'Though he be but little he be fierce'!

Our wee man is 9 weeks old today. In baby terms, he's actually not so wee, weighing in at just shy of a stone already and he's growing at a pace that my arm strength is struggling to keep up with! He was in 3-6 month clothing at 6 weeks: what a porker! That’s what comes of having a 6’4” Dad and a 5’7” Mum! I cannot believe how quickly time flies when you are living your life in 3 hourly blocks between feeding-winding-nappy changing sessions (sleep features minimally – he doesn’t like napping in the day as he seems to be frightened of missing out on something!) For something so tiny he has had a massive impact on our daily lives. Mind you, between the endless 3 hourly feeding cycles, I have managed to fit in a surprising amount of training!

I must highlight from the off that me being able to resume training has only been possible thanks to the amazing support of my family as he still cannot be put down in the day due to his silent reflux. My visions of having him napping next to me in his moses basket whilst I pedal merrily away on my spin bike, or chilling in his pram in the middle of the nearby cricket pitch whilst I run reps around him have proved to be wild visions of my antenatal idealistic imagination! Thank God I only paid £25 for his moses basket from Aldi as it has seen no use since he reflux kicked in at week 2! It does, however, provide a good storage facility for his cuddley toys, so it is getting some use! I have become the master of in-sling activities, including doing the washing, cooking and even blogging with him on me in the sling (see photo for evidence!). If we go out for lunch, I hope he is chilled enough in his sling to allow me to sit down, but mostly he isn’t a fan of Mummy sitting on her backside and prefers her to be on the move: Yes, well done to all you wise cracks who correctly predicted that by running with him in the womb and swimming up until week 39 of pregnancy I was setting myself up for a baby who won’t sleep unless moving! Many coffees out with friends have been “enjoyed” with me stood up pacing around the table while they sit down like normal people! Meals are also taken with him chilling in his sling below. The sling is now covered in a varied manner of curry sauce, tomato juice and guacamole stains and he invariably ends up with my lunch secreted about his person: today’s treat was a smoked salmon and samphire sandwich; hastag, first world baby problems…. Yes, our wee man has his challenges, bless him, and apparently reflux affects boys more than girls (as I keep saying, boyz iz trouble). Life as a Mum is not at all as I had envisioned – I think whatever you envision, it will end up surprising you at every turn – but that is the magic of it and those precious moments towards the end of a feed cycle when he is not screaming with the acid burning from his previous feed or else screaming because he is gearing up for another grubbing, are truly joyous. And as for my first smile, which he dutifully gave me on my first Mother’s Day, it melted my heart. Those moments make all the struggles worthwhile. Anyway, I digress. I promise that this is not turning into an exclusively mother-and-baby-blog and is still very much sport focussed; however, I cannot not touch upon the huge impact this tiny little being has had on my sport and so he will inevitably feature in some capacity in most of my blog posts from now on. Anyway, down to sporting business…

In sling blogging.

In sling baking. 

Training has resumed in earnest. After recommencing some easy running 11 days after giving birth and subsequently being warned by a fellow Mum and runner friend about the rather unpleasant risks of doing so in the first 6 weeks postpartum, I promptly knocked running on the head again. Cycling also had to wait until, well, er, the old undercarriage had healed a bit. I started back on the spin bike again after 2 weeks but there was A LOT of out of the saddle work in those early days!! I tried running again at 5 weeks postpartum, feeling reassured that everything was ‘back in its rightful place’, and I instantly felt amazing. I knew from some runner friends who had had babies and breastfed them that it can result in increased oxygenated blood and is akin to being on natural EPO with the added bonus that it is entirely legal and you don’t need to provide the BTF with a TUE for it!! They weren’t wrong! I was gliding along effortlessly despite not having done any real cardio efforts since finding out I was pregnant last June. At 6 weeks I decided I was ready for parkrun already… cue impending disaster. Yes, I felt amazing, coasting along at 6:50m/m pace without even being out of breath. Sadly, my legs were no match for my lungs however and after 4 months of not doing any strength work, my calf said ‘no thanks’ 2.4 miles in and so I had to bail. Gutted as I was on for a comeback 5k time in the region of 21 minutes just 6 weeks after giving birth: that’ll teach me to be impatient for results!

Cue a trip to my trusty physio, Nigel Wilman at Honiton, and a diagnosis of a calf cramp (luckily I stopped straight away and so prevented a tear). This was the best case scenario and should heal fairly quickly with some rehabbing and a sensible and slow return to running. Meanwhile, during this glorious sunny weather, I have been enjoying getting out on the bike after sacrificing riding on the open roads whilst I had my precious cargo on board for 9 months. I love riding in the sun and the oxygenated blood cells have been making their presence felt on the bike too as I have been floating up climbs that would previously have had me puffing. Too bad hill climb season isn’t until Autumn as I’m in shape ad raring to go now! Rides are squeezed in between feeds, with either Matt, my Mum or my father-in-law kindly stepping in to wear a baby for an hour. I just have to pray I don’t puncture as I know I would get in a flap about getting back in time for his next feed and totally fluff fixing it. In fact, in my desperation to get back to my baby, I would probably throw pride out the window and play the damsel in distress card and flag down a fellow passing cyclist for assistance!

In terms of a comeback race, I am now undecided. I have entered Ottery 10k on May 12^th but I think it will be a bit too early in terms of my calf rehab to race a 10k on tarmac. There is also the Exe Valley Triathlon that day, with just a 5k run at the end, which might be a more reasonable ask. Of course, I also have the option of being ultra-sensible and waiting a little longer before racing… hmm, yeh, like that’s gonna happen! In terms of bigger goals, I am looking at the GB team qualifying race for the European sprint duathlon championships: the qualifier is in October in Bedford and the championships are in Soria, Spain next year… yes, back to Soria! At least I will know the course and the logistics of travelling to and from the location, which should minimise the stress. Mind you, heading there this time with a baby in tow will maximise the stress, so it’s swings and roundabouts. Much as I feel that my strengths lie in endurance rather than speed, I don’t have the time this year to put in the bike mileage to do the standard distance justice, so the sprint it is.

