Category: Running

Waddle, waddle, splash

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I appreciate that pregnancy is a binary state – you either are or you aren’t, there’s no being ‘a bit pregnan’t – but over the last week or so, I have felt Very Pregnant. Certain movements, bending forward to reach something when I’m sitting down for instance, are somewhat hit and miss and are often accompanied by a chorus of ‘ooooofs’, ‘bloody hells’, or sometimes even ‘ooooof, bloody hell’.

It’s a bit of a cliche, but one of the times where I feel slightly less lumbering is in the swimming pool. Just as the penguin is a bit ungainly and waddly on land, but sleek and gymnastic in the water, I am a bit ungainly and waddly on land, but a bit less ungainly and waddly in the water. I am still managing a nice 20 lengths on my trips to the baths, albeit a bit slower than before, and am now 65% escaped from Alcatraz. I think I would like to complete my daring swim to freedom by my due date.

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Me at the pool

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve also been looking ahead and doing some forward planning (conveniently ignoring the last couple of weeks of pregnancy, the actual birth and the first couple of months with a newborn baby). This has partly been triggered by other bloggers (particularly the inspiring words of I run because I love food) and hearing about Australian cricketer Sarah Elliott, who was back in the gym after six weeks and scored a Test century in between breastfeeding. I will concede that it’s probably a bit late in the day for me to contemplate an international sporting career and if I’m totally honest, at the moment the concept of running for a bus is as unimaginable as running an ultra. However, there’s only me that can make it happen when the right time comes and so I’ve been pondering my return.

My ultimate goal is an autumn half (to keep up my ‘half-marathon a year’ that I’ve done accidentally for the last three years). This might be helped along by the Lancaster Race Series Wagon and Horses 10 miler. We were up in Lancaster a couple of weeks ago when we saw the organisers setting up this year’s race, and I’ve always got time for an event that starts and finishes at a pub…

The other news that’s made me a bit excited is that I have a new local parkrun at Cuerden Valley. The inaugural event was last Sunday and I did consider having a waddle down, only to fall asleep instead. I’m not sure how the route works, but it looks intriguing and I assume that it will be somewhat undulating. Either way it’s a lovely setting for a run (it’s where I did one of the Badger 10k series  and I last ran there in the snow during this year’s Janathon) – country park rather than municipal park, and it’s handily close to the M6 for all you parkrun tourists out there.

Counting down – the effect of looming deadlines

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I’ve had another of my “similarities between running and pregnancy” moments.

Just as Jogblog wrote last week, I love training plans. They fill me with optimism as I visualise myself sprinting gazelle-like during my interval sessions, watching the mileage clock up on my long runs and this time definitely sticking to the plan so I finally reach my sub-<insert possibly unrealistic time here> distance. I love looking at all the similar but different plans on the internet and filling in apps with my previous times to predict my finish times and training paces. And then there’s the joy in ticking off the perfect first week’s training.

Unfortunately training plans tend to have a deadline and to quote the wise words of Douglas Adams, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”. At the end of the plan is usually a race and this fills me with panic and dread. It’s not unknown for me to sabotage myself by simply abandoning running for a couple of weeks because I’m so freaked out by the whole thing. It’s the counting down that gets me. One minute the future race is a tiny elephant in the distance and then the clock starts ticking and before I know it, there’s a whiff of dung on the air and I’m being poked in the bum by a tusk.

I’m finding that pregnancy has a similar effect on me. It doesn’t seem five minutes since we found out and since then it’s been one countdown after the other. First midwife appointment, 12 week scan, next midwife appointment, 20 week scan, next midwife appointment, four weeks between midwife appointments, three weeks between midwife appointments, antenatal classes… Chuck in the usual counting down to paydays, holidays, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Athons and the new series of CSI:NY and time flies by in a terrifying way.

I am writing this the night before the countdown flips over into single figures – 9 weeks to go and apparently this is one event where I can’t defer til next year.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again

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Last night I dreamt that I was running through the countryside. I felt light and free and the running was easy.

I remember that I ran 9 miles (well it was 8 point something when I checked my Garmin, but I rounded up…) and that I thought “that felt so easy it probably wasn’t real”.

I like to think that my legs were going like a spaniel dreaming of chasing cats.

