running

I AM ALIVE

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Wow, I am the WORST BLOGGER EVER. Seriously.

But I have a great excuse. Bear with me for a moment. I had another baby! neck surgery. Well, that only explains the last five months of inactivity. But the three months before that, I was dealing with some serious low back and neck issues which made running and being anything other than a sloth pretty difficult.  I think I averaged about 15 miles per week of running. That was pretty impressive, I know.

Anyway, fast forward to January 17, 2015. This happened. neck An anterior cervical discectomy and fusion at C5-6. They removed the C5-6 disc and replaced it with some screws, or something.

And this is what it looked like on the outside. neck2 I’m sorry, I can’t help that I’m sexy. My mama came to help me recover, which was very nice of her, especially during almost tax season (she is a CPA). We spent two nights in a fancy hotel with Super Girl, and I watched tv, read trashy magazines, drank stuff through a straw, and Vicodin-texted people. It’s almost as fun as ambien texting. Almost. Super Girl told me I needed to go to lululemon to get a scarf to cover my neck hole, so of course, I did.

The next several weeks were tough. I wasn’t allowed to drive for two weeks, or lift more than a gallon of milk for 6 weeks, which meant I couldn’t pick up my own kids, including Super Baby. Which also means that Super Dad had to ramp up his super parenting skills exponentially, which you wouldn’t think possible, given that he already does everything around here. He would go and get Super Baby from her crib in the middle of the night and set her down beside me in the bed so I could nurse her. Then he would put her back in her crib. Sidebar: WHY did my third baby decide to be the one who was a crappy sleeper? Super Girl and Super Toddler slept through the night at like 7 days old. Not really, but within the first three months of life. Super Dad also had to take them to daycare and pick them up every day for a few weeks. I eventually got to the point where daycare would help me bring the kids out to the car so that I could at least pick them up at the end of the work day. I also couldn’t really be alone with Super Baby because if she needed to be picked up, I couldn’t exactly rely on Super Girl to do it. Although she is freakishly strong for a 5-year-old.

Do you guys know about parenting points? It’s where one parent accumulates points (to be cashed in at a later date) by doing things like watching all the kids for a weekend, or getting up with the baby in the middle of the night, or what have you. Well, Super Dad accumulated about 749,204,573 points during my recovery. He has cashed in approximately 3,200 of them during a recent trip to Colorado. So I am still seriously in the red.

Another awesome thing happened in the winter. We got a ton of ice and snow. About three weeks after surgery, I slipped and fell on the ice, which is definitely  not something you want to happen when you are recovering from a cervical fusion. I was starting to feel a lot better post-surgery. I had regained much of the strength in my left hand which I had lost, and my thumb and hand pain were almost gone. But after I fell, I began having this horrible nerve pain in my right shoulder. I know, I should play the lottery because I have the best luck ever! Well, guess what? To this day, I am still dealing with that pain. I managed to herniate the disc below where I had my fusion. Why? Because when you have a fusion, the levels below and above are at greater risk for herniation. So, yeah, that’s fun.

I am treating with my orthopedic surgeon and a pain management specialist, and have gotten two epidural steroid injections, several trigger point injections, and am going to start physical therapy. I do electric stim at home too. In the mean time, my running has been virtually nonexistent because the jostling seems to bother me. And I am seriously boo-hooing because I haven’t been able to go to Madabolic Raleigh since the new year (seriously, if you are in Raleigh, Charlotte, Charlottesville, Asheville, Greenville, or one of those other ‘villes, you NEED to go. They have an awesome program going and the owners of the Raleigh location are the sweetest people ever). But I have been going to Flywheel a lot because it is low impact and it totally feeds my competitive illness. If I’m not in first place at the end of a class, I feel like I just wasted $20. It’s the only thing I can win at these days, besides eBay and “how many times a day can you yell at your kids?” contests.

I am also turning around my diet with the 21 Day Sugar Detox, which is basically Paleo. I think, I’m not sure. I never really looked into Paleo before because I was 100% convinced I could never give up bread. As we all know from my blog name, I am super into carbs. Like, the bad kind. I am hoping that putting the kibosh on gobbling sweets and swigging Diet Pepsi will help with my pain and some other health issues I won’t get into here.  More on that in my next post, which I PROMISE will not be in 8 months. I am only on day 2 of the detox and so far it is going pretty well. If by “pretty well” you mean “in a way that makes me wish I could be in a medically induced coma for the next 20 days.”  No really, it isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, minus the excruciating amount of time I have to spend prepping food and cooking. Which is (how many times can you divide zero into one hour?) times more than I typically spend on those things each day.

But first, I leave you with two delicious things:

1) The Banana Vanilla Bean N’oatmeal that I had for breakfast this morning. To die for.

2) This baby. Who needs to be eaten, immediately. Babies are Paleo, right?

coco2

Half full

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No, the title of this post doesn’t describe me after a visit to Gigi’s Cupcakes or any place that serves biscuits.  Because if so, it would be titled “TOTALLY UNCOMFORTABLY FULL.”