I have these grand plans but in reality there is now a tiny person on the scene who has the potential to throw multiple toy spanners in the works. Take today for example, I had every intention of going to Torbay to watch and support the sprint triathlon there. Both my own coach, Chris Dominey (name not a coincidence, he’s also my cousin-in-law!) and one of my coached athletes, Sarah Taffler, were taking part, so I would have loved to have supported them, but it was simply too hot to take him out and have him exposed to the blazing sun at the exposed venue. Shame as my sponsor Patrick of PDW Sport was going to be there doing the race massages and I’d have loved a catch up with him. I am so grateful to him for his continued support (and faith!) in me this season; I am heading into unknown territory trying to get back into competitive racing, with the aim of competing for my country again, in the same year as having my first baby, so having regular massage and maintenance on my post-preggers fragile body will be a massive benefit. Thanks Patrick – you are awesome!

I guess the biggest change in training and competing since having a baby is the colossal level of planning that has to be involved. Gone are the days of deciding on a whim that as it’s sunny out I might like to head out on the bike. No more arranging with friends to coffee-ride together at 10am, as at 10am I might have a baby on my boob and timescales vary massively from one day to the next. Sessions are now restricted to an hour tops between feeding cycles. Prioritising is essential: yes, I would love to keep up the yoga classes to help my flexibility, and the core classes to help me regain my strength, but I can only fit in around 5 activities a week, if I'm lucky, and when you do a sport that already involved 3 activities, add-ons like yoga are an impossible luxury. Yesterday I drove past a lovely hill and thought, ‘Ooh, I could drive here, park up and do a hill reps session’… and then it hit me: oh yes, you have a baby now, what will you do with him? Can’t exactly leave him in the car at the bottom! Training now involves the goodwill and support of others and will do so for some years to come. It involves being super organised whilst also acknowledging the need to be flexible: if we’ve had a bad night or if baby won’t settle, he is now my priority, NOT fitting in the miles on the bike or the lengths in the pool. For someone so focussed, who likes to do something every day and gets a bit twitchy if I can’t, this is the biggest adjustment. But looking at our wee man’s face as he smiles when he hears his Mummy’s voice makes all the sacrifices worthwhile. Hopefully the breastfeeding blood boosters will compensate for the lack of training anyway!

A month into motherhood

And stone the blinking crows, what a month! No matter how prepared you think you are, you are never ready for the whirlwind of an existence that arrives with the arrival of your new arrival! Sylvester torpedoed into the world mid-February after a ridiculously short labour (little over 2 hours) in which we only just made it to the hospital. It all happened so fast I barely had time to process that I was in labour and, before I knew it, I was lying there, torn wide open, in severe pain and presented with this little being that I was henceforth responsible for, thinking, “What in the hell just happened?” Since then we have stumbled through life in a blur of feeding-winding-nappy changing cycles. Sleeping has featured occasionally but not in any meaningful way and when my husband and I kiss each other good night and say, ‘Sleep well; I’ll see you in 2 hours’, that just about sums up our new life: divided into two hourly blocks! It is truly life (and life-style) changing. I knew it would be, but boy I had no idea to what extent.

I knew my exercise and training regime would have to take a back seat, but I had (somewhat naively!) envisioned scenes of my baby asleep in his Moses basket in my home gym whilst I pedalled merrily away on my spin bike next to him. #Cue hysterical laughter here# For one thing, I have a baby with severe reflux who simply will not be put down during the day: he has not seen the inside of that Moses basket since his first week of life! The only way he will sleep is upright in his sling, being worn around the house or carried over a shoulder. I have been incredibly lucky as my husband has taken 6 weeks off work and so we have been able to divvy up the ‘baby wearing’ duties to share the burden on our aching backs and shoulders and to give each other an hour’s occasional respite between feeds. So I have managed a few short (20 – 30 mins) sessions on my spin bike, but doing so uses up my one free slot of the day (a slot that would probably be better spent catching up on much needed sleep). The other slots are spent doing essential tasks, such as cooking, doing the laundry (how does something so tiny generate so much washing?!), trying to sort out the bomb site that was formerly our neat and orderly home, bathing the wee man (again, a small surface area but a massive undertaking), and generally hunting around the house for mislaid baby socks, muslins, hats, nappy inserts etc. Going out for a coffee is now a task that requires warfare level logistics and planning and we need a small army just to carry all the stuff we have to take with us (again, how can such a small person need so much kit? It’s ridiculous!) We have been to parkrun twice, at week 3 (Exmouth) and week 4 (Seaton), but getting there for 9am meant preparing to leave the house at 7am and getting up and starting feeding at 6am! Three hours of preparing for Matt’s 20 minutes of running: it hardly seems worth it! Suddenly the idea I had of doing the Slateman duathlon in North Wales in May seems laughable; for one thing, we’d never fit all his kit and my kit in the same car, despite it being a large estate! Yep, I have had my eyes well and truly opened and my sporting ambitions for 2019 have been well and truly reined in. The Ottery 10k in May seems as innocuous a place as any to start, not least since the start and finish is less than half a mile from my house and so we might have a chance of making the start on time if we set off the night before!!

