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.