it (or if it starts to hurt).
They'll eventually patch this workaround out I imagine.
Maybe the company should sponsor one diabetic patient for every athlete who buys their product?
I've been using the Libre now Libre 2 for nearly 4 years now and I'll tell you now that it takes years not weeks/months to gain enough valuable data and start to make reasoned and effective decisions off the back of it. Diabetics are forced into understanding and working this data as out lives quite literally depend on it, honestly this is just a gimmick and a total waste of time for any non diabetic. If you're serious about this kind of stuff, get yourself a coach and do some proper testing to get reliable and qauntable data across a range of factors. Check out people like Train Sharp for example, that would be money well spent.
That said, if they're buying up fibre sensors from abbot to sell off to gullible folk and reducing the cost of production of fibre sensors in turn making it available to more diabtetics, then I can get behind it. For many its hard enough to get access to this technology which for diabetics is life changing, seems wrong to turn it into the latest bit of cool lifestyle wearable electronics. That said, maybe that makes me cool now as I've always got one on my arm!
Both require a prescription in the US. I've been trying to source one for a month of so, I've been in and out of the hospital with non diabetic issues the last year and my rides have really suffered so I've just been wanting to give a CGM a go for a month or so to learn a little bit about the weird stuff my body is doing when I'm out pedaling up to get down.
As to finding one? You could just find a diabetic and point them towards the nearest CVS. Or go to your doctor, give them your reasoning and ask if they will give you a prescription. You likely won't get insurance coverage either.
You aren't going to get much from it.
For a non-diabetic person I am not entirely sure how having a CGM does help with performance. I should so more readings on this, but I would expect other physiological mechanisms affecting performance while having a blood glucose in normal range.
I am doing my medical residency in endocrinology and diabetes, if you wonder.
Also, those devices do measure interstitial fluid glucose levels and not blood glucose levels per se, and while often very similar at rest (with 5-10 minutes lag) in specific circumstances, strenous exercise and dehydratation are part of them, their accuracy drops significantly
If you are interested, could you please take this questionnaire (2-3 mins) about your experience?
There is the link: forms.gle/1FrnJZ9xF8nWoGVv6
Switch the sensor to sample lactate and then pair it with HR or power and then you have a more meaningful measure
Most non-diabetics will hit 10+mmol/l and can easily drop below 4.
Big advantage is learning what aspects of your life impact your BG when and why. The number might not be as valuable as it is for someone using insulin, but the trends and direction of your BG can be worth a lot for competition, but especially for avoiding type 2 diabetes.
It's just a rebranded Libre sensor. You can get them at your pharmacy, and they are a frig of a lot cheaper than $150USD. They run about $100CDN, they'll be even cheaper in the states. You shouldn't need a prescription, at least in Canada you don't. I used to use the Xdrip app, or you can download the Freestyle app for your phone. I think this is sort of stupid though, I don't really know what anyone not running the tour de France, or with a working pancreas wants to glean from this. Your glucose levels? Plot spoiler, they'll be somewhere between like 4.5 if you've been fasting and 7 or 8 if you've just been eating gels or a meal, unless you've got an absolute piece of shit pancreas like I do. Otherwise it'll sit flat around 5.8 mmol/l.
As for my routine, I always take a couple cokes no matter what. Makes my bag feel like it weighs more than my bike, but I've run into some real situations over the years, so I prepare.
Usually leave the house on temp basel on my pump, set to come off about 2 hours after I think I'll be done riding. Drink some Gatorade on the way out to the mountains, have Gatorade in the water bottle instead of water. Always have a bagel just before leaving, 50% my normal bolus. Those honey stinger gummies are awesome, I always have a few in my pack, if I notice my sugars coming down I'll stop and pop one of those, and it usually works good to level off the crash and sustain higher levels for a bit (they really are awesome).
I'm usually high at the end of a ride, but I'll usually head back down the road a bit and sometimes a crash happens so I'm ready with a coke, if not I'll slam some insulin as I'm coming back into the city.
#1 and potentially the most important: everybody's needs for fuel will be different, we all have different bodies and just because we compete in the same sport as someone else, that other person may require drastically different fuel sources than you. Your fuel source will also drastically change depending on what type of competition you're doing, a downhill racer will need a way different diet and pre-race meal compared to a XC racer.
#2 is "Not many of us would drive a car without a fuel gauge... why would you train without one?" -- because we can generally feel (within reason) how our body is fueled at a given point, "bonking" is a super exaggerated form of feeling your body's fuel being depleted. This analogy in your article is also misleading because your car doesn't have a backup fuel tank to get you home. We use different fuel systems in our body depending on what we demand of it, it's not like we'll keel over and be unable to move if we don't have enough fuel, we can still get home on an "empty tank" whereas with a car you're calling a tow truck.
#3 is the premise of this article to begin with. If it's insanely expensive, it's safe to say that 99% of people on here aren't going to buy into it. Those who are able to afford it or need it for training, are probably racing at such a high level that they're in UCI sanctioned events, in which case this article states that it's banned by the UCI in competition so what's the point?
I understand that it's a cool piece of tech and I'm personally very interested to see how the tech can trickle down into more affordable versions of itself, but I don't really think this is worth dedicating time to testing and writing an article about on Pinkbike. It's not affordable, it's getting into the "too much info" territory for most people, it can't be used in high level competition so you can't even use it to properly fuel yourself mid-race, and most people probably won't be able to interpret the information it gives and effectively change something about their diet due to lack of knowledge on nutrition anyway.
Personally, the best way to find out what works for you is through trial and error. I use one exclusive brand of granola bars during a ride because they're the only ones that don't give me cramps. Trial and error is how I know what to eat the night before, the morning of, and during a ride.
Haven't the interwebs agreed for bananas for scale?