Many of the struggles with time stem from my decision to breast feed. I can easily see why so many women start but swiftly abandon and revert to formula feeding. We have faced several battles on our breastfeeding journey, such as our wee man having a 100% tongue tie which had to be operated on (a small procedure, thankfully), his reflux issues, my fast let down exacerbating the wind and reflux and the fact that we seem to have got ourselves a gluttonous booby monster who wants to be guzzling away for up to 90 minutes at any one feeding, with feedings occuring at 2 ½ hourly intervals. I thought my arse and the sofa spent a lot of time getting acquainted in late pregnancy, but this is a whole new level of intimacy that my husband may soon start to suspect … If I bottle fed, Matt and I could share the feeds (oh to be able to share that 2am feed when he is at his most ravenous and can spend up to two hours dining out on my finest quality boob juice). But I am determined to breastfeed: the benefits are so great for both of us and the bond it creates is truly magical… yes, even at 3am when I sigh in Dickensian-style exasperation, “More? You want more?” Got ourselves a regular Oliver Twist here who is porking out like a trooper. Born at 8lb3oz, he was already up to 9lb11oz by two weeks! His mother, on the other hand, is going the other way! The other bonus to breastfeeding: it burns 500 calories a day and, after putting on the best part of 2 stone during pregnancy, I was back down to my pre-pregnancy weight by day 11 without even trying. It really surprised me and scared me a bit, but luckily it has stabilised there and not dropped any further as I literally could not shovel any more food in than I am doing now!

I have one more week with the luxury of an at-home-husband, then the real shit’s gonna go down! If Sylvester is not upright for at least an hour after a feed, he screams in pain from his reflux: it absolutely tears at my soul. How will I shower? How will I get dressed? Nevermind how will I fit in a run or a cycle, ha! What a wildly ridiculous idea! My home gym is now more of a storage facility for baby equipment and my ‘wheels’ are no longer streamlined and skinny but come in pram format. Yes, life has changed, but for the better. They are only tiny for such a short time and so you have to make the most of it all, sleepless nights, being pooed on and all (yes, we’ve had a couple of target hits as I have lifted his legs and bottom to remove his old nappy and the missile has fired). We have liquids of varying levels of viscosity emerging from every orifice these days. My boobs often resemble the Jet d’Eau fountain in Lake Geneva and Sylvester’s highlights have included a huge projectile reflux vomit directly into the plug sockets. I lose count of the times his little todger has gone off as I have peeled back the nappy (what’s with that?!) and he has urinated into his own eyes and mouth… it doesn’t seem to bother him too much: boys are grubby beasts. I used to marvel at how far from the toilet my husband could make his yellow splash marks reach, but this little fellow has reached a whole new level and is fast running out of surfaces upon which to leave his scent markings.

My Ironman ambitions are now Ironmum and it really is the most challenging but most rewarding test of physical and mental endurance in the world. No other achievement in my life compares or even has much significance by comparison.

# Typed stood upright at the breakfast bar with a snoozing Sylvester asleep in his sling!

The year in review: 2018

So, it’s New Year’s Eve and as it’s become customary for me to write a ‘year in review’ type blog I will stick with tradition, even though this year has seen my sporting goals somewhat shafted by other major life events, so the stats don’t read too impressively. But here they are for continuity’s sake anyway and I will attempt to explain away the naffness after:

2018 mileage:

Running: 412 – naffer than naff, my lowest year yet by a long way!

Cycling: 1252 outdoor miles

    1000 (approx) indoor miles on turbo / wattbike / spin classes

Swimming: 99’000mtrs (should have made the effort to round that up!)

2018 races: 

1 x 10k road (4^th lady in 39:44)

1 x 10k multi terrain (1^st lady)

23 x parkrun (parkrun SB of 19:05; 1 x new course record Seaton parkrun 19:20)

1 x standard distance duathlon (2^nd lady, 1^st in age group with auto qualification for the 2018 World Duathlon Championships)

1 x sprint triathlon (7^th lady, on the back of 8 weeks of no exercise)

Qualifications:
BTF Level 1 Coach

It’s an unimpressive and rather diminished list compared to previous years, but where the sporting achievements are lacking, the life goals have been smashed! On 14th June of this year I found out I was pregnant! No-one could have been more shocked than Matt and me as it came the very next month after having undergone a failed round of IVF, after 3 years of trying ourselves and not a sniff, and subsequently being told IVF was our only hope of conceiving. I took the pregnancy test for the failed IVF round on May 12^th… also my Mum’s birthday. I was crushed at not being able to give her the birthday present she most wanted, particularly as my Dad had been ill since February and it was a boost our family desperately needed. Then 6 days later, on 18^th May, my Dad nearly died in rather traumatic circumstances. Me and my Mum found him just in time. That week was probably the lowest of my life.

Throughout the IVF I had been unable to exercise much beyond light walking and yoga and so after 8 weeks off, I returned to race the Exe Valley Triathlon on 13^th May. It seemed like a good idea, to throw myself straight back into it, but my plans to tempo race it went flying out the window once the gun went and competitive Ellie, high on emotions, went wild and pushed herself the whole way. No surprises then that I crossed that finish line injured, having flared up my achillies injury asking it to race hard after 8 weeks of nothing. The worst week of my life and my main coping mechanism – running – was now unavailable to me. Nothing to do but ride it out and hope for better times to come…. I just didn’t realise they would come so soon. By the time my birthday came around (also shared with Father’s Day), my Dad had had the operation he had been waiting for since February and was on the mend, and I was now expecting a baby after being told it wouldn't happen naturally: Ha! In your face, medical science! From miserable May to jubilant June – what a turnaround! 

Suddenly, the fact that I was injured and so wouldn’t be able to take up my place on the GB team at the World Duathlon Champs in Denmark in July was irrelevant. I said from the day I found out I was expecting, no cycling on any open roads, and I have stuck to that. Yes, I know loads of ladies who continue to cycle / horse ride / ski when pregnant, and good for them – each to their own, it’s their body – but for me, having gone through so much to get here, there was no way that any bike ride would be worth the potential risk of a fall, especially when there are safe, indoor alternatives. So, running mileage down due to being injured for most of the year (in fact, most of those 412 miles have been done while pregnant!) Cycling mileage down due to the reason outlined above. Swim mileage slightly down as it's never been my favourite sport and, without a competitive goal, I just can't be arsed with doing the big 2500m+ swim sets, so all swims have been 1500m (my boredom threshold!) or below. Mind you, I have to say that these past few weeks I have come to greatly appreciate the gravity-defying properties of water and the brief aquatic respite from feeling like a 30 stone barriatric surgery candidate when attempting to walk, run or climb stairs! 

