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