29 April 2011

Over 31 weeks down

So I had to stop running at 25 weeks with this pregnancy. I had my last run in the mountains of West Virginia while Tim and I were at Greenbrier. Tim took the "up the mountain" trail and I stuck to the golf course run course. It was a nice winding 4 mile run, but I knew when it was over that I was done for the remainder of the pregnancy.

I was just altering my run form too much to compensate for the weight gain/distribution. My calves and achilles were killing me during and after the run for the next day. I'm certainly about trying to stay fit while I'm pregnant, but injuring myself long-term in order to stay fit is just stupid. So after talking with Tim about it, we decided it best that I stop running.

So that was a little more than 6 weeks ago and it didn't bother me much because I could still spin, swim and do the elliptical. Well, swimming although it feels good on the body/joints, makes me feel like a whale when I put my swim suit on, and the elliptical is sort of boring, but I manage both infrequently. But the spinning, that I can do like 4 days a week.

Until this past week, I was still spinning comfortably on the spinners at the gym with no real aerobic difference or issues with the fit on the bikes. Almost over night, that changed. This past week, my pelvis seems to have moved in such a way that sitting on the seat for more than 3-4 minutes causes major discomfort and lower back pain. On top of that I've got the handle bars as high as they can go and it's getting hard to use them due to some huge growing mass around my mid section. I have to say though that I still managed a 75 minute and 1hr.45 min spin class this week.

Overall, I'm finding that I much less focused on exercise this pregnancy. I don't know if it's the reality of time, family, energy...or if I'm just at that point of "it is what it is" and no matter what I do it won't change the fact that I will gain weight, I will not be as fit as I was and it will get back to normal afterward. And that is OK. Or at least I keep telling myself that. Truth is, I'm still bothered by it somewhat, but heck, I'm not super woman and I don't want to try to be anymore.