The only regret I have is towards those who invested time and effort into helping me achieve my duathlon goals this year. I started the year committed to upgrading my silver medal from Soria to a gold at either the Worlds or the Europeans and so I enlisted the assistance of a coach (also my cousin-in-law, Chris, of Tri Coach Kernow) and I signed a much-valued sponsorship agreement with sports massage therapist, Patrick, of PDW Sports. Things were starting to get serious and the result I got at the world’s qualifier event at Anglian Water in February got me - and no doubt them - excited about the season ahead. So I do feel like I have in some way let Chris and Patrick down by being a ‘typical bloody woman and getting herself pregnant’, but in reality I know that this is just me being stupid and that they know what this baby means to me and that no sporting result can ever come close. So, maybe it was bad timing in some ways, but perfect timing in others as goodness knows both my family and I needed a change of fortune in that horrendous week in May. The weirdest thing is that my pregnancy has been officially dated to 12^th May…. so the day that initially caused such heartache when the test stick read ‘not pregnant’ following the failed round of IVF, has subsequently become a day of joy. Strange how these things work out.

I am now nearly 34 weeks in with approx. 5 – 6 weeks to go… 5 would be better! Starting to get rather large and uncomfortable now. For a ‘year in review’ stats bonus, I currently weigh 1.5 stones heavier than I did at the start of the year! Hopefully most of that is baby and not just excess Xmas pud! Having to really scale back the exercise these past few weeks as if I try to do too much, I just end up exhausted and sofa bound later on in the day, so it’s all about measuring my efforts. This is really strange for someone who is, by nature, always on the go and gets easily bored and fidgety when sat doing nothing. My day usually runs in 30 minute segments, with me trying to rest with my feet up, but getting bored after half an hour, feeling unproductive and lazy, and so getting up and doing something such as laundry, baking, cleaning etc. This results in me wearing myself out again and needing another 30 minute sit down, etc etc, until it’s finally 9pm and I can take myself off to bed! Rock and roll! It’s so weird to not have energy and I really feel for anyone with conditions such as ME or thyroid problems who experience this lethargy on a regular basis. I guess it’s all good prep for being sleep-deprived when little one arrives!

And so to my sporting plans for 2019. In my head, I have lots; on paper, I have none, as I am very mindful that planning things before I have experienced life with a newborn is just asking for trouble! Through my rose-tinted glasses I can visualise a cosy scene of us all rocking up at a local race, with our parents in tow to look after baby, I’ll bust out a post-partum PB fuelled by my oxygenated breast-feeding blood cells and Matt will float around equally effortlessly on the pure euphoria of fatherhood…. There is, of course, every chance that I could be living in cloud cuckoo land here and we may well be too knackered to even contemplate leaving the house when the time comes! I would love to take Baby D. to North Wales to visit my Welsh family in May and maybe race the Slateman whilst there…. but again, the logistics of this may prove too much. We’ll just have to see. I may be blessed with an angelic being that sleeps all day apart from feeds at regular intervals. Equally, Karma may dish up its revenge and serve me a dose of what I put my poor mother through by giving me a screamer who refuses to be put down and is awake 24/7 with no pattern to feeding or sleeping… there is apparently one very good reason why I remained an only child!

February: en route to setting a new female course record at Seaton parkrun, 19:20: the record still stands

February: Finishing the Anglian Water Standard Duathlon in 2nd place overall and qualifying to represent GB at the world champs later in the year

May: After 8 full weeks of no exercise, I thought I could just rock up and race the Exe Valley Triathlon and get away with it... I didn't. Injury ensued.

December: A slightly different physique to usual, or, as my husband quips, 'My wife's let herself go a bit this past year'. 33 weeks pregnant on Christmas Day.

2019? Let's see what you've got in store. Hopefully lots more love, laughter and living life to the full.

Thanks to my supporters in 2018:
Patrick at PDW Sports - best sports massage both sides of the Tamar!
Chris at Tri Coach Kernow
Nigel at Honiton Physio.
N1 Tri Club, Honiton Spinners and Axe Valley Runners - training alone is ok, but training with other like-minded folk is better
My friends, both local and afar, for their much needed and valued support this year
My family, for always being there... family first, fitness second, always!

Being a coach potato

Yes, you read that right, a coach potato. Not a couch potato… although I am rapidly becoming one of those too, so the pun serves two purposes.

Last weekend I became a fully qualified British Triathlon Level 1 coach. I signed up for the coaching course back in the summer as I thought it could be something to get my teeth into whilst I am on my pregnancy reduced training volume. (There is only so much baking a girl can do to fill the 10+ hours that were previously spent swimming, biking and running, and I would hate for my husband to get fat as a result!!)

Why did I decide to do the coaching qualification? Well, several reasons, but chiefly because I was massively inspired by having my cousin-in-law, Chris Dominey of Tri Coach Cornwall, coach me at the back end of last year and into the start of this. I was previously sceptical that I needed a coach, after all, I’m not a pro and so it seemed a little self-indulgent, and hell, I managed to get myself a silver medal in my first international outing in a GB suit on the back of my own simplistic approach, so it can’t have been too off target. But once I took the plunge and committed to his programme, it highlighted so many things that I was previously doing wrong in my training, and my performance improved massively as a result… too bad I then got pregnant and so wasn’t able to see if I could convert that silver to a gold at the World or European duathlon championships, but I had a better reason this time for the DNS than my usual “injured”.