Several friends reached out to me after my last post, saying they were sorry about my back problems, and offering their support. I responded to one of them that it isn’t really so bad because I no longer have to stress out every day about how I am going to fit a workout in along with everything else I try to do in 24 hours, including keeping three small humans alive. She said it was a very glass half full way to look at things.

I am not usually a glass half full kind of person.  In fact, I am a glass mostly empty type of person. I am not very positive, as I assume that the worst will happen to me. Yeah, it is a pretty awesome way to live life… said no one ever. I just found over the years that if I don’t expect that much, I can’t be let down as much.  Sounds reasonable, right?

But with my newfound free slightly less totally frantic and mind-spinning time, I realize that taking a completely non-voluntary break from exercising is making me slightly less insane than I thought it would. This is because I have eliminated the total chaos that comes from trying to get to the gym or sneak in a run while having a full-time job out of the home, a part-time job on the side, breast-feeding, chauffering three kids to/from daycare, and attempting to sleep at least 12 hours a day (kidding sort of).  I am by no means saying that I am giving up on working out and devoting myself to blogging and competitive eating. What I am saying is there is a bright side, and maybe the universe was trying to keep me from having a nervous breakdown.

Here is how my days looked M-F with no kids:

1) Wake up when my alarm goes off.
2) Eat a bowl of hot oatmeal, or maybe some scrambled eggs or pancakes while watching TV that was DVR’d just one night earlier.
3) Go to work.
4) Come home.
5) Have a snack and read a book maybe.
6) Go to the gym or on a 7 mile run with the dogs.
7) Come home and shower.
8) Put on makeup.
9) Go out to eat with Super Husband.
10) Come home and watch TV.
11) Go to bed whenever.
12) Sleep 9 hours with no interruptions. Repeat.

Life with one kid (after three months):

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1) Wake up to either hungry baby or alarm clock, depending on whether or not it is a good day.

2) Feed her.

3) Eat some cereal standing up while perusing Us magazine.

4) Prepare bottles for daycare.

5) Drop baby off at daycare.

6) Go to work.

7) Pick baby up from daycare and drive straight to the gym.

8) Come home from gym and shower while SuperDad feeds baby a bottle.

9) Eat dinner with SuperDad at the dinner table. Or take baby out to dinner. Unless she is over one year old. Then don’t even bother until everyone in your house is > 3 years old.

10) Put baby to bed.

11) Watch tv for an hour or so, or play video games with SuperDad, then go to bed. Heck, maybe you even get a sitter and go out to a BAR?!

12) Go to bed.

Repeat

Life with two kids (after three months):

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1) Wake up to either hungry baby or toddler who needs to pee or has had a bad dream.

2) Feed both children.

3) Make bottles for daycare.

4) Take both children to daycare (add 6 minutes to prior drop-off routine)

5)  Go home and get diapers because you forgot those for the baby.

6) Take diapers to daycare.

7) Go back home and get your pump.

8) Go to work.

9) Eat a granola bar at your desk.

10) Pick kids up from daycare.

11) Go to the gym.

12) Leave the gym because you forgot to bring snacks for the toddler. She is starving and refuses to go into childcare without a snack.

13) Put the kids in the double stroller and go for a run, after feeding toddler. And pumping.

14)  Feed both kids dinner, then bathe them (most nights).

15) Put baby to bed.

16) Watch Friends or New Girl with your toddler, while you eat a luke warm Lean Cuisine. She doesn’t know what they are talking about- she is only 2 1/2.

17) Put toddler to bed.

18) Take a shower.

19) Watch tv for 30 minutes with SuperDad.

20) Pass out.

Repeat

Life with three kids:

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1) Alarm goes off at 5 so you can pump then run or go to Crossfit at 6. Turn alarm off because you can work out at lunch. Uh huh, totally gonna happen.

2) Wake up to either a hungry baby, hungry toddler, toddler with a nose bleed, preschooler who has wet the bed or had a bad dream or lost her Hello Kitty or is concerned about her Halloween costume, or some combination of the above.

3) Nurse the baby while everyone else sleeps, assuming she was the first one up. Otherwise, nurse the baby while toddler screams, preschooler watches Peppa Pig in your bed, and SuperDad takes world’s fastest shower.

4) Go downstairs to make bottles for daycare, feed the dogs, pour some cereal for the older kids, grab any bills that need to be paid. Do not concern yourself with getting anything for you or SuperDad to eat. That is what vending machines are for.

5) Go upstairs and grab diapers for baby to put in diaper bag. Run downstairs and put in diaper bag.

6) Go back upstairs to get diapers for toddler. Put in diaper bag.

7) Get baby dressed.

8) Get yourself dressed then throw on makeup.

9) Pack your gym bag. Don’t forget clean underwear and a towel if you are going at lunch.

10) Leave SuperDad at home to deal with the monsters children. He has to dress them, feed them, get them in the car, and make it to work before noon 9 10.

11) Drive to work.

12) Realize when you are pulling into the parking garage that you forgot a sports bra for the gym. So yeah, that workout is not happening.

