Spectating can be just as fun as racing

I've always enjoyed spectating, but it's a little different when you are spectating because you can't race. Well, I guess I could run the race, but I haven't quiet built up to a full 13.1 miles yet. I'm not sure if I can or should.  I love being behind the camera and cheering on my HPT teammates, but I missed being part of the race. I thought I was not going to pay any entry fees this year and just enjoy keeping up my fitness for when the baby arrives, but I have an itch to jump in with the crowd.

Spectating is great, but there is so much down time between seeing them start and seeing them finish. So, since I'm a running addict (and so are a few of my friends), I did an 8 mile run during the race. Noga, Kristen, Matt (other teammates not racing) and I watched the race pass 1 mile, and trailed behind the pack for 4 miles up through the hills of Sleepy Hollow. We had many laughs as the race officials stopped traffic for us to cross streets, as the photographers took our "race photos" and as racers commented on how we made it look so easy!  Oops!!!  Didn't anyone notice we didn't have any race bibs on?

We got to see our teammates on a loop of the course and we even made it back to the finish in time to see all but one of our teammates cross the finish line. Back behind the camera catching teammates coming up their last hill, looking at the finish line, and capturing that look of determination and accomplishment made spectating fun!

Now I think I want to run a 10K race. The atmosphere and the people make it more fun than just training. Time to start looking. Time to get this baby to "run" it's first race!

First Trimester

The first trimester:

Really, you don’t get to see a doctor to confirm a pregnancy until you are 7-9 weeks pregnant???  So, I spent the month of December reading Exercising Through Your Pregnancy, by James Clapp and Catherine Clam, and monitoring my efforts on workouts.  My coach and I discussed that I shouldn’t get my HR up in the 180s again, but it seemed that the 150s was safe, as it seemed I was still able to have conversations with it at 155bpm, while still breaking a small sweat.  And I finally get to use all the fans I want!  (In preparation for Kona, most of my training was done in the warm studio, with NO FANS!)  It was a good thing I had been starting to learn and monitor my heart rate during the last year, it helped me to better understand my perceived efforts.  My usual tempo HR during Ironman training was about 150bpm.  150bpm during the first trimester didn’t seem like I was working anywhere near where I had been working before.  I did a lot of reading online, trying to find blogs of pregnant-competitive endurance athletes, but it was difficult to find answers.  That is part of the reason I wanted to start a blog.  Hopefully my experiences will help other expecting endurance athletes too!  Many things I read said HR should be around 140bpm, but my coach and I felt that seemed too low for the effort.  Even reading Exercising Through Your Pregnancy Pregnancy said that it is difficult to say a set heart rate for every pregnant woman, even Clapp and Cram felt that “perceived effort” was a much better base.

When I finally saw a doctor at 9 weeks, everything was looking great, right on target, but she was concerned about letting my HR get up in the 150s.  I disagreed, so she left the room and conversed with other doctors.  She admitted to never having worked with an endurance Ironman athlete before, and that as long as my overall HR for my workouts wasn’t above 140bpm, then that should be good for the baby.  I’ve been able to follow that no problem!  Considering my baby’s heart rate was 185bpm at rest, I don’t want to tax it’s little heart too much or pull too much blood away from the baby to allow my muscles to work harder.  I’m sticking with my doctor because she is willing to work with me, and is going to make sure to help monitor the baby’s growth and progress once a month to make sure the working out I’m doing isn’t causing any harm to the baby.

My husband and I joke that either our baby is going to come out loving swimming, biking and running or our baby is going to hate it!  It will be his/her choice, as long as he/she is healthy and happy that is the most important thing!

I found I felt great during workouts, even though swimming, biking and running were much slower, but then I was super exhausted!  Saturday morning I would do my modified 2 hour bike effort at the HPT cycling studio, followed by a 2 hour nap.  It seemed I needed much more sleep than ever before.  Waking up at 5am was getting even harder!

I’ve become a fan of all the pool toys to help me focus on my stroke while my body is slowing down in the water.  I had a swim analysis done by Mary Eggers (who has recently joined the HPT team) when I was 9 weeks pregnant to help give me some good things to work on.  She suggested I buy Finis agility pull-paddles.  I now know why all those master’s guys use them!  They really help with the stroke.  As it was clear in the analysis, I do a lot of kicking and miss a lot of water in my stroke, which Mary calls “free speed”.  I’m still working on making that “free speed” feel natural.  If only I had grown up swimming, maybe it would be natural!