I used to think that all I needed to do was keep my fitness levels up all year round, make sure I swam, biked and ran each week, did a modicum of the dreaded S + C work, and mixed the sessions up with some easy paced stuff and harder interval efforts. I did not know that it is impossible to be “fit” all year round and that, in trying to be, you risk over-training, fatiguing your body and, worse still, succumbing to a plethora of injuries and illnesses, which is basically how I spent most of my time in 2015 (injured), 2016 (ill) and 2017 (both!). A good coach will work with an individual athlete to periodize their training, manage their fatigue levels and make sure there is the right balance between the harder efforts (that get you fit and improve performance) and the easy work (which allows your body to recover and adapt). This was all new to me. At first I resented the rigidity of the regime; being told that this is the specific workout I must do today, when previously I would have taken the weather, my mood, my time availability and others (e.g. availability of riding buddies and sessions offered by my tri and cycling clubs) into account and decided on the day what activity I would do. It was a very different routine to my previous ad hoc ‘wing it and see’ approach, but I can totally see now why having such a structure brings results. I can now see others – tri club mates, training buddies – making the same mistakes I used to make and seeing their same bewilderment at being constantly tired or picking up niggles in the process: hardly surprising when they haven’t had a rest day for 5 weeks! I used to fear rest days; I thought they were a sign of weakness and my secret inner-lazy-self winning out over my more disciplined-self. I now see that they are essential if you want to stay fresh, keep enjoying the sport and see continued long-term improvements.

By taking the coaching qualification, I hope to be able to impart some of this newfound wisdom(!) to others and help them improve their performances. With the level 1 I am limited in what I can do, but I view it as a step on the ladder towards progressing to my level 2 and level 2+, with which I will be able to coach on a one-to-one basis and write bespoke programmes… and do this in a professional capacity, for financial gain. Online coaching is definitely something I could make work around being a stay-at-home-Mum, and so it is a potential career path I am considering for my future, post-partum.

Talking of baby, I am now at 30 weeks and expanding by the day! I am still doing 3 spin classes a week, 2 swims and the occasional parkrun, but running is getting pretty uncomfortable these days as I need to pee every 5 minutes! I have found the last few weeks I have been really tired and had a few unpleasant dizzy / feeling faint episodes (luckily I have managed to sit down before any keeling over actually happened), but then I discovered last week that I am anaemic and I found out yesterday that I have a UTI (both common in pregnancy and both are things I have suffered with before, which makes me more susceptible to them). It would explain the feeling tired, faint and slightly elevated heart rate in spinning! Hopefully now I am on meds for these issues, I will soon start to perk up. No wonder I never experienced that second trimester surge of energy of which others speak – I feel like I’ve been deprived of what my Mum described as “the most energized few months of her life”!

People still continue to pass comment on my activity levels and expanding waist line, as if I am public property. The “oh my goodness, I can’t look you, what are you even doing here in your condition? I think you are going to go into labour at any moment” at spin class, to the “Gosh, you’re only that far on, I thought you must only have a couple of weeks to go, your bump is so big”. It gets a bit tedious and, for someone who has body image issues at the best of times, being told you look massive and are “much bigger than they were at that stage” sends my irrational brain into a spin. But then rational Ellie kicks in and remembers that at my latest growth scan, both me and baby are bang in the mid-range of where we should be at this stage. I just think that everyone has their own opinion and, if you are someone who struggles with exercise you are more likely to think I am bonkers, and if you are someone who is super-fit yourself, you are more likely to appreciate that it’s good for you to keep fit throughout pregnancy and I’m not some weird alien-type being for wanting to do so. Yes, there has been more sofa surfing in the last month or so, but Matt keeps telling me that that is ok and I do not have to be productive for every moment of my waking hours! For now, when my 4-5pm witching hour strikes, I give myself permission to be a newly qualified coach potato!

Below: Me and bump @ 28 weeks, enjoying our last little holiday with baby on the inside to Snowdonia

Thoughts on exercising during pregnancy

I have deliberately entitled this post ‘exercising during pregnancy’ rather than ‘training during pregnancy’ as, for me, the two are very different. Training, as far as I see it, has an end goal; you are training towards something specific: a target race, to improve your swim technique, to raise your FTP on the bike. This means there is a focus and a structure to what you do as you are chipping away towards achieving a set target. Exercise is far more casual. Anyone can engage in exercise without any specific goals in mind. Sure, they may be using it to lose weight, keep in shape, get fit, feel good, relieve stress etc, but there is a fluidity around the use of the word. This suits where I am at the moment. For the first time in years, I am not training for anything… well, aside from impending motherhood, but there ain’t no Wattbike session, intervals set or pilates class in the world that can prepare me for that! Rather I am exercising, on an ad hoc basis, to feel good in body and mind, hopefully to keep me and my baby bean healthy, and to just enjoy it.

And enjoy it I am! What a treat to be able to just go out the door and run where I want without looking at the pace on my Garmin. I am running purely on feel, whilst trying to keep my heart rate down so as not to distress baby in any way. Matt and I have been keeping up our Saturday morning parkrun routine, but for me, there hasn’t been the added stress of feeling like I have to hammer it and finish as first lady. I get there feeling relaxed, maybe warm up, maybe not, saunter to the start line, position myself a few folk back from the front line, and enjoy the run and admire the views. Then the café and catch up with friends part still features afterwards, of course!

Some days running feels harder than others. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I work and I am on my feet for 7 ½ hours a day. I feel pretty knackered by the end of these days and if I run on a Thursday, the effort feels much harder. I still record my runs to log the mileage in my training diary, but that is purely because I like to keep totals of how many miles I run in a year to add to my collective totals and see how my virtual progress around the world is going! I don’t look at pace whilst running, only after, and it does fluctuate. Parkruns tend to be the fastest – obviously, despite feeling chilled, competitive Ellie is still lurking in there somewhere and having others around me to work off brings out that bit of extra speed – and some runs when I am on tired, work-weary legs, are over 9m/m. I really don’t care. I am out the door, doing them and enjoying them. That’s what counts.

I also try to do a spin class once a week and a swim. Swimming is interesting as this is the only sport in which my times haven’t slowed. To be honest, they were so slow to start with, if I slowed any more I would likely lose all forward momentum and sink anyway! I wonder if the added buoyancy aid that is rapidly expanding around my middle isn’t giving me some form of assistance in this regard?! The maximum I swim in one go now is 60 lengths, but often fewer, maybe 50 or just 40, depending on how I’m feeling. Swimming usually finishes with a visit to the Cornish Bakery in Sidmouth for a coffee and cherry and almond croissant… it’s kinda become a new ritual!

