It's Been A Year!

My last post was on August 16 2006....when I was about 7 or 8 weeks pregnant. My training slacked off during the pregnancy - I did some prenatal yoga, and continued walking all the way through to the end of my third trimester, but eased off on the biking and running. I intended to keep swimming, but frankly, once the weather turned cold, I lacked motivation to get into the pool, so that drifted off somewhere around mid-October.

So here I am, back again trying to work on my running and general fitness. My boy is now 21 weeks old, and I've been gradually getting back into the swing of things since giving birth. For the first 6 weeks, I didn't do anything much more strenuous than pushing the stroller around the neighbourhood, which was quite tiring enough.

At around 8 weeks postpartum, my Mum gave me a 6 week membership to her gym, where I attended a "boot camp" 3 times a week. At the beginning of the boot camp, I could barely manage a single push up, and I could only hold plank position for about 20s. Running felt ridiculously unnatural and very uncomfortable. By the end of the boot camp, I could do about 10 push ups and hold plank for almost 2 minutes! I could comfortably jog a couple of miles. Progress!

But then my maternity leave from work ended, and my temporary gym membership ran out, and the pursuit of fitness took a backseat while my efforts were concentrated on just getting through each week at work and keeping my family happy.

Things are starting to get back on a more even keel now I'm getting back into the swing of things at work and my family is more settled, and I've been able to get out running a couple of times each week for the past few weeks. I've got a new gym membership, and I've been going to yoga once or twice a week too, which I'm really enjoying.

I've still got about 11 lbl of pregnancy pudge to move, but it's coming off gradually, and overall I'm happy with my progress.

Upcoming events that I have committed to during moments of insane optimism and/or intense peer pressure:
Fila Relays (Aug 31) - 2.5miles. Should be OK, provided it's not disgustingly hot.
Silicon Labs Marathon Relay (Sept 30)- signed up to do a 10k leg. I must be mad.
Livestrong Bike Ride (Oct 13) - I'd like to do one of the longer routes, but I'll just have to see how my biking fitness is nearer the time before I pick a goal.

I'd like to do a tri, but I've barely done any biking at all....and although I love cycling, it takes up a lot of time....which I just don't have at the moment. Perhaps if I start doing some spin classes? Beh - real biking is so much more fun than spin class. Unfortunately, there's no way I'll be fit for the Austin Triathlon (Sept 3), which looks like an awesome Olympic distance course. But perhaps I could aim for the short course version of the Longhorn Tri (Oct 6-7)?

Long term running goal is to do the 3M Half Marathon.

Better hope that my boy learns to like the jogging stroller once he's old enough to start riding in it :o) !