10 months since my last blog post! I think that gives you an indication of how hectic life is as a full-time Mum of two!
When I gave birth to my second child at the end of
February 2021, my body was in a mess. No, I think the word “obliterated” would
be a more accurate description! I got off relatively lightly with my first
pregnancy, managing to run parkruns right up to my due date, but this time
things were very different. A low lying placenta picked up at the 20 week scan
meant I had to stop running right there and then (October 2020). I could still
swim and cycle, but pools were pretty much shut from that point onwards with
lockdowns and so the wattbike it had to be. But also around this time, I
started getting pelvic pains, later diagnosed as pelvic girdle pain. It got
continually worse as the pregnancy progressed and in the last 8 or so weeks I
couldn’t even walk without being in severe pain, let alone contemplate running.
I was pretty much sofa and bed bound towards the end. For someone so active, it
was a huge deal and my mood plummeted. I just wanted my baby out so I could get
my body back! I gave birth 2 days before my due date but, to my utter dismay, I
still couldn’t walk. I had hoped giving birth would make the pelvic pain stop,
but it didn’t, it actually got worse and to the point that my hip kept giving
way underneath me and made it unsafe for me to carry my newborn baby girl up
and down the stairs.
Several toys were thrown out of prams (and we're not talking about the
baby’s or the toddler’s here), and then I went and saw my trusty physio, Nigel
Wilman at Honiton Physio, who instantly sprung into action. When he said he
could have me back running in 8 weeks I wanted to laugh in his face! How could
I possibly run when I was wincing just walking the few steps from the car door
to his treatment room?! But I should have had faith – Wilman the Wonder phys
worked his magic as ever… and I did a hell of a lot of tedious rehab exercises.
But I got there. By the end of April, I had taken my first tentative ‘Bambi on
crack’ like steps back to running.
It has been very slow, cautious progress since then.
It’s been hard not to compare myself to where I was after my first pregnancy, not least because my babies were born almost exactly 2 years apart, both in February,
so I have always had in the back of my mind “by June I was down to a 20 minute
parkrun”, “by August I had placed 2nd at a competitive 10k race”, “by
September I had qualified for the world duathlon champs” etc etc. It was a
stupid and fruitless exercise that had no meaningful relevance anyway as I was starting from a
completely different place this pregnancy having not run at all for 7 months
prior and being unable to even walk more than a mile for 3 months, but still my
perfectionist mindset went there, berating me for my enforced inertia, my slow comeback and allowing
me to become frustrated at my self-perceived lack of progress. The only thing was
to avoid any targets for the remainder of the year in order to be kind to myself and to give my broken, battered post-partum body the time it needed to heal. And that is what I did.
Christmas day was my last chance to go sub 21
minutes at a parkrun in 2021. I knew I was capable of it, but illness, weather
conditions, course conditions and just general family chaos and lack of time to
train properly meant it hadn’t happened. I had clocked a 21:03, a 21:04, a
21:09 and a 21:10 without specifically pushing to go sub-21, just racing
whoever was there on the day for positions. Christmas Day was naff weather and,
to be honest, priorities change once you have kids and dragging my offspring
out in the rain so I could run a sub-21 minute parkrun seemed somewhat low on
the list, so we sacked it off. Then on New Year’s Day, I clocked 20:35 at a
very wet, blustery Exmouth without even pushing for it, so I think the right
decision and a marker set for 2022!
August 2021, Exmouth parkrun with my 6 month old in the buggy
November, Penryn Campus parkrun - New female course record
September - Henstridge airfield parkrun
July - Haldon Forest parkrun
So, now a modicum of fitness appears to have
returned, it’s time to start getting more focussed for the coming year. I turn 40
in 2023 and so the qualifying races for the 2023 Euro duathlon champs, which
take place this year, are a feasible target as I will move up an age group when
I actually race the champs the following year (assuming I qualify). So that
gives me a few solid months to get fit ahead of the qualifiers, then over a
year to really up my game ready to race the vet 40s, who are a fearsome bunch…
often more competitive than the 30-39s who, like me, have all been out having
babies!
I have totally lost focus on my wattbike sessions,
just bimbling away for 25 minutes (30 always seemed over-indulgent when I know that me taking time out to exercise involves my husband taking time out of his hectic work schedule), responding to messages on Wattsapp, flicking through facebook or watching the latest
installment of the “What Boris did next…” on the news. But the couple of sessions I have done so far in 2022 have been more focussed, with my goals in mind for motivation,
and, with some good tunes playing, I have suddenly found an additional 20 Watts
out of nowhere. Probably still approximately 30-40 watts down on my FTP from 2019, but I
have no intentions on putting myself through that hell by testing just yet.
I also need to beef myself up a bit. Breastfeeding does
something weird to my metabolism – it seems to ramp it up to crazy speeds and
so, despite eating more than I have ever eaten in my life, I weigh nearly a
stone less than before conceiving. My body has also changed shape and I find it
harder to build muscle now, so I am on a mission to bulk up. This photo of me
at a muddy trail race before Christmas this year made me realise that this gal ain’t
gonna hold her own on the bike with weedy thighs like this! So I’ve been adding
nut butters, chia seeds, protein powder etc to my baked oats every breakfast
and have managed to gain back 4 – 5lbs the past couple of weeks and, crucially,
my thighs have got a bit more tone and shape to them, so it’s going on in the
right places!!
Incidentally, this was a really cool 7.5 mile race
with a 30m long slide in the middle of it, and the fact that I came home with a
win made it even sweeter as I had only been running up to 5 miles and so my
goal was just to finish in one piece!
So, time to focus. Faff time is over. It’s hard to
fit training around looking after 2 small people full time, so I shoehorn in
workouts whenever I get chance, but I am going for quality of sessions rather
than volume. Recovery is also important and something that is often hard to
come by when the 10 month old still wakes two to three (sometimes four) times a
night and when the toddler only has to sniff a germ wafting in breeze 10 miles
away and gets ill and shares it with the whole household (no covid yet, thank
God, but tonsillitis, Strep throat, 7 x cold/cough combos and 2 vomitting bugs,
all since September).
My other goal for this year is to get back into doing some triathlon and duathlon coaching. I hope to be able to do my BTF Level 2 coaching qualification later in the year and so I will be looking to work with a couple of people before then to keep building up my portfolio. Message me if you're interested. I have a duathlon and novice/nervous specialism, but happy to coach other distances and disciplines too.
