Week 8-9 of pregnancy.

Pretty uneventful :)

It's been incredibly difficult to get out and practice my 10ks in preparation for pacing Maritime Race Weekend. Keegan has been away for most of it and our province has decided to enter a wicked heat wave. Super high humidity makes it already very warm before the sun even rises. I did manage to get in a 5k one morning with my favorite little guy. Hitting a pot hole at the end may have ruined our jogging stroller. I'll definitely have to look into that a bit more. 

I got accepted into the midwife program here in the city! I had added my name to the list too late when I was pregnant with Zachary. Still went on to rock my vbac though. This time around, I am trying to avoid an induction so taming that sneaky high blood pressure will be a big goal. Since we got pregnant on my 2nd post pregnancy cycle, my ovulation date is 100% known. I'm confident of my dates give or take a day so I'm eager to see if an early dating ultra sound will agree with it.

Amazing to realize that this pregnancy is already a quarter of the way done. It's going to go by so quickly!

2 great weeks of running pregnant (weeks 6 & 7)

Although baby is the size a small pea and a blueberry, it sure knows how to suck the energy out of me.

Week 6 (18km) - Managed to get in 2 runs. Decided to join some guys from my marathon clinic and run a couple hills. They were running 9 hills I believe (they are both currently training for an upcoming full marathon) so I knew right from the start that I was not going to run as many as them. I ran 4. They were hard. And the weather was hot and humid. But the guys were nice and waited for me at the top of each one since I was obviously running them much slower than I was used to.

Then there was Not Since Moses. Back in the spring, I won registration for the race through a #runatcan twitter party hosted by @RunAtCan . Were it not for that, we never would have gone. It was a FANTASTIC run! We hung out with @RunAtCan and Shannon (@okanaganflower) before the race started. Probably my most challenging to date (even harder than my full marathon!) but it was a definite favorite. The small rocks, sand, mud, water, boulders... it was all great! I almost twisted both ankles but managed to stay up on both feet the whole time!

Keegan and I with Moses. About 1km left of the race.

Week 7 (20km) - Again, 2 runs. First was on a beautiful evening. After supper, decided to just go out and run down the hill along the water. Nice and simple.

Then my first long run in over a month. The temperature was supposed to be lower so I got things ready for an early morning 15k. I am pacing the 70 minute 10k group at Maritime Race Weekend so I really had to practice keeping a steady 7min/km pace. Worked out perfectly!

Managed to log in 84km in the month of July. Really need to step up my nutrition game. I'm still finding myself pretty tired. I'm sure that food is having an effect on that. Now that summer is slowly coming to an end it will be much easier for me to organize and stick to a meal plan.

Did you find it tough to get into a routine in early pregnancy?

Running while pregnant

After running the Bluenose Marathon in May, I was on a total high. I loved it! Since it was such a positive experience, I immediately set my next goal: qualify for the Boston Marathon. I tapered tremendously in June while I recovered. July came around and I felt like I crashed. I tired running but just wasn't able to run like I could near the end of my marathon training. I decided to put my Boston dream on hold since I honestly believed that I would not be able to commit the time necessary to achieve my goal. Little did I know, the following week I would find out that I was pregnant.

Funny, the first question many people had for me was what it meant for my running. I had already put my Boston goal in hold so now my only goal with running is to stay fit and healthy. It's also great for my mental clarity. They often say that you can keep training as you were before pregnancy but that you must take precautions. You need to listen to your body. I will not run at the same paces I was back in May but I'm ok with that. 

This upcoming weekend, Keegan and I are running the 10K at the Not Since Moses race. It will be awesome to run together since we haven't in a very long time. I also still have plans to be a pace bunny for Maritime Race Weekend 10k. I can easily run it in under an hour and I'm pacing the 70 minute group so I have plenty of wiggle room to slow down.

Although I will not meet my 2015 goal of 1000 miles (I'm a mile 563), I will keep running as long as I can. We'll see how close I can get!

Did you train regularly during pregnancy?

So big news... and the biggest change of all!

So last week, I mentioned that there were some big changes coming. Those big changes were all about "REbecoming granola". I wanted to get back to eating whole and organic foods, making our snack foods from scratch, getting rid of excess clutter and simplifying our lives. Well little did I know that life had one more HUGE change for us!

Surprise!

I was just taking a test for the confirmation of a negative. It screamed positive! So we decided to take a digital test to see how far along I was.

3+ weeks gestation

Looking back at my fertility symptoms, 3+ weeks made perfect sense. So here we go with the pregnancy updates along with everything else.

So it's been a while...

So it's been a while. When I first started blogging, I decided to transform my life. I "became granola" as my mom would always say. Made the switch to everything organic and found my inner environmentalist. It was a lot of work but it was great. 

But then over the past year, something shifted. I stopped buying everything organic even though I regretted each purchase. I decided to train for and run a marathon so that took up an incredible amount of time. My priorities never changed but I stopped putting so much effort and energy in important aspects. Well, I'm making more changes. And hoping that blogging about it will make me more accountable to you all. 

Hopefully I haven't lost too many readers. And I hope that some of you will share stories and tips along with me as I get back onto my quest for a healthier life for my family and I. 

Marathon Training - A week of Personal Bests!

We are now in week 11 of our 18 week program. Last week, we got over 5 feet of snow in 3 separate storms and a couple training runs were cancelled. Finding safe roads to run on has been tough all season but hopefully now that it's spring, the roads will become safe again.

My last 3 runs have been absolutely epic!

Sunday - Longest. Run. Ever. 