Running has always been my favorite thing to do (I started running when I was 7), but it has also always been a struggle with nagging aches, pains and injuries.  I’ve been determined to keep it up because everyone says that running becomes the hardest as the baby begins to change your center of gravity.  My pace has slowed, but that’s okay.  I don’t want to tax the baby’s heart rate for too long and it’s always so hard to keep the heart rate low on a run without totally losing form or turning the run into a walk.  Since I wasn’t running much when I found out I was pregnant, I’ve kept mileage low, with my long run being 8 miles.

Running has been easier since I’m more in tune with my body and I’ve learned a lot about being aligned and balanced.  I started seeing Dr. Stu, a chiropractor/ART therapist/Ironman athlete, to help keep me aligned 2 years ago.  He has helped in all of my Ironman training’s, and so far in my pregnancy.  You could say, I’m addicted to feeling aligned.

My whole life isn’t about my training, I’m also a science teacher and track coach.  I love working with kids, they have so much potential and it’s great to watch them grow.  I work in a school that is K through 12 in one building, so you really get to see the whole child develop.  It’s a high performing district both academically and athletically.  Coaching and teaching isn’t just about writing and implementing plans, but it is about getting to know the kids and help them grow into people.  I love going to work everyday!

I’m one of the “lucky” ones, I didn’t have morning sickness, so I was able to hide it at work for almost 4 months.  I started telling people, not because I was showing (I’m still not really), not because my pants are tight (I’ve had to dig into my “big” pants from college and through some hair-ties on button loops to feel more comfortable at work), but because the stress of keeping something in that was so exciting was making me very cranky and moody at work.

Am I really that out of shape after a few weeks?

After taking a few weeks off and enjoying classes at the local Y, changing it up from just swimming, biking and running, I felt mid-November was a good time to get back at things.  I took enough time off of running that I was able to run pain free!  I spent the month of November making my own training plan to work back into shape.  Starting the week of November 24, a few things felt off.  My HR at the end of hard bike efforts was about 192bpm, usually my HR doesn’t go much above 180bpm.  On Thanksgiving morning I did a Turkey Burner cycling class at the HPT studio, in my comments I wrote “Hit all power numbers.  I’m clearly not in shape, my HR was super high!”  Over the next few days I kept noticing my heart rate would spike on what seemed like easy to moderate efforts.  And I was SUPER thirsty.  I could finish double the amount of water during a workout than I usually would.  And all of a sudden swimming got slow and harder to keep up with the Master’s group I usually swim with.  I knew something was up, but thought maybe this was my body punishing me for taking time off.  With December and the holidays getting near, I decided I needed motivation...I was clearly lacking motivation, that’s why I was getting slow!  So, I resorted to social media to motivated me and I posted my “25 days of Fitness” for the month of December.  I was also feeling super tired all the time, was I depressed?  Was my lack of motivation and my slowness making me depressed?  I started Googling and reading...I started putting it all together...I was pregnant!

My husband and I had discussed wanting to start a family, especially seeing so many of our teammates at HPT balance family and tri-life, we felt it was time to start trying for a family of our own.  After putting my body through the strenuous Ironman training, we figured it would take time to conceive...guess not!  Surprised, but overjoyed!  2015 was going to be the year of maintaining fitness, while preparing for our first child.

2014 was the year of Ironman

2014 was the year to get in the best shape of my life and to culminate my season at the Ironman World Championship in Kona. 2014 was a great training and racing year, I hit a marathon PR by 12 minutes, a half-marathon PR by 6 minutes and a half-Ironman PR by 17 minutes. Overall, a successful year, except I spent the 7 weeks before Kona, NOT RUNNING! I tried to not let it get to me, but it inevitably did, since I often rely on my run to make up time in a triathlon, even though I spent much of 2014 getting stronger on the bike and in the swim, it wasn’t enough to make up for my lack of running. My Kona goals needed to be readjusted, not only because of my lack of running heading into the race (I did spend significant time on the AMT, but it wasn’t the same as hitting pavement for miles on end), but the winds in Kona were some of the worst in years, that I spent 5 of my 6 hours on the bike holding on for dear life and trying not to be scared. The run hurt, I walked more than I ever have in a race, but wow, pavement is much harder than the non-impact AMT! Luckily, nothing else seemed to hurt, but the bike stress made me more tired than I had ever anticipated. But hey, I was in Hawaii, and it was beautiful, and amazing, and I was there with not only a great teammate (and role model), but also some family and friends who made the experience worth it, where I was able to finish with a smile, no tears and a hunger to tackle Kona again.

But first, my body needed some time off, and I needed to give some more time and energy to my family, especially my super supportive husband/ultimate race-day Sherpa. 2014 would have never been possible without my team, High Performance Training (HPT) and my coach Julio German, who always seems to see the greater potential and is able to push me to limits I had never dreamed possible.