(My running stopped four weeks ago when I was 24 weeks pregnant. It was a natural conclusion after our holidays; a few more aches and pains, growing increasingly bumpy and, most of all, I hadn’t run for two weeks – I find it hard enough to get back after a fortnight’s break at the best of times. I have spent the last four weeks envious of other runners).

Juneathon day one: Lune

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How did it come around to June already? Anyone? Anyone? No. Oh. Well it’s here again, another month celebrating our festival of exercise and excuses. If you’re new to my blog (hello! Make yourself at home, please bring cake next time…) I don’t really have a bad Athon record. I usually (somehow) manage to run (even if it’s just a token mile) and blog every day, typically clocking up a respectable hundred or so miles in the process. However, when I finished Janathon this year it turned out that I was about a fortnight pregnant and so I’m starting Juneathon 22 weeks gone. Running every day aint an option. If you’re currently pregnant and running every day, more power to your elbow! If you’re feeling good, then go for it. I just know that for me, it’s not a sensible option at this point in time (well it’s even less of a sensible option than it has been for the last three years).

Instead, my Juneathon 2013 will be a mix of run/walking, walking, swimming and gymming. I am trying to feel enthusiastic about this, but the lack of running (especially on day one) has made me feel a bit of a fraud. It’s ten o’clock on the first day of Juneathon and I feel like there’s something that I’ve forgotten to do…

Day one kicked off with a bacon and black pudding baton (the breakfast of champions) and a trip to the British Lawnmower Museum. The reasons for this are a little too involved to explain, but I have learned why Flymos are orange, have seen a whole host of celebrity lawnmowers…

Hilda Ogden's lawnmower.

Hilda Ogden’s lawnmower. Fact.

…and learned that smoking and mowing are not necessarily doomed to be mutually exclusive activities.

Ah, the heady days of straightforward advertising.

Ah, the heady days of straightforward advertising.

After all that grassy excitement, a series errands took us up to Carnforth (home of Brief Encounter) at the other end of the county and then back down to Lancaster for the rest of the afternoon. Working on the theory that a run only counts if it’s Garmin-ed (I know, I know), I took Miles (my Garmin) to (a) keep track of my pace and (b) have some kind of proof that I didn’t just amble around the house. Setting off from the Millennium Bridge in Lancaster…

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…we headed down the River Lune along the Lancashire Coastal Way for a mile…

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…admiring some impressive bits of stone being salvaged from an old factory on the way…

 

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…before striding back in time for tea.

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On borrowed time…

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Due to a combination of holidays (more on that to follow), recovering from holidays and (if I’m honest) just generally slacking a bit, I hadn’t run since the Liverpool 10k. That’s two and a bit weeks of postponing my glorious return to action because I wasn’t sure just how glorious it would be. I’m now halfway through this pregnancy lark, finally starting to show a bit, but also noticing a general change in my fitness. It might just be that I haven’t been doing enough exercise, but I’ve skived off plenty of times in the past and not noticed this big a change.

It really hit home on holiday in Boston. We walked for miles (which was fine) but I started to notice that climbing stairs was starting to leave me feeling out of breath and a bit wonky. Deciding to climb the Bunker Hill Monument (294 steps…) probably wasn’t my best idea. To be fair, initially I did say that Ginge should go up on his own and I’d look at the photos, but I hate the idea of missing out on something exciting. So I climbed it, eventually reaching the top red-faced and glowing like a shire horse.

What I climbed.

What I climbed.

I was not a happy bunny. “You wouldn’t believe I ran a half-marathon last month” I muttered, “look at me”. The realisation dawned that I might be on borrowed time as far as running is concerned.

Today’s effort confirmed that run-walking is now the order of the day.  Ginge joined me on a canal run on which I chose the route (up hill through a series of locks) and then announced “I’m not very good with hills. Or inclines. Or slopes. Or bridges”.  There was a lot of run-walking on the way out, but I was chuffed to discover that on the return downhill, I managed it all in one go (albeit at a much slower pace and with a much redder face than normal). My plan is to stop running when it’s either too uncomfortable or I don’t enjoy it (and presumably, if it’s too uncomfortable I won’t enjoy it anyway…). I suppose technically I have had my Last Run (managing any kind of distance without walking) but if you don’t mind, I’ll keep calling my run-walking ‘running’ because it’s easier and makes me feel better.

In the meantime, I have renewed my gym membership (with an option to take a break for a few months) and I’ve (foolishly) signed up for Juneathon so that’s some more motivation to keep myself active.