1st Appt

Monday was my first appt. Brian took the morning off (I work a compressed schedule so I'm always off on Monday) so he could come along. The day ended up being a series of bad events starting when we tried to leave. We load Darwin up in Brian's car (the bigger, family car) and it won't start. We were right on schedule so we didn't have time to break out the jumper cables or anything like that. With no other choice, we load up into my car which is a Mini Cooper. Seriously, with 3 of us in there, it is basically no better than a clown car but at least it is running. We drop Darwin off and head to the Dr. The u/s goes great. Baby measures right on and everything looks perfect. My Dr. had 4 deliveries that morning so she was running behind and we ended up being in the office forever. By the time we got home, Brian needed to leave immediately so he took my car to work. I had to stay home with no car but it was only for a few hours and I was by myself so I didn't figure any big emergency would come up. Brian ends up having to stay late at work and didn't leave until almost 5. Daycare closes at 6 but it is only about a 20 minute commute so he should have had plenty of time. When he was getting ready to take our exit, he got rear ended! He was fine and my car actually wasn't damaged badly but it was rush hour and he was having to wait for the police to show up. With no functioning car at home, I can't even go pick Darwin up from daycare. As you can imagine, I was freaking out for a few minutes. Brian got on the phone and worked everything out. A co-worker of his that lives in our neighborhood and takes her son to the same daycare was able to pick him up for us. Brian got everything taken care of and it all worked out. Turns out that his car just needed a battery so we got that fixed and now we just need to get my Mini fixed. It was a stressful day to say the least, but in the end, Brian was fine, Darwin wasn't in the car when the accident happened and we got to see PeaPod on u/s. And finally, a pic for your viewing pleasure:

Double Whammy

About this time each year, runners start to wonder what is wrong with them. I'm probably one of the worst. The temperature goes up and my running suffers. Even though I know the heat is having an effect, it gets so much harder to run that I can't help but wonder if something is wrong with me. Am I getting sick? Have I not been training enough? Before the summer of 2007, I only ran sporadically so I never realized how much the heat could really get you. I started running year around in July of 2006. Since I was just getting started, I felt the heat but I didn't realize how much harder it made running. I just assumed that I was out of shape and that is why it was hard. When the fall and winter came around, I got a lot faster. Sure, a lot of it was training but I certainly got a boost from the cooler temps. After training consistently for 10 months straight, I was starting to get faster than I ever thought I would be. I was feeling pretty good about myself and then June rolled around. I suddenly had to cut 8 mile runs to 6 miles and forget about long runs. Yikes! For the first time in months I was struggling through runs only to find my pace was horrible. More experienced runners assured me that this happens every year and that I would probably have trouble all summer long but it would get better. The good news was that when fall rolled around, I would be rewarded for all that warm weather training with a new zeal for running and even faster times. They were right. Since then, I've gone through this cycle every year and even though I know what is going on, I can't help but wonder every year, if my running will ever be the same.

Well, it is that time of year again and, as usual, I'm hurting from the heat. Add 8 weeks of pregnancy to that and I'm suffering two fold. I also have to be careful as we've already had some days up close to 100 degrees (99 yesterday!). While running is perfectly safe during pregnancy, any kind of exertion in that sort of heat isn't. To combat this, I've been getting up before dawn to get my runs in. Normally, this really wouldn't be a big deal, but, being in my first trimester, I'm soooo tired. The alternative is to run on the treadmill. I really don't like the treadmill so I avoid it as much as possible. I work too early in the morning to run before work so I'm already stuck on the treadmill at least 3 days a week. Eventually, we'll probably have weather so hot that there is no time of day that it will be safe so right now, these early morning runs are my only option.

Currently, I'm running between 30 and 35 miles per week. Some days are better than others but for the most part, I feel pretty good. I feel strongly that I should stay active during pregnancy and running is my favorite activity so it is worth it to find a way to keep at it through these hot months. Because I had just finished marathon training right before this pregnancy, I came into it in really good shape. I'm 10 lbs lighter than I was at the beginning of my pregnancy with Darwin and I wasn't big then. I was also just recently running 65 miles per week where I was probably doing more like 40 or so before Darwin. With him, I was able to run at least 15 miles per week up until week 32. After that, I did run/walking nearly everyday right up to week 36. After that, I put lots of long walks in until I delivered at 39 weeks and 1 day. I had bad hip/pelvis pain at the end of that pregnancy and it continued to plague me for months after I delivered. Ultimately, that is why I had to stop running at 36 weeks. I'm worried that it will happen sooner this time around but I'm running strong now so I just have to be happy with that.



Here's a shot of me at 8 weeks. While I feel thicker, I certainly have no bump yet so we'll consider this a before shot.