13) Get some overly hard boiled eggs from the cafeteria at work.

14) Eat hard boiled eggs at your desk aka stink up your office for the rest of the day. Who cares? It is protein and you are the boss.

15) Leave work to pick up kids from daycare. Don’t forget a snack or they will scream THE WHOLE WAY HOME.

16) Kids screaming the whole way home.

17) Once you get home, don’t let the starving, under-exercised dogs knock you over while you are carrying a baby through the door.

18) Be prepared to whip up a super cheesy, carb-filled healthy dinner in 14 seconds. Or the kids will scream. Or better yet, make sure SuperDad is already home and cooking.

19) Turn on the babysitter TV. Peppa Pig or Sophia the First. Top Chef if you are very very lucky.

20) Convince toddler to eat 1.5 bites of quinoa pasta and peas.

21) Nurse the baby.

22) Attempt to eat a delicious Caprese salad that you have been waiting to eat all day. Because kids hate mozzarella and balsamic. False. They will eat all of it even though they wanted nothing to do with their pasta. You have half a tomato slice and lick the balsamic off the plate, while standing of course. Super filling. And satisfying.

23) Bathe kids if it is Monday or Thursday. Wash hair if it is Thursday.

24) Put toddler to bed.

25) Nurse baby.

26) Take a shower.

27) Nurse baby some more (cluster feeding is AWESOME!) then put her to bed.

28) Read stories to preschooler. Answer 75 questions during two stories.

29) Put her to bed.

30) Go to bed 9 minutes later.

So needless to say, eliminating three steps from the routine these days has made it a lot easier for me to focus on important things like posting pictures on Instagram (@willrunforbiscuits– follow me!), watching Bravo, and hanging out with my tiny people.

In all seriousness though, because we know I am a super serious person, this isn’t meant to scream “look how awesome I am” or “life is so easy with one kid” but… no wait, I AM saying life was easier with one kid. I ran a lot. I slept a lot. I hung out with SuperDad a lot. But with each kid my heart has expanded more than I thought possible. You make sacrifices to have one, two, ten kids (don’t have ten kids- unless you are a kitten. In which case bravo, you are a blog-reading kitten). You sacrifice your figure, your time, sometimes your sanity. But it is oh so worth it. So if that means I won’t be running a sub 3:40 marathon again for 5 more years, so be it. Even though I love the endorphins and it keeps me level, it will never fill my glass the way these crazy kids do. I hope to get back to running and working out as soon as I can, but in the mean time, I will enjoy my precious “free” time.

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It’s getting real up in here

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July 2013

July 2013

Whenever I go to the gym, run a race, or see people trying out new diets (ahem, “lifestyle changes”), I wonder what the impetus is.  Do these people Crossfit to lose weight? To get stronger (duh)? To work on their butts? Do my friends eat Paleo so that they can get leaner? Or maybe they are thinking about the long term health benefits of changing the way they eat.  I don’t really care what the answer is because it’s none of my business.  I just know that for me, exercise and nutrition have played so many different roles in my life and I am once again seeing their evolution now that I am a mother of three, just scrambling to keep my head above water many days.

The background on this somewhat totally rambling, TMI post is this: during pretty much every minute of my 20’s, I had an eating disorder.  I vascillated between bulimic and anorexic although I never looked thin like the celebrities and models whom everyone labels as anorexic.  I know exactly when/why it started in college, but that’s not something to get into here.  The only salient point is that I became bulimic for a number of reasons, one being that I loved food more than I loved myself. I loved the way donuts and ice cream and cookies made me feel. But then I hated gaining weight. So being the brilliant college student I was, I figured purging was a way to get the best of both worlds: eat a lot and not gain weight.  Oh wait. As any bulimic will tell you, you definitely do not lose weight with binging and purging.  In fact, you may (I did) gain weight. And you feel GROSS.  You also feel like you are deceiving so many people around you, including your loved ones.

Right before my senior year of college, I decided the bulimia thing wasn’t working for me.  I needed to find a different way to get control because bulimia made me feel out of control.  So I switched gears. I started counting calories and stopped drinking (Uh, I mean, I was only 20 so actually I made the decision not to start drinking when I turned 21 in the fall).  I lost a LOT of weight because I was swimming 4 hours a day, doing one hour on the ellipitical between practices, and subsisting off of chocolate chip scones, frozen yogurt, and salad.  I allowed myself 1300 calories per day but I was burning close to 4000. The weight melted off and I tipped the scales at 116 before the season started. I think my weight at weigh-in was 136 the year before. But I got a lot of positive reinforcement because I swam faster.  And my back fat was gone, so of course I was thrilled about that.

After graduation, I didn’t have all the hard core swimming to keep my weight in check.  So back to bulimia I went. My bulimia peaked while in law school.  The stress of studying and being away from my friends and family, the feeling of not being even close to the best but actually being below average when everything depended on your class rank… I just could not handle it. Things got so bad during law school that I considered taking a semester off to go to some really expensive recovery facility to deal with my eating issues. The cost was just too huge of a deterrent. I knew I was going to develop some serious health complications from my bulimia if I didn’t stop.  I decided I wanted to start running again to see if that would give me some of the self esteem I had lost after college.  I also thought it would help me lose all the weight I put on from my binges.