It was supposed to rain the night before. We were hoping that the weather would have cleared up by the time we were to hit the roads but we woke up to this:

Being sick of running in snow, we decided to hit the indoor track instead. Many people have trained on tracks and treadmills this winter but I managed to stay outdoors. This was hopefully my one and only time. Around a 130 laps and 3 1/2 hours later, I ran my longest distance ever. It was quite the mental exercise since going around and around in circles that many times is definitely not for everybody. I stuck through it and finished strong with these guys.

I love my pace group!

Tempo Tuesday

I have been skipping this workout all season because the kids had their swimming lessons. Now that those are over and that the sun was shinning, I decided to find a small section of straight road with very little traffic and ran a couple back and forths. It felt great. Then this happened.

Wednesday Hills - 7x600m

Still on my runner's high from the day before, I decided I was going to tackle the hills. I stuck with my pace buddy since he was definitely pushing me. The 2nd last hill sucked. It was tough but the last one felt absolutely great and was our fastest. When we got down to the end, my Garmin was showing 9.6km and almost 56 minutes. I couldn't just stop there so we finished off for an even 10k since I knew I was oh so close to this:

It's amazing when you can clearly see definite improvement in your running. And with 7 weeks still to go, I'm eager to see how many more Personal Bests I will have! I also have another 7 weeks to try to attain my fundraising goal of 1000$ towards the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada. Cancer is something our family is fighting everyday. I am 8% of my way there. Will you help me?

https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/FundraisingPage.aspx?registrationID=2719955&langPref=en-CA

Marathon training week 2 recap

So that cold that developed last week? Yeah. Well thanks to it I have spent the whole week resting. My voice was gone the majority of the week. Coughing led to a major lack of sleep for a couple days. It felt weird not training but I know I benefited from the week off.

Since I had plenty of extra time on my hands, it gave me the chance to tackle other areas of my journey that needed work: nutrition. The kids keep me busy during the day. I can easily eat very little in the run of a day. I know this can't happen if I want to take this training seriously. I need fuel. So meal planning it is! I roughly plan out a month's worth f meals to ensure some variety from week to week. Then every weekend, I plan out the week in more detail. At this point, I only have suppers figured out. Eventually, I'd like to figure out some sort of plan for lunches as well. As the weeks progress, I may even look into seeing a nutritionist.

Month and weekly planners on fridge for meal planning

So Day 1 - Long Run Day. 

Today was 13km! I may have to change the way I tackle these runs. My plan is to run as much of the marathon as possible but for now, I will stick with the "run 10 minutes walk 1 minute" plan encouraged by the Running Room. I stuck with the lead pace group today. The run felt great! I didn't know how I'd feel about running with a group since I'm not a huge talker when I run but it was awesome. Lots of encouragement. Lots of laughs. We ran at a consistent pace the for the first 11km and finished strong.

My goal time is anywhere between 4 and 4:15 hours. Putting it in writing makes it official ;)

Marathon training - Week 1 recap

It's hard to believe that I'm actually doing this. I signed up for my very first marathon and joined a training group. I love that I have finally found something that I truly enjoy and that is great for taking care of myself. Sometimes as parents, we have a terrible hard to time doing things for ourselves. Well I have no problem being selfish for once. :)

Day 1 (Sunday)
Training started off with a 11km run on my birthday. We were supposed to do 10 but since it was the 11th, I decided to add another one in there for good measure. It was the beginning of what was shaping up to be a crazy week (ballet, basketball and swimming for Abigail and Zachary and lots of running for me) but I was glad to kick it off in a great way.

Supposed to be Day 2 (T)
I skipped my very first scheduled training day. Trying to fit in my runs with evening activities for the kids will surely be difficult as the weeks progress. But since I ran regularly leading up to this week, skipping this workout wasn't going to affect my progress.

Day 2 (W)
10km tempo run with run club! I'd say there was probably 50 of us out running the snowy streets that evening. Our city is notorious for doing a horrible job at clearing to snow so there were a couple times where we had to almost stop running altogether to let impatient drivers by. I was unsure what pace to run at and since I didn't really know anybody, I just went with a pace that I was comfortable with.

Day 3 (Th)
Clinic day! It was great to meet everyone. We are a large training group (around 25!) and everyone is essentially training for one of 3 marathons being held in May. Lots of experience and there are a few of us newbies. We then went out for a 6km tempo run. As much as I enjoy running alone (it lets me clear my mind), I'm enjoying running with a group. Tons of encouragement.

Supposed to be day 4 (S)
I came down with a cold mid week. Forcing myself to skip more runs in return for more time to rest. But I did finally register for the Bluenose Marathon!

Day 4 (Sunday)
Long run day. Decided to skip running with the group in the cold morning and went in the much warmer afternoon with a group member. She couldn't make it in the morning either so meeting up in the afternoon for a 10km run worked out perfectly!

Still waiting for the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada to be listed as an official charity for the Bluenose Charity Challenge. I'm eager to start raising funds!

Why am I running? (My 100th post!)

As I sit here writing this, my mom is in the middle of her 7th cancer removal surgery in as many years. It sucks. It really does. So I figured I'd do something about it this year.

Last year, some of you may remember, I "became" a runner. I decided to turn my half marathon into a fundraiser for our local environmental centre. This year, I have decided to challenge myself even further and run a full marathon! A whole 42 kilometres. And I'll be doing it as a fundraiser for the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada.

My goal will be to raise 1000$ in honour of my mom. Details are still being finalized between the association and the Bluenose Marathon but I will have those links for you as soon as I can! Marathon training officially starts this weekend so there will be weekly updates!

Thanks again for taking the time to read!

-20*C with the wind doesn't stop me!