As far as peoples’ attitudes towards me continuing to exercise during pregnancy go, I have noticed they are split into two distinct camps. The first, occupied by those who aren’t avid exercisers, tend to think you are bonkers, irresponsible and selfish for continuing to run whilst pregnant. “What if you fall over?” (I could do that walking, or moving around the house anyway) “That poor baby, being shaken about inside” (The baby is insulated by a massive sack of amniotic fluid and not likely to feel much). “If you are struggling with tiredness anyway, why put yourself through this as well?” (Exercise actually energises you and I feel so much better on the days I do a 30 minute run or swim than on the days where I do nothing). Besides, current medical advice is that pregnant women SHOULD exercise throughout their pregnancy (30 mins 5 – 6 times a week is in fact recommended, and I am not exceeding that), but obviously making the relevant modifications as you progress towards full term. If you exercised regularly before conceiving, it is safe for you to do more than 30 minutes at a time as your body is used to it. Studies show that women who exercise throughout have healthier pregnancies with less complications than those who do not.

Then we come to camp two: people who are, by and large, exercise fanatics themselves, including those who personally know of other athletes who have successfully continued to not only exercise but also to compete to a decent level throughout pregnancy. This camp is wont to imply you are being overly cautious by only running 24 minutes at parkrun, as they know someone who was still doing 20 minute 5ks at 25 weeks pregnant. They are the people who tell you about so-and-so who competed in fell races at 38 weeks preggers, or who continued to mountain bike throughout, so Ellie, aren’t you being a little bit over-cautious by refusing to even get on your bike? To these people I invariably say, maybe I am, but did these people take over 3 years to conceive? If we had hit the target at the first time of asking, so to speak, I might be a bit more blasé about cycling on the roads or pushing my body a bit harder on a run. But we have been through hell and high water to get to this point and so there is no way on earth I would do anything to jeopardise it… wrong place wrong time at a blind junction on the bike and that’s all it takes. No, it might not happen, but if there are safer alternatives, such as sticking to the spin bike, then what’s the point?

I have read blogs by athletes who have done amazing things whilst pregnant (scaled the Eiger, won international medals in eventing) and who then went on to bounce back in no time afterwards and fit their breast-feeding schedule around their training. Good for them. I do not judge these people, but nor do I hold them up as some kind of totemic superhero either. Every woman should be free to do what they feel is right for them, without pressure or judgement from others. The current balance I have found of exercising on average 5 days a week for a weekly total of 3 hours, at a far less intensive level than pre-pregnancy, works for me right now. If I start to struggle, I am not going to beat myself up if I have to scale that back. There has never been a better time to throw the stats, numbers and averages out of the window and just do everything on innate feel. Besides, I am really enjoying having some free time to do things other than training, resting and recovering! I do miss Friday morning long rides with the gang, but I am enjoying other things in their place. Biking Fridays have become baking Fridays and I still of course have the option of driving out to the coffee stop so I don’t have to miss out on what is, let's face it, the best part of biking anyway! Mostly, I am just trying to enjoy my pregnancy as it is something I have been desperately seeking for a very long time. Furthermore, when will I next get the freedom to be a bit lazy and sit on the sofa watching crappy Louis Theroux documentaries on I-Player with a cuppa and cake in the future? Maybe not for several years from February onwards, so I am enjoying it while it lasts!!

@ 17 weeks.

"Even the stormiest tides turn...."

May 2018. Unequivocally the worst month of my life. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. 

After 3 years of trying and getting nowhere, we were eventually referred to Exeter Fertility Clinic for a first round of IVF back in May 2017. I am reliably informed that it usually takes about 2-3 months from your initial IVF consultation to the commencement of a first cycle of treatment. For various reasons it took us just shy of 12 months. A whole year. A tortuous, emotional wreck of a year of appointments, discussions, blood tests, ultrasound scans, trial procedures, more discussions, getting lost “between admin systems”, and generally having to lie back and think of England whilst the world and his wife – or so it often felt like – became intimately acquainted with my intimate area… believe me, for someone so body conscious that it took me 31 years of my life to work up to showering and changing in the communal changing area at the local pool, that is one hell of an ordeal.

What I have noticed since I have revealed that we have gone through IVF is just how many others have responded with their own personal stories of fertility struggles and difficulties conceiving. It is almost a taboo subject that people just don’t speak about, and whilst I can understand why – it is intensely private and personal and, often, quite upsetting to discuss – I also believe that it is healthy to have these conversations, when you feel ready to do so. Going through IVF is so all consuming and because you do not read about the struggles of others but only see the constant baby-joy announcements of success stories, it is easy to feel that you are the only unlucky ones in this position whilst everyone else parades their fertile family unit across social media.

We started the whole process somewhat naively; again, no doubt, because I was not aware of anyone I knew who had gone through the treatment, I had no personal accounts to draw upon. I thought those three loaded letters – I-V-F – were just a case of tapping into a bit of scientific knowledge to help you out a bit: wait until I’m ovulating, have someone who knows what they’re doing extract the egg, mix it with sperm, put egg back in, baby is made, or, often, two babies in a buy-one-get-one-free deal. I had not appreciated the 8 week long preamble that leads up to this part, in which you must self-inject with a truly astonishing (or so it seemed to me, when it arrived by the truck load in a giant box on the back of a transit van one evening) volume of drugs. You inject nightly, always at the precise same time, 8:45pm for me. As some of the drugs have to be kept refrigerated, this means always being at home in time to take them. If you get the timing wrong just once, it can muck up the whole cycle. I remember once racing back up the A38 from a massage with Patrick, my sponsor, at St. Mellion clinic, to get home in time. It's pretty stressful. 