Picking up long distance running in 2005 was the first turning point in my eating disorder. I had something to focus on besides “where am I going to get my next meal… which will end up in the toilet?” I began to feel better about myself. I ran a half marathon after 6 months of training and was pleased that I ran under an 8:00 mile pace for my first half marathon.  A few months later I ran a half marathon around a 7:20/mile pace. My grades improved significantly.  The problem that lingered is that I continued to be bulimic, but it was more like “bulimic light.” As long as my training went well and I had a good run, or a good race, I didn’t rush out to buy ice cream and other junk.  But if I had a bad day or missed a run for some reason, I backslid into my old eating habits.

This pattern pretty much continued even after I became a real grownup, with obligations like law school debt, a car payment, and a mortgage. It wasn’t until I became pregnant with Super Girl that I had a wake up call.  I could not, I would not, do anything to harm this baby just because I was too ignorant or scared to deal with the underlying issues that contributed to my eating disorder.  I needed to make smart choices for myself and this child.  I continued eating biscuits and ice cream, but instead of just using it to stuff down my feelings and anxiety, I ate it to enjoy the way it tasted.  I ran during my pregnancy because it made me feel strong and empowered.  Yeah it burned calories too but I don’t think it’s a crime to run an extra mile because you had an extra scoop of Ben and Jerry’s.  Nobody is perfect.

I never really lost that focus on my weight and body image though.  I was determined not to gain more than 30 pounds and I “accomplished” that goal with Super Girl and Super Toddler.  The number on the scale was so important to me as it had been for years.  So even though I wasn’t bulimic anymore, I still cared so much about a silly number.  After I had them, I was frustrated my body didn’t just snap back to a version of me that never existed anyway.  Some Gisele Bundchen-esque figure with a 36 inch inseam and tiny waist.  I didn’t lose any sleep over it but I tried diets here and there hoping that I could get to my “ideal weight” of 130 pounds.  Never happened.

During this pregnancy, I really lost site of nutrition even though I was lifting and running a lot during the first two trimesters of the pregnancy.  I had so much anxiety because I didn’t know how we could handle three kids.  Also, I was worried I would have post partum depression again, as I did (really really badly) with Super Toddler.  So I ate my feelings, my old crutch.  I would joke with people about my Bojangles Baby, and I still do from time to time- okay, yesterday.  I rationalized that if I was working out that hard, I could eat whatever I wanted. I had been making that argument for YEARS.  I think it goes back to my swimming days in my teenage years when we quite literally could eat just about anything and never gain an ounce because we were burning so many calories each day.  But eating whatever I wanted wasn’t healthy for me or the baby.  And again, it was just a way I dealt with stress, as it always had been.

I watched the scale creep higher and higher each week.  When I delivered Super Girl, I had gained 38 pounds.  Wowzers.  I officially weighed more than Super Dad the last three weeks of my pregnancy.  And I delivered 3 weeks early.  So yeah, that’s kind of scary.  After having her, I have been focused on slowly getting back into my workouts because I was on bed rest for the last 6 weeks of the pregnancy.  But on the other hand, I would get so frustrated that the number on the scale has not just dropped by double digits every week.

I finally had an epiphany last week after Super Girl got on the scale three days in a row and asked me what her weight was.  She had been seeing me do it.  It broke my heart.  She wants to gain weight because she will be a “big girl,” but I don’t want the number to be something she obsesses over when she is old enough to care.  I don’t want her staring in the mirror examining her stomach or “Cabbage Patch Abs” as I call mine half-jokingly. I don’t want her to think that exercise is a means to an end of keeping her weight down or getting boys to like her.  I want her to feel empowered by sweating, the way I do every time I go on a run or finish a Crossfit workout.  When I was doing a WOD on Saturday, I felt strong even though it was only my second time back since Super Baby was born and I was lifting a lot less weight.  I felt hope for how much stronger I could get with each passing week.  I felt like my daughters would be proud of me not because of the number on the scale, or how my thighs don’t touch, or how much definition I hope to one day have on my stomach, but because I work out to be a better mom to them and a better wife and just a badass who loves herself.

I am not 100% comfortable with my body and I don’t know that I ever will be, but I’m getting there.  Being a mother has helped me realize that I can largely overcome the insecurities and issues that led to my eating disorder, because I would never ever wish that kind of torment on my children.  I just want them to see that eating and exercise do not have to be rewards or punishment, and that they can be strong and happy no matter what the number on the scale is. And that’s as real as it gets folks.

