So, hey, I’m pregnant! Ok, that’s old news, but I’m in my second trimester now! Based on the way in which your due date is calculated (which was something I didn’t really know, perhaps, I am a dum dum) I was technically pregnant when Teal and I ran the DRC Half in November. Let’s just go with that so I don’t have to have a birds and the bees plus pregnancy calculation discussion on the internet. 🙂
Turns out Teal wasn’t the only preggo in this pic!
At the time I got pregnant I was not far off from finishing my training cycle for Dallas Marathon which was to be my last big marathon HOORAH! before I knew I’d take a step back from such long distances while pregnant. Since this is a new thing for me I didn’t want to pressure myself at all with running and let it play out the way it would. I found out I was pregnant around Thanksgiving which made me immediately think – wait, what all long run distances have I covered during this short amount of time? And it made since why there were a couple of runs where they just felt HARDER already and I would come to find out why shortly!
My first race where I knew I was pregnant
A couple of side notes about my pregnancy that have nothing to do with running. 🙂 There was one point I thought I might be pregnant, I remember telling Teal this, but when I took a test it was negative. Which was fine thought I felt already like something was just different with my body. As it turns out I’d really just taken the pregnancy test too early. The other thing which I just think is neat that your body just naturally start do is…Brent and I like to drink wine, but my desire for it just decreased. We’d sit down to unwind, I’d have one glass and I was just done. Again, I’d end up finding out I was pregnant during that time so it would all make sense later. OK, here is my final side not for you, I actually had a dream the night before that I got a positive pregnancy test so naturally I got up the next morning and took a test which was positive!!
Anyway, back to running, in the time that I was putting in long training runs for the marathon and I was pregnant but didn’t know it I’d actually run an 18 miler and 20 miler. Honestly, I just felt like runs got harder but I didn’t at the time know why. After my first doctor’s appointment they had told me to make sure I could still carry a conversation while running to know I wasn’t pushing myself too hard. OK, well, that’s easy because when Teal and I meet Catherine to run we all talk each other’s ears off. 🙂 When I’m by myself you can sometimes find me mouthing things to myself to see if I could carry a conversation if I had someone with me to talk to. Ha.
End of my last 20 miler for marathon training…a very toasty day!
I tried very hard in this first trimester (and still do now) to embrace that I will slow down, to remove any pressure I am guilty of normally putting on myself and know a slower pace of running is better than no running at all. This was a little bit harder in the first trimester just because I was keeping the pregnancy secret until I was out of the woods with the first trimester.
Other than that I’m trying to drink as much water as possible and hope Baby H doesn’t mind my continued running! I’ve been trying to get in 20 miles a week, so we’ll see how long I can keep that up!
Please note I don’t actually know the gender of my baby yet, so don’t read into the color of the header. However, I think, this baby will be a girl. 🙂