Running for Two

I've been really quiet on here and I can't believe its been nearly 3 months since I've done a blog post. Time really flies when you're juggling numerous balls.

25+ weeks

I'm now over 26 weeks pregnant and approaching the final trimester of my pregnancy. My belly has started to look pregnant instead of fat. What seems to amaze people is that I'm still doing weight training 2 - 3 days a week and I'm running between 15 and 19km on top of that. I've had so many people urge me to stop training and even more that are concerned about my running. I've got the full support of my doctor to keep going and his advice is that I will just know when enough is enough.

Now I'm no expert, I'm not medically trained so don't take anything here as gospel and definitely do your own research and tall to your own doctors if you want to run while pregnant. For most women that have been running before falling pregnant there are no reason why you should stop once you conceive. Obviously if you weren't a runner before hand its not the time to take it up but if you have a low-risk pregnancy you shouldn't have to dramatically change your exercise routine.

If found that during my first trimester that going for a run (and to a lesser extent doing my strength training) helped to keep my morning sickness at bay. Looking back now I think it was more that the running gave me something else to think about and took my mind off that awful "I think I'm going to hurt" feeling in my stomach.  Fatigue also rears its head during the stage but once again the endorphins from the exercise helped to rise above it.  During this first 13 weeks my training barely changed. I was more conscience about my heart rate and over heating but my mileage and pace stayed fairly constant.

Almost 22 weeks

Almost 24 weeks

From 14 to 22 weeks I started to slow things down a bit. Both my mileage and pace dropped off. Some of this was due to my belly starting to swell but the main reason was due to the heat of summer. My weights during my strength sessions have basically been the same from this point forward too.  I'm actually not wanting to increase any of them even if I'm feeling ready to as the increase in relaxin can make your muscles, joints and ligaments more unstable.

Almost 26 weeks

About 3 weeks ago I thought that my running days were about to be replaced by shuffles. My Saturday 5km run times were increasing in time, which is to be expected. Well I'm still not sure what has happened but just over 2 weeks ago I record a PB at parkrun and then 1 week ago I equalled it. Now this is not a true 5km PB as I have gone faster but its the fastest I've done since starting this course on New Year's Eve.

I'm no where near the fastest that runs each Saturday but I'm having a giggle at the pseudo celebrity that my belly has become. It also gives me a little bit of a lift when the volunteers on the day call out things like "your stowaway is the fastest runner in her age group".

I'm hoping that I can keep running up until the weekend before baby number three arrives, but with my past history if I'm still running at 30 weeks I'll be happy. Any activity after that will be a bonus, be it a shuffle a run or a session at the gym. To date I've put on a total of 5kg since falling pregnant. I'm not trying to not put on weight and to be honest my diet has be far from perfect recently but when I compare it to my previous pregnancies there is no comparison to be made.  If you tried to tell me that I'd be running at 26 weeks pregnant this time last year I would have laughed in your face and today if you told me to stop I would not so politely tell you where to go.

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I get it now

Losing weight is a funny thing. You're body changes in many ways. It shrinks, it gets stronger, fitter, faster. Some bits get firmer while others get wobblier. Friends and family start to comment on how good your looking but your brain is struggling to comprehend it all.

After talking to a few others ladies that have lost significant amounts of weight I can see I'm not alone. My brain still "sees" me as fat. I still walk into a clothes store an head for the large or plus size clothes. I shake my head if someone picks up a size 12 as I don't think it will go anywhere near me, even though they now do. 

Trying to re-teach the brain is going to take time.  You become conditioned to being a number and it gets ingrained into who you are and it weighs you down. I'm still working on not thinking about the numbers but to be honest it's not easy.

Its only now when I see a recent photo of myself that I realise how far I've come. It doesn't really make sense but I still see a much larger person when I see myself in the mirror but if I see a picture it hits home.  I saw a couple of pictures of me taken on the weekend during a workout and it took me a while to actually comprehend that the legs I were looking at were mine and even when I look in the mirror today I have trouble believing that they are one and the same. Sound's strange doesn't it?

I could never understand when watching something like Bronte's Story how someone that was so thin could actually see themselves as fat. It's only from starting to comprehend what's going on in my own brain that I now actually have some understanding of what's going on in the mind of someone with an eating disorder like anorexia.  While I'll never truly understand it I can start to sympathise with the internal battle that our brain gives us.

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The Mousdash

What could be seen as being any crazier that doing your first triathlon when about 9 weeks pregnant? I've got a great answer - doing The Mousdash when you're almost 12 weeks pregnant!

So what's Mousdash I hear you ask.  The Mousdash is a run held by Nova in Brisbane during Movember to help in the fight against men's health issues, with the main targets being prostate cancer and depression. Two events are held. The 5.5km stroll or walk and the 10.5km stride or run. The 5.5km event is a walk from the planetarium to the Mt Coot-Tha Summit restaurant roundabout and return. While the 10.5km event is a run up and around the whole summit road of Mt Coot-Tha.

My DH and I signed up for this race before becoming pregnant and even at that time I knew it was going to be a very hard run.  All you have to do is look at the long section of the run by clicking on the view elevation button in the picture below to get an idea of the hell it puts you though.



I set my HR monitor to beep at me on this one each time I hit 165. The plan, which I did stick to, was to walk until my heart rate dropped below 155 before starting running again so as you could imagine there was A LOT of walking involved during the run.  I actually found this run physically tougher than the half marathon. Maybe its because I have a great distaste for hills.

The first couple of kilometers from the planetarium to the Summit Restaurant Roundabout were just plain nasty.  There may have been a short section that was relatively gradient free but in all honest I can't remember where it was as things just seemed to keep going up and up and up. I've driven up that road numerous times before but I've never realised just how steep it is. According to my map there was an average grade of 5% for 4km. All I can say is that the first kilometre was a lot harder and steeper than the gateway bridge!

After passing the roundabout there were a few undulating sections of road but they were never enough to really suck in some decent air before the climb started again. Then you were also taunted by the distance markers with their little comments on then. I could have yelled at the 5km one telling me I was half way there, if only I had enough lung capacity left!  Not long after passing the 5km marker I spotted the St John's ambulance and thought what a mind game play by setting up and halfway. Unfortunately it wasn't set up for that reason - it was treating some poor guy that had been beaten by the mountain outside of the gates to Channel 9.

After rounding Channel 9 the next kilometre wasn't too bad and then I got to hit my stride on the downhill chaser! 3km of downhill running and I loved every step. I actually felt like my form was good. I wasn't over striding but I wasn't breaking too much either.  To top it all off I was running averaging about 12kph for that section and flying past a whole heap of people. The at 9km someone decided to add it a section of up hill again - where the hell did that come from? It was absolute torture for about 500m before the downhill decent started again. Then some sadist of a person decided that the finishing shoot had to be uphill too - bastards! At least it wasn't too long.

All in all I conquered the mountain in 1:18:24.4  I was aiming at under 1:20:00 so I was rather happy with the effort. I was even happier to see that the fastest female took 42:16.5 which going by my previous results in relation to the fastest female made my day.  What was even more surprising is there was over a 10 percent DNF rate!

To top it all off I finally had a look at some of the pictures that were taken on the day and I can say that I think I finally look like a runner!

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