Recovery Mode

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Again, more TMI.  But then we move on to our regularly scheduled exercise-related programming…

Recovering from childbirth is what I imagine recovering from an Ironman would be like… it’s long and it requires patience or you can hurt yourself further.  Plus, it’s different for everyone, and for the same person it may vary depending on the particular race.  With Super Girl, there was a lot that nobody told me about what the immediate aftermath of childbirth would be like.  So, thanks a lot for nothing friends who had kids before me.  I was not prepared for the cramping or feeling like my insides were going to fall out with every step I took.   I started to feel more myself around a month and was back into my workout routine around 2 months postpartum. Recovery with Super Toddler was pretty similar, but a bit more difficult because I was on bed rest the last three weeks of my pregnancy. I was careful though, and eventually PR’d a 5k when he was 6 months old (21 minutes-ish).

With Super Baby, I had terrible cramping for a couple hours after she popped out.  Like, worse than my strongest pitocin-induced contractions.  Oh wait, I had an epidural.  Still, it was not enjoyable.  Once the pain meds kicked in I felt a lot better.  But I had to take 800 milligrams of Motrin a few times a day for over a week.  That didn’t seem normal.  Otherwise, I felt really good south of my waist.  It helped that this was my smallest baby though not by much, and with it being my third child my body seemed to be kinder to me.  I was going for walks within a few days and at around 10 days, thought I could actually run – but I didn’t.  I felt like this was the universe’s way for evening out how ridiculous the labor process went. Until…

At 12 days post partum, I woke up with very odd symptoms.  Like, check with Dr. Google odd.  Typically, when you consult Dr. Google, Web MD, Wrongdiagnosis.com, etc, you get about 821 different diagnoses and turn into a hypochondriac, and there’s a 99% chance that you don’t have any of those ailments.  For me, there was pretty much just one possibility. The next day I had the same symptoms so I called my doctor, who, after an ultrasound, confirmed that I had retained part of the placenta.  Gross.  On Super Baby’s 2 week birthday, I had to undergo a procedure under anesthesia to get everything cleared out, lest I bleed to death at home.  It really wasn’t a huge deal, until I lost a ton of blood on the operating table.  Whoops, so that was scary.  Fortunately, I narrowly avoided a transfusion although my doctor threatened me with an overnight stay to monitor my hemoglobin.  No thanks, I have a baby to attend to.

Since then, I took it easy for almost two weeks.  I was left severely anemic, which coupled with newborn sleep deprivation, has made me extra sleepy. I know right- so weird that losing a lot of blood and waking up every 3-5 hours makes me tired.  I have been taking iron and getting in as many naps as possible, and have gone to bed early every night which means I can’t watch Game of Thrones with Super Dad on Sunday nights when it airs.  So no spoilers on facebook people, I need my sleep.

On Monday, I went for my first run.  It lasted 5 minutes.  Later I thought my lady parts would fall out but it was just a side effect of the massive iron consumption (google it… I am not going to overshare that much).  Yesterday I ran for 10 minutes straight ( that was a mile.  Holy moly) and did five one minute “sprint” intervals.  And by sprint I mean running at about a 4 second per faster pace than my 10 minute jog. But I felt good, and I stopped myself before I was utterly cashed.  Plus, it was 90 degrees out.

Reigning it in is hard. I really want to head out tomorrow and run 20 minutes, then 30, then an hour, but I know that I have to be smart about it or I will hurt any number of organs or body parts that would not have been remotely affected by even a 2 hour run in the morning and an evening Crossfit beating in the past. Childbirth puts your body through the ringer, and just like there is pressure for endurance athletes to get back to training after a race, lest they lose the base they had built up after 6 months of heavy training, there is too much pressure on women to not only crush their workouts until hours before giving birth, but to return to “beast mode” before their milk comes in.  Too much? Sorry, not sorry.  It’s true.  I am done procreating, and have the rest of my life to run marathons, do an Ironman, learn how to do a muscle up pull-up, and Rx+ a WOD.  For now it’s all about keeping this tiny human alive, keeping myself from going insane (aka, sleep as much as possible), and being there to have fun with my other Super kids now that summer is here and the pool is open!

I may be contradicting myself in three weeks when I feel awesome and head back to Athletic Lab for some punishment, but for now, I am trying to be smart about my recovery mode.  Beast mode can wait.

 

Here is the gang at the pool this weekend:

pool

30 weeks

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Wow, so I have been going to CrossFit for 30 weeks now, and my goal is to keep at it for another 10 weeks in this pregnancy.  I was able to work out until 34 weeks with Super Toddler, before going on modified bed rest for my blood pressure.  With Super Girl, I ran 3 miles the day before I was told my blood pressure was too high and I needed to be induced (39 weeks).  So if I can make it to 34 weeks again- great.  If not, I am pretty proud of the progress I have made and am glad that I am doing something to offset my terrible eating habits this pregnancy.