This goes on for weeks. One drug shuts your whole reproductive system down (this phase is called “down-regging”) and puts you into a menopausal state and you get to experience the delights of every symptom that goes along with that… hot flushes, sweating, headaches, and mood swings like you would not believe. The next phase (referred to as “stimming”) sees you start to inject another drug that stimulates the ovaries, causing them to go beserk, get huge and produce multiple eggs ready for retrieval. Cue mega bloating, constant cramping, back ache and a 7lb weight gain in as many days. Oh, plus the continued mood swings, emotional outbursts, generally feeling like shit etc etc and the risk of contracting a potentially fatal side-effect called OHSS if the ovaries become too stimulated. Finally, after 4 delightful internal ultrasound scans, you arrive at the egg retrieval phase. Cue another injection timed to the minute to trigger the egg release at precisely the right time. Egg retrieval – usually done under sedation unless, like me, you don’t handle sedation very well, so in my case purely on gas and air, is followed by 5 long days of waiting to see if any of the eggs fertilise in the lab. You await the daily phone call from the embryologist to update you with the current state of play. From 10 extracted eggs, we had 3 valid embryos by day 5; one of which was put back into me, the other two frozen in storage for potential future use. For me, the embryo transferal did not go well; she struggled to navigate my apparently complex canal, resulting in me bleeding a lot. The night I got home I had bad cramping and more bleeding and, basically, I think I lost the embryo that very same night. But I don’t know this; I still had to assume I was now pregnant and act accordingly, avoiding alcohol, processed meats, pates, soft cheeses etc. You have to ride out the hellish period that they call ‘the two week wait’ before you can take a pregnancy test 14 long days later. That day happened to be my Mum’s birthday, 12^th May. It was negative. 12 months riding the emotional IVF rollercoaster and it had all been for nothing. The realisation that we would have to go through all of this again, only next time pay thousands of pounds to do so, was crushing.

All throughout this procedure, you are advised to exercise minimally in the 6 weeks of injections leading up to the egg retrieval, then from that day, for the next three weeks, you cannot exercise at all beyond a 30 minute daily walk. For someone who uses exercise as an emotional coping mechanism and stress reliever, I cannot tell you how hard it was to have to abstain. It was like going cold-turkey off an addictive drug! That 3 week period was the longest I had ever gone without exercise since I was 14 years old…. A fact I think I must have pointed out to poor Matt at least 10 times!! After training through all that miserable, cold winter weather, the sun and heat had finally arrived and all I could do was watch the strava uploads as all my mates went out cycling without me and stole my QOMs! Hard, but there was no way on earth I was going to “cheat” and disregard clinical advice, as, if it didn’t work, I wanted to be sure, for peace of mind, that there was nothing I did that could have impacted it.

We took the negative test on May 12^th at 7am. By 9am I was lining up on the start line of Exmouth parkrun. Might as well get back to it and focus on getting fit for the world championships in Denmark, now I’m not pregnant. The next day, the 13^th, despite 8 weeks of little or no training, I took up my place at the Exe Valley Triathlon. I should have just coasted it for a training run out, but competitive Ellie had to push and ended up buggering up her left leg again in the process. No baby, no running, and likely now no world championships. Not in the best place I’ve ever been, physically or emotionally….. and then, 5 days later, after being unwell since a botched hernia operation in January, my Dad very nearly died. Long long story there, which I won’t go into here because it’s too upsetting to recall it, but thank God he didn’t. My Mum and I found him in time, and he is now fully fixed up and back to full health. But it certainly put a few things into perspective. The world duathlon champs suddenly seemed unimportant in the scheme of things. What matters most is health and family: I was lucky that I still had both and so I had every reason not to wallow in negativity, but to pick myself up, be thankful to still have my Dad and the unfailing love and support of my husband, family and friends. Time to kick back, go easy on myself, just do exercise for enjoyment for a bit and not worry about any competitive goals for the moment. And the IVF? Well, we certainly aren't keen to go back to Fertility Exeter, and we needed a few months to take stock, allow my body to reset itself, and then consider our options.

One month later, following a relaxing weekend away in London in a lovely spa hotel, I was pregnant, naturally! I found out in the doctor’s surgery when I went for a check-up following the failure of the IVF and all the emotional upset I had been through with that and my Dad’s situation. She made me do a urine test and it revealed I was pregnant! I was absolutely flabbergasted. My doctor was too! We danced around her surgery, hugging each other. She was so thrilled as she has been on this whole journey with us and been such an advocate of our cause, constantly chasing results and making enquiries on our behalf. She was thrilled that she was able to share the special moment with me. That was the 14^th June, just 3 days before my 35^th birthday and 3 days before father’s day…. What an amazing birthday and father’s day gift!

My wise old Gran, who passed away in December 2013, aged 97, and is my own personal hero, had a plethora of axioms that she would periodically impart when occasion demanded. One was “good things come to those who wait” and another, “even the stormiest tides turn”. You were right Grandma, they do. They really do. From worst month ever to best month ever, life’s great storms sometimes engulf you and all you can do is ride them out, because, eventually, even the stormiest of tides turn and spit you out onto a sunbathed tropical beach. 

First time in my life I've ever had a belly! It's taking some getting used to, but proving useful for added buoyancy in the swimming pool! ;-) 

Annus horribilis

For those who don't speak Latin, no, that's not horrible backside, it's what the Queen endured in 1992 and in modern day parlance would be best described as a year from absolute hell. I am having one right now. 

Boy, oh boy. Where to begin with this one? Soooooo much has happened since my last post, and none of it in any way good. If I listed it all it would read like an Eastenders script. My whole world as I knew it has been flipped on its head over the last two months and it has certainly highlighted to me what is important in life and how trivial the insignificant things that I previously stressed over, such as doing well at parkrun or in my local sprint tri, are in comparison. I’m not going to give all the details because it’s personal, involves other people whose privacy I must respect, and the whys and wherefores are all irrelevant anyway. The point is, a lot of difficult things have all occurred within a short space of time, a veritable annus horribilis, and made me realise two things: 1) I am stronger than I realised, 2) I need to give a few less fucks about what other people think of me, by which I mean people who are not important to me: those whom I’ve never met, vague acquaintances, racing rivals, social media followers etc. In the past I would be scared about showing up out of shape to a race through fear of who would see the results and judge me on that poor performance without knowing the circumstances that led up to it. Now I realise that the people who matter already know what’s going on and why I ran slowly / took it easy / ran out of steam, and if they don’t know, then it’s because their opinion doesn’t matter.

