Participant Review:

Michelle Peronek

By: Michelle Perone - IronHike Participant 2024

When I was diagnosed at 16 years old with Type 1 Diabetes I didn’t really understand how much of my life from that point forward was going to change and how many decisions I’d have to make. Did you know the average Type 1 Diabetic makes 180 more health decisions a day compared to a person not living with T1D? Decisions that need to be made to just stay alive. In the beginning I did just that, made decisions to just stay alive. I didn’t think much further into it since ya know, young and dumb. As I got a little older and got the hang of my diagnosis (for the most part) I realized that while I was making hundreds of decisions a day to control my diagnosis the way I made those decisions were really going to direct the direction my life. I’d either just get by in life and probably accumulate other complications and live my life controlled by my disease or I could strive to be in control of my disease and live a super active and exciting life the way I wanted too.

So I made a new decision and I decided one day to sign up for the American Diabetes Association Tour De Cure, a cycling event put on annually to raise awareness for people living with diabetes. I wanted to push myself in a way I’d never done before. So I rode my first cycling event! 35 miles and completed it solo! I was so pumped that I did that, that my body did that!

This is where I began chasing more ways to challenge myself. In the following years I completed 6 Tough Mudders, 1 Spartan race, bumped the mileage for the Tour de Cure from 35 miles to 64 then 100! Now I’ve done the Tour De Cure Century about 7/10 times! The chase didn’t stop there, I kept pushing my mental and physical boundaries and have in more recent years participated in an Everesting event in Utah where you climb up 13x to reach the height of Mt Everest in total vert feet, I climbed 5 14ers in Colorado in 7 days, I attempted to summit Mt Whitney twice and ran my first ultra endurance events! This past October 2024 I attempted IronHikes Everesting event and ultimately let my mind win and of course I now have to go back and do it again!

I’d like to say IronHike found me since in 2023 after my first everesting event I came upon the Iron Hike page and I was immediately interested. I loved the simplicity of it. Climb up, climb down and repeat! It sounds so simple but the difficulty lies within yourself. To me, nothing is a better challenge than trying to beat your mental demons. This Everesting event is much more difficult than the other Everesting events since there’s no gondola to take back to the mountain base.

The past year I’ve been working on my mental grit (as well as my physical conditioning). Iron hike is the ultimate challenge. I have to battle my mental demons that constantly make me forget my “why”, my diabetes control - I really don’t want any rollercoaster-ing on the mountain and my physical needs. It’s the ultimate trifecta for me. I’ve been told so many times that I’m being too crazy or living too dangerous because of my diabetes and that I should do normal exercises and just go to classes. I think Type 1 diabetes has been a blessing and has made me chase bigger goals. It has pushed me to work hard and opened my mind up to what I can do and not what Ai can’t do. It has made me a better person. I am looking forward to coming back to IronHike and learning some more about myself and seeing if I can knock 1 more personal challenge of my belt!

Michelle Perone