Orindan Sunil Shah, raising his custom built titanium touring bike in victory, after finishing the Tour D’Afrique, a bicycle race and expedition that began on Jan. 16, 2010. The race covers 10 countries in Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town. Shah was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 31. Today, the 37-year-old father of two with wife Shirin Sharif, talks about his amazing health journey.
He dubs himself ‘Geek on a bicycle,’ but that doesn’t come close to describing who and what Sunil Shah is all about.
Sure, the Orindan could be called a techy-dude for working as an engineering manager for Yelp, Airbnb, and now Databricks in San Francisco, but it’s the bicycle part that really starts to define him.
We’ll get to cycling in a minute.
Born in Stoke-on-Trent, which is in the middle of England, where his dad’s first job was, he and his family moved to Watford – a suburb of London – at the age of two until he moved to Berkeley for a Master’s program in engineering at 26. In between, he found himself at 224 pounds with his 5-9 frame, and landed squarely in the obese category.
At 31, he was diagnosed with onset type 1 diabetes, also known as T1DM, and wound up in the hospital.
Now 37, Shah and wife Shirin Sharif, parents of two (ages two and four months), look back on his medical and physical journey – one that more clearly defines this “Geek on a Bicycle” (geekonabicycle.co.uk/about/).
Why were you hospitalized in 2019?
I had diabetic ketoacidosis, which is a life-threatening condition where your body’s blood sugar levels are high enough and there are significant risks of cardiac arrest or falling into a coma. This was because my body was no longer able to control my blood sugar, and without producing insulin, my cells were unable to process the sugar in my blood to get the energy they needed.
You wrote in your blog your blood sugar level was 609 mg/dL. What should it
have been?
A normal (non-diabetic) blood sugar should be around 100 mg/dL, anything above 180 mg/dL is considered high. So this was … extremely high.
How did news of type 1 diabetes hit you?
At first I was in disbelief. There are a lot of misconceptions about the disease – one of which is that it is caused by diet (type 1 is hereditary and an auto-immune reaction, there is some evidence that it is caused by an infection causing the auto-immune system to go haywire). Then I progressed through the various stages of grief – and for a period of time, I was very angry at life in general.
It was very hard for people to empathize with my disease and management of it – it’s often natural for people to blame someone for their blood sugars going high or low, not realizing that so much of it is out of your control, even if you do eat perfectly.
I was also very anxious about being able to return to exercising. When you take exogenous insulin, it is much easier to have a hypoglycemic episode (low blood sugar) when exerting yourself, which can be very dangerous.
However, the silver lining for me was connecting with a community of other type 1 diabetics. An old manager from work who had been type 1 since he was a child was incredibly helpful in pointing me towards resources that could help.
The diabetes educator at Alta Bates connected me with a support group based in Berkeley who provided a good outlet for commiserating and sharing tips. And one of the swim instructors at Odyssey Open Water in Berkeley mentioned she worked with a coach (Cliff Scherb) who is type 1 diabetic – he is an Ironman and was a competitive triathlete, so that gave me inspiration that it would be possible to get back to exercising.
After I got set up with a continuous glucose monitor (which is a marvel of modern technology), I remember taking my very first bike ride with my friend Phil, and it was a huge occasion.
Why did you choose bicycling as your exercise of choice to get back in shape?
At the time, and given my family background, I wasn’t really cognizant of the need to exercise or focus on fitness. However, I enjoyed cycling and became friends with another kid at school –after the department store bike I had was stolen one summer. I found that, despite the physical discomfort that came with cycling while I was so out of shape, I enjoyed the adrenaline rush and increased mental clarity I got when cycling – and it was addictive. So I cycled when I could, to school, around town, on weekends and during school holidays.
How did your diet change?
When I went to university and after I’d lost almost all of my extra weight, my diet cleaned up quite a bit, and I became quite conscious about reducing carbs and calories to maintain my body weight. At home, we ate primarily vegetarian Indian (Gujarati) food, which is tasty, but generally tends to be quite carb-heavy and can be quite rich.
Since your diabetes diagnosis, your cycling morphed into big races and other forms of exercise. In what ways have your athletic accomplishments affected you and your lifestyle?
Originally (up to and including the Tour D’Afrique in Jan. 2010), I was mostly just interested in spending time on my bicycle. Sometime after that trip, I may have burned out a little on cycling – there are aspects of road cycling culture that I don’t enjoy (particularly the cost and elitism associated with the discipline – where you have to buy the right sort of gear and clothes to be considered a real cyclist) – as well as the competitiveness. I’m not particularly fast and for me, a large part of the enjoyment of cycling comes from the adventure and the social aspect of it.
After I moved to the Bay Area, I decided I wanted to do a triathlon, since many of the more serious athletes on the Tour D’Afrique were Ironman finishers or competitive marathoners. I signed up for the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon through the lottery in 2014 and got a spot for 2015. Several people told me I was an idiot and that it was a tough first triathlon to sign up for, but that usually helps motivate me to prove them wrong. Since then, I’ve tried to set myself a goal for each year, although lately, balancing the demands of parenting with hobbies has made this more challenging.
The Tour D’Afrique is the world’s longest bicycle race over four months and 10 countries, covering over 7,000 miles.
What does your exercise regimen look like now each week?
It fluctuates depending on how close I am to an event. When I’m training for an event, it’d usually be a longer ride or run on each weekend day, plus up to an hour Tuesday through Thursday.
When I’m not training, I usually try to do something every other day at the very least. I do run and as much as I hate it, it’s become more comfortable to me, and Orinda is a beautiful place to run around. I enjoy swimming a lot too, although it’s mostly been open water at the Berkeley Marina – and am excited to sign up for Orinda Aquatic Masters in 2025 (having just trialed the group a month ago). I don’t do much weight-training, but am trying to change.
When you’re not working, what do you, Shirin and the family do for fun?
We both try to stay relatively active (although in separate ways – she prefers group exercise classes, I prefer solo workouts). The toddler took up a fair amount of our time early on – and now with two, there is very little downtime.
Otherwise, we love to travel – either to visit my family in the UK or hers in L.A., or to explore the world. For a period of time, it felt like most of our travel was to friends’ weddings. We enjoy hosting (especially in Orinda, where we have a nice deck) and seeing friends. And there always seems to be one or two house projects every year, even when we think we’re happy with the way things are.
What would you like others to know about living with type 1 diabetes?
One of the things you become acutely aware of is how many hidden carbs exist in foods that we eat every day, as well as how they are processed. I used to love boba tea prior to being diagnosed, but liquid carbs generally are incompatible with exogenous insulin – you spike super high and then the insulin will eventually cause a low – even if you do dose correctly.
There is an influencer called glucosegoddess.com who has great advice about reducing the sugar spike – and I find this is very relevant to me as a diabetic and my non-diabetic friends and family.
As for T1DM – there are misconceptions about this disease that are often frustrating for me. One is that it was caused by my lifestyle choices or diet – this is unfortunately not true. The other is that you can’t consume sugar or carbs as a type 1 diabetic. This is also not true – low carb is definitely helpful in controlling your blood sugar, but eating the right sort of carbohydrates (with the right sort of protein/fat content) can be perfectly healthy and is necessary for endurance athletes.
Anything you’d like to add?
A random thought – when I meet someone else with type 1 diabetes out in the world, it’s like meeting a long lost cousin or someone else who is into the same esoteric hobby. It’s one of my favorite things these days – whether it’s at work, running in the SF Marathon, or
while traveling.
Taking a summer ride last summer on his bike with his toddler around Moraga, Sunil Shah, 37, has learned how to live with type 1 diabetes since his diagnosis at age 31.