With that in mind, the day after being given the medical all clear to recommence exercise, I decided to take up my place at the Exe Valley Triathlon. I had already spent £40 on the entry and couldn’t sell it on, so I thought what do I have to lose? I know I’ll be rubbish, I know it won’t feel anything like where I left off 2 months ago, but what the hell, just go and enjoy it. It was a warm sunny day, 5 of my fellow N1 club mates were racing, I had nothing else planned, so why not? It’s truly terrifying how much fitness you can lose in 8 short weeks. I posted my slowest ever 400m time (8:08, the only time I’ve ever raced a 400m in over 8 minutes). I had zero rhythm, my arms ached after just 16 poxy lengths and I was gasping for air. My usual bilateral breathing was cast aside after just two lengths in desperation to get more oxygen into my lungs. The bike felt the least bad of the three disciplines; I still had power in the legs but I had no puff, so the second I hit an incline, I’d be wheezing like a billygoat, when that is where I normally make my gains. The run was atrocious. Aside from the no exercise thing, I hadn’t run for some time before that with a calf niggle, so this was the first time I’d run in well over 2 months. No rhythm, no puff, no leg speed. I usually post the fastest female run split at tris and make up for the crappy swim on this discipline, but today I was outside the top 10 fastest times, taking nearly 23 mins for the 5k. Disastrous. I finished 7^th female and 3^rd in my age group; the only time I’ve finished as low as this was at my very first ‘trial’ triathlon in 2014 when I swam breaststroke, got changed into dry clothes in T1 and did the bike leg on a rickety £150 hybrid! But who cares? I enjoyed it as I had no expectation on myself to “perform”. And who cares what people think (if indeed they even care!) when they see the results? I know the score and I can now come in stealth and sock it to them next time when they are expecting me to be crap again! It’s good to keep people guessing!

Hmm, now, can I still remember how to swim after 8 weeks? ... In fact, I could n't really swim before, so whatever. Que sera sera.

Let's get this show on the road. 3, 2, 1...

It's all about the tongue!

I get by with a little help from my friends. With one of my besties, Jane. She and my other cycling buddies have been amazing these past few weeks. I appreciate you all.

N1 massive at Exe Valley Tri.

The past few months have truly confirmed who my real friends are. They are the ones who aren’t afraid to contact you through fear of saying the wrong thing or not knowing what to say; they are the ones who keep letting you know they are there and thinking of you. It has also confirmed that I have the best support network around me, from my amazing GP, to my sponsor, Patrick of PDW Sports Massage, to my physio Nigel at Honiton Physio, and to my coach, Chris of Tri Coach Cornwall. None of them have put any pressure on me to get back into training; they have all been kind and supportive and let me know that they are there and happy to help in any way they can.

My season is now panning out very differently to what I had envisaged. The World Duathlon Championships in Denmark in July are off the agenda: after 3 weeks of reduced training and 5 weeks of no training, in fact, of no exercise whatsoever, there simply isn’t enough time to get fit enough to be competitive. It is a shame I opted for the standard distance and not the sprint, as, with the latter, I may still have had a shot, but gaining both speed and endurance within a 5 week turnaround simply isn’t feasible. Not to beat around the bush, it’s a bummer. I was in the shape of my life when I qualified in February and definitely in a position to challenge for a medal if I could continue to build from there. But, shoulda woulda coulda…. I can’t. Circs have conspired against me and 2018 simply isn’t proving to be my year. But, oddly, having made the decision not to go to Denmark, I am now much happier. I felt worse with the indecision: Should I go? Will I be happy to go knowing I’m nowhere near full fitness? Would I rather go and enjoy the experience with my friends Jane and Moira (who have qualified for the sprint race) even though I know I won’t be able to match the performance I delivered in Soria? Would I rather just go and watch and support them? Would I be able to handle being there and yet not being a part of it? If I do give it a go, will I wreck my body for the rest of the season and then regret it? There was simply too much pressure and uncertainty and, in the end, Matt made me realise that what I actually need is a proper relaxing holiday, with no race attached, to just get away from it all. So that’s what we’re going to do and the competitive focus will shift to the Europeans in Ibiza in October, allowing me time to prepare properly.

So, this summer my main goal is now to just have some fun and get some joy back in my life. I really loved the Nello sportive last year, but I only did the 55 mile option…. There is also a 100 mile option and I have never done a century ride, so that is currently piquing my interest. Problem is, it’s in three weeks’ time and I am presently only up to about 50 miles… but I do relish a challenge! Also, the 100 is the same price as the 55, and the Yorkshire lass in me appreciates value for money! I may also enter some local tris and low-key races later in the summer, if I fancy it. No pressure. Coffee rides with my buddies though are very much on the agenda; Garry and I have plans for a Tour de Devon ride, sampling as many of our favourite coffee stops on the way!

So many thanks as always to the usual suspects:

Patrick Ward of PDW Sports massage for staying loyal to me and continuing to sponsor me, even though I won’t now be achieving all the things we had planned for the season.

Chris Dominey of Tri Coach Cornwall: for all his support as both a coach and friend and for not pressurising me by allowing me a free reign to make decisions in my own time.

Nigel Wilman of Honiton Physio: without question the most talented, knowledgeable and trustworthy physio I have ever seen (and trust me, I’ve seen a lot of physios!). In it for all the right reasons; a true master of his profession.

All my friends, both local and afar, for all your support. Too many to name you all, but you all know who you are and how much I appreciate you all.

My Mattie. Always there. Always fighting my corner. Always patient, kind, thoughtful, caring. Husband in a gazillion! Mwah!