I know that most CrossFit enthusiasts are into the Paleo lifestyle, and I am all for it, in theory. For some reason, this baby just wants CARBS. All. The. Time.  At the beginning it was because my morning sickness was so bad, the smell of anything other than bread made me sick to my stomach.  Then it became a convenience thing.  It is just so easy to eat carbs.  But the thing is, it’s really easy to just munch on an apple or banana.  So I am not trying to make excuses.  I am just a chubby kid at heart and I know I need to be more conscious of how I am fueling my body and the baby.  Christmas, New Years, and last week’s (AMAZING) trip to Disney World did nothing for my attempts to eat healthier.  But this week I have been craving healthier choices, in addition to continuing to crave Lindor truffles, Cheez-Its, and biscuits.  I have cut out my Bojangles runs and pizza, and added in fruit for dessert every night. Baby steps right?

Anyway, enough about food.  I’m getting hungry again. At the 30 week CrossFit mark, I have seen decent strength gains.  I finally hit a body weight back squat (70 kg- yikes yes, that’s what I weighed two weeks ago).   I know that there are a lot of people who can do 2x or more of their body weight but I don’t consume enough protein or lift  enough that that is gonna happen any time soon. Also, I’m pregnant. I have no idea what my deadlift one rep max is but tonight we did 7 x 2 and I did 80 kg on my last few sets. So I don’t know if that is any good.  My front squat leaves much to be desired but given that I have a large round mass pulling me forward, in addition to the weight sitting on the front of my shoulders, I am not setting my goals too high or trying to push myself too hard.   I still HATE snatches.  I am fairly certain this is a combination of my not being able to keep the bar close enough to my body and my fear of going to heavy overhead on account of my prior shoulder surgeries. So really, not too concerned there.  It’s not like I am trying to compete in any competitions so if I can’t snatch, no biggie.

Pull-ups have been nonexistent. I currently use one green band for high rep sets and one purple band for lower reps. We did clap push-ups during last night’s WOD.  Wow, those sucked. I couldn’t figure out why they were so hard, until I realized that every time I try to explode off the ground high enough to clap, I have this giant baby bump pulling me back down toward earth.  That’s the reason that I could only do two at a time before breaking right?

Running is really not that bad yet.  I am doing it in much shorter spurts than with my other two pregnancies though.  My longest run the last month has been 3 miles and I can stay at around an 8:15 pace.  I just run around the neighborhood because I am at that point where I need to have access to “facilities” in a moment’s notice.  Sorry, TMI. On Saturday, I did the “beep test” during Endurance class.  Basically, it’s a 20m shuttle run.  The first round you get a lot of time to do the 20m.  You can basically speed walk.  There are several runs in that first round.  Second round is faster, third even faster, etc. etc.  We did the test about 10 days earlier but before that, the last time I did the test was when I was pregnant with Super Toddler.  I managed to get in 9 rounds and 3 runs on round 10.  Only one female in the class beat me.  People were looking at me like I was crazy.

Actually, people look at me like I am crazy at almost every class.  It felt good to do so well during the bleep test but it was also a little frustrating because I of course had to hold back.  When non-pregnant, I go until I want to barf.  That is probably not the healthiest approach to exercise.  But I am obviously not going to push myself to that point while pregnant.  So I really have to listen to my body and stop before I get even remotely close to that point.  I may still be red in the face but I pay attention to my breathing and the rest of my body, and pull in the reigns when anything starts feeling off.

I am really so happy with the community I have found at Athletix Lab.  The coaches are all really motivating, and the people I work out with are like-minded and supportive of one another.   The coaches make sure I am not overdoing it and offer modifications for things I can’t do, like handstands.  They also know that pregnant women produce relaxin, which causes the ligaments to loosen and makes you super flexible.  But because you feel more flexible, you can overstretch and get injured, or squat too deep and hurt something else.  So knowing that I am in good hands every time I step into the gym is a good feeling.  Also, with the other two pregnancies, I just kind of felt like the running I was doing was to be able to say that I kept running.  It was really uncomfortable at times and I took A LOT of bathroom breaks.  With CrossFit, I feel that I am accomplishing something every time I take a class and I leave with a smile on my face.  And some major pit stains.  I may be singing a different tune when I am as big as Shamu but for now, I am going to savor these last 10 weeks (or longer if possible).

 

Blecht

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***originally written on 9/23***

Remember in the last post how I talked about how great I was feeling? Well, that was 10 days ago. Since I last mused on pregnancy, I became so horribly infested with morning sickness that all my energy is reserved for figuring out how to avoid rushing to the bathroom every 6 minutes at work, then willing myself not to yack on my keyboard. I even waited five days to upgrade to iOS 7 because the thought of adjusting to new icons made me nauseous.

I cannot even begin to adequately describe how all consuming the morning sickness is this time around. It was pretty rough with Super Girl but partially, I think I was just like “oh women get morning sickness when they are pregnant, and I am all about pregnancy, so I guess I have it too.” I can’t remember. It lasted til right around my second trimester. But I didn’t have any other kids to raise so laying on the couch eating pretzels every day was no big thing.

With super toddler, I think I had some queasiness but not quite on the level with Super Girl. That’s how I knew it was a boy. I kept running a lot and that’s what reminds me I couldn’t have been that nauseous, because working up a good sweat/lactic acid doesn’t go very well with morning sickness.

The reason I know this is because for the past week, I have either hovered near death (the toilet bowl) or have attempted, in vain, to work out hard. In the fleeting moments where I feel halfway ok, I pretend like nothing is wrong with me making me sick and I have gone to a very intense group exercise class at my favorite very expensive gym downtown. All three times have resulted in disaster. I know I have said before that it’s not a good workout unless cookies are tossed, but that did not apply this week. I was too queasy to really even get to a good workout in. I was focusing too hard on unsuccessfully warding off trips to the bathroom.

On Sunday, I accompanied my sister in law to her first ever class at this studio. I could tell, morning sickness notwithstanding, that it was probably the hardest class I have ever taken at this studio. She looked at me like “what the heck is wrong with you? Normal people don’t do this to themselves.” She works out HARD almost every day of the week, and she is most certainly not with child, so I knew it was a good one. Unfortunately, this meant I was done within 5 minutes. I kept looking at my watch thinking there must be some mistake, that surely more than 9- 12- 14 minutes had elapsed. I finally called it quits at 30 minutes. It was pointless, I was having to stop so often to visit the little girls’ room. Sorry, TMI.

I know you all are thinking that I was crazy for even trying to work out when 95% of my waking hours over the last week have been spent barfing, thinking about barfing, or trying not to think about barfing. I figured that if I already felt sick, it wouldn’t make much difference if I did an activity which would keep me in shape but also make me want to wretch. Oh how wrong I was. I have learned my lesson, and will be limiting my workouts during this very dark period to speed walks around the neighborhood.

I just hope it ends soon, because my mental health depends on a) my ability to contribute around the house and b) how good of a sweat I can get going in the gym or on the road. Super Dad has majorly stepped up, as per usual, and taken care of the kids during the many many times I have been laying on the couch/bed/floor of the bathroom. We both know that Super Baby is the last one, but this experience is 19929% sealing the deal. Super Dad has effectively been rendered a single parent, and a mighty good one at that. Man, I am going to owe him so big- once I am done cashing in my bearing the cross of morning sickness for several months, having back pain, giving birth, getting up to feed the baby in the middle of the night (hopefully not for more than 3 months), and making up for a year of sleep deprivation.

Maybe next time I can write about running, or anything other than barfing. Here’s to hope.

Race Recap

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Remember a couple weeks ago when I asked someone to help me identify a half to do in the coming months? Well, I haven’t found one yet, but I succumbed to peer pressure and on a lark, registered for a 10k that was part of a local race which also included a marathon and half marathon.

The City of Oaks Marathon and 1/2 Marathon took place here in Raleigh on November 3. I obviously cannot comment from firsthand experience about these but can say that according to the race organizers, the course was changed this year to make it faster. From looking at the elevation map, generally knowing Raleigh’s topography, running part of the course, and speaking to friends who did both the full and half, I can unequivocally say that the past years’ course must have been hell on earth.

The 10k course was also not so easy, but running isn’t supposed to be easy, right? Mile one, as I could gather from the elevation map, was almost all downhill, with a short steep uphill at about .75. Sweeeeet. Now as a brief aside, let me advise that none of you actually try to “race” anything other than a trip to the hospital with a) only 13-15 miles of mileage under your belt for several weeks or b) no warmup on a 37 degree morning- in shorts.

Anyway, mile 2 was fairly flat with one or two climbs. Still feeling pretty good, I clocked in at 14:25 for the first two miles. Just before mile three was a pretty long, nasty hill. At this point, my lack of training and warmup led to cramping in both hamstrings within about 5 minutes of one another. Can I also blame pregnancy on this? Surely the blood flow to areas other than my reproductive organs has to be limited right?

The last half of the race was an exercise in futility. I felt pretty well aerobicaly, which is nothing short of a miracle given my complete lack of conditioning. However, my muscles were shot from the cramping. Mile 4.9-6.4 (per my Garmin) was pretty much a death march straight uphill. I dragged my almost lifeless body across the finish line in 49:06. While this is a pregnancy PR, the last time I ran a 10k pregnant, I was 28 weeks along and MASSIVE.

With respect to the race, other than the crappy hills which should come as no surprise, in light of the fact that Raleigh is freaking hilly, I thought it was extremely well run. There were 750 volunteers throughout the course. The crowd support was wonderful. There were a lot of porta potties. There were jugs of hand sanitizer right outside the potties. Running through downtown Raleigh was a blast. The post race “party” was located about 1/2 mile from the 10k finish and about a block from the marathon and half marathon finish.

Oh right, so I forgot about what I would perceive as hell on Earth if I were running one of the longer races. The 10k started 30 minutes after the full and half. At close to our 2 mile marker, the 10k converged with the rest of the field. I filtered into the 2:15 half marathon pace group. I can imagine that group was frantic about getting passed by hoards of people, then annoyed because we were “only” running 6.2 miles.

Our finish was on the left side, after the 1.6 mile climb previously mentioned. The longer distances continued on the right. So not only did the longer races have to watch us finish, they continued to slog up that hill, which appeared to last another 1/4 mile. It was at around mile 8 of their race. It would have been so demoralizing to watch all these people finish as I was slowly jogging towards my death. Trust me, I have experienced it before in marathons, watching the half-ers cheerily split off to the post-race festivities.

At City of Oaks, the post-race festivities included free pizza, donuts, soup, bread, fruit, and BEER. Which I of course had none of, because pregnant woman can’t drink in public. There was a bounce house for the kids, and the post-race area was not so close to the finish line as to congest the spectating or finishers. I also liked how easy it was to get to and from parking, which was available in many different directions from the race start and finishes.

Overall, I give this race and it’s organizers a B+. It’s not for the faint of heart, but I think it would be a great, scenic, energetic race if you don’t mind a few hills. A friend of mine unexpectedly PR’d, but she is a freak of nature and is from this area (and most likely doesn’t repeatedly run in a 1600m loop in order to avoid hills, the way I do).

I did a long recovery walk with my Super Family, including our 3 mutts, later in the afternoon. Monday I was sorer than Pamela Anderson after the NYC Marathon, but on Tuesday I was re energized to tackle some hill work. If I’m gonna live in this city, I may as well give in to its topography and stop being a wuss about the elevation changes. It’s not like it Asheville or Boulder!

Random first trimester musings

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Hopefully I have just finished running my first 10k since June.  And hopefully I didn’t run slower than I have been on my training runs.  Either way, I am just glad to be racing again!  Here is another look into my earlier pregnancy days…

*originally written on 9/13*

We have our first ultrasound in 12 days, and let me tell you three things I am thinking right now:

1) Why didn’t anybody tell me how humongous you get so quickly the third time around?

2) I REALLY hope there are not two or three babies in there, because I think I look like I am 16 weeks pregnant with triplets!

3) I already feel like I have been knocked up for four months. Why couldn’t I have been one of those women on “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant” that has a perfectly healthy baby on the toilet at 38 weeks?

In other news, I am still feeling well (knock on wood). I was pretty nauseous at this point with both Super Girl and Super Toddler. Maybe my brain knows I don’t have time to be sick, so it’s telling my stomach to suck it up? That said, I am SUPER exhausted. I would much rather take a nap than go run at the end of the day, so I have been trying to work out in the morning since I am sleeping like crap anyway. I don’t remember being this tired before, maybe it’s because I have never had to be pregnant while raising two other kids? Although Super Dad does basically everything way more than most dads.

Will Run for Pickles

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***Originally written on August 31***

When I first started this blog, I really wanted to have a post about running during pregnancy. I ran a good amount when I was pregnant with Super Girl, and even did 5 miles the day before she was born. With SuperToddler, I ran a half marathon (1:54) when I was about 15 weeks, then a 5k (24:50) at 24 weeks, and a 10k (53-ish) at 28 weeks. It was definitely harder the second time around, but I was smarter about my workouts. After reading every not so great book about running while pregnant (there were precisely two at the time), I was confident that the baby would not get overheated or, worse yet, fall out if I ran more than 1 mile.

This time around, I plan to keep running but I will incorporate more cycling and swimming yoga, strength training. That’s right, Super Baby part 3 is on the way! I just found out yesterday, right before Labor Day weekend. Awesome- guess who won’t be downing margaritas at the pool on Labor Day? I knew I shouldn’t have tested so early. But I also kind of had a feeling something was “off” so if I had indulged in a lot if adult beverages, raw sushi, and cold cuts over the weekend, I would not have been happy with myself.

Super Baby 3 was not planned because of the ongoing back problems I have been having. We decided to wait on expanding our family until I knew whether I would need injections or surgery. Well, the Big Guy upstairs had other plans. Thanks goodness that I have had almost no issues with my back or leg all week. I think it may be because I have not been on any 4 hour bike rides in that time.

I plan on documenting my activities throughout this pregnancy and my research on running/exercising while pregnant. I am not going to be doing any pregnant triathlons because a) I am deathly afraid of falling off the bike to begin with and b) who really wants to see a pregnant woman in a bathing suit?

That said, I would love to do a few road races, if my body permits, in the next several months. No, I won’t be running a marathon the morning I give birth, like that crazy lady that did the Chicago marathon a couple years ago. Do you have any clue how many potty breaks that lady would have needed to take? Maybe she just wore adult diapers? And just what is the point of running that far when you are 39 weeks pregnant? You are about to endure the torture of labor and sleepless nights- why do that to your bladder and legs? To each her own, I suppose.

I have a 5 mile race on tap for October 20 and half marathon I am tentatively planning for Late fall or early December when I will be well into my second trimester. Maybe a few more short races until the third trimester- then laying on the couch eating curly fries for a good 10 weeks. My goal is to run 2-3 times, ride my bike on my trainer 1-2 times, and do one strength session a week. If my back tells me to stop, then I will do more yoga and swimming sleeping.

For those of you hoping for posts about hardcore triathlon training- sorry. This has officially turned into a pregnant running blog, at least until next spring.