Waiting for something big....

So I am not going to start this post saying "I'm back!", (Wait did I just do it?) because I don't know if I am, but I am trying. So let's catch up a bit. The last time I checked in I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of our baby.  Well I waited and waited and on November 20th at 5:51am, my water broke and it was game on! Little did we know this little peanut would take its sweet old time getting here. Apparently my belly is quite comfy and no matter how many contractions I have a baby will stay put until evicted!

After about 24 hours of laboring, 12 naturally and 12 with an epidural, the doctors decided a c-section was the only way to get this baby out. The baby was in position, but would not engage, so they were going in to get it out! Now, this was not part of my original natural birth plan, but I just had to keep reminding myself that the doctors know best so into the operating room we went. Fifteen minutes later at 2:59pm on November 21st, we welcomed Penelope Rose into our family and our world changed in an instant. Life took on a totally new meaning the moment I laid my eyes on her and we have been relishing in this new world for the past 3 months. 

Penny came into this world with gusto. My doctors kept their guesses on her weight at about 8 1/2 pounds max, Penny was 9 pounds 5 ounces. My doctors said she was in position and ready to go, Penny was so big she was stuck. Her butt was stuck under my ribs and her head was sideways, so her nose was stuck on something inside and when she came out it was smooshed to one side. Penny spent the first hour of her life outside of her little belly apartment eating nonstop. When it was time to move to our room we had to pull Penny off of her buffet and her little face was covered in colostrum. I think Penny got here and decided she was going to go big from the start.

Onto fitness news, I had gained a total of 38 pounds in the almost 42 weeks I was pregnant and within the first two days I was down 23. The last time I weighed myself before my training started I had 10 pounds to go. And that is when I decided to let up on the scale, because really, no good could come of it. I am still breast feeding Penny so really it is impossible for me to get an accurate reading on my weight anyway.

So onto training. I had to wait 6 weeks after giving birth to start exercising, but really I don't know where I would have found the time during that 6 weeks to exercise, so the time restraint didn't make much of a difference. Once cleared I decided that I needed a good month to get back into training mode, so I pushed Coach P off one more month for a February start of coached training. I got back into all three disciplines slowly and allowed my body some time to figure out how to train with all of these new changes.

I am now 1 month back into training and feeling great. It is definitely interesting to try balancing my roles of mom and triathlete. And I have to say, I haven't quite mastered it yet. What I have mastered is a new mentality. I now give myself a break when I need it. I know that I can be all things, but that some days you just need to say, "it's ok" if you can't get everything done. There will always be tomorrow to try again.

So back to the title of this blog post. I have been wanting to get back to blogging for quite a bit. I figured when I started back at work and Penny went to daycare I would start blogging again since I would have more time to write. But I wanted to make sure, like with my training, that I was ready and that I wanted to come back. So I figured I would wait until I raced to get back on here and that is what I did last weekend. I was just waitng for something big to report on.

Saturday was my first 5k of the season and my first race in almost a year. Last year around this time I ran my best 5k, not knowing I was pregnant at the time. I ran a 23:20 in February of 2013. This past weekend I came back to the distance and ran a 24:22. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. I ended up 19th out of 140 runners and placed in my division and took home a nice gift card to Dicks.

So it is official, I am back in the game. Now I will spend the next year trying to balance my love of my family and my love for this sport, all while attempting to document the entire process. Wish me luck!

Patience is a ......What? What is it already? Tell me!!!

It is a virtue that I apparently no longer have! I am currently 4 days past my due date and I would like to meet this little bugger now! I am doing everything I can to get this party started but I am the only one ready to party it seems.

In work our world, I am happy to say that after pulling a muscle while walking up a hill, I am at least able to add some walking back into my regimen, which is honestly a godsend. I spend about an hour each day on the treadmill just walking and reading which I think is keeping me sane.

I have also been spending some time thinking about the 2014 racing season and how I am going to approach it. I know that I would like to complete at least 1 marathon like I do every year and I am thinking with this bambino nursing a for the first part of he year, a later marathon might be the answer. Which has me focusing on possibly Chicago. That location also allows for me to visit with a ton of college friends so it is a win, win.

Other than the marathon, I am not sure what I will do. I am in a totally new racing circuit, but also a totally new racing scenario, of training with someone else to think about and take care of. I figured I will just play this all by ear and see what I am capable of.

But first thing is first, I gotta have this baby!!!

Where have I been you ask? Or did you?

Ok, so you probably didn't ask, maybe didn't even notice, but lately I have been feeling bad about just dropping off the face of the earth, so here goes! Where have I been? Well.....let's go back to my last post in March (yes it was that long ago, sigh), right around that time, I was feeling a bit tired and cranky. Ok, that is an understatement, super tired and just really mean, but only to my husband (sorry Nick!). Well it was about 4 or 5 days before that post that we found out, we were pregnant! Yup, we had thought that 2013 was the year to try and boy it didn't take very long, about 1.5 months later that "trying" paid off! So that explains being so damn tired!

So now I am 9 months pregnant, about 2 weeks out from my due date and the heir to the throne is baked and ready to enter our world! We do not know what we are having, we decided to make keep that a surprise, but we are excited to meet this little one! Here is some photographic evidence of what I have been up to. A nice round triathlete reporting for duty!

So since this is a triathlon blog, let's talk about that. My original plan was to continue to race and train up until the end of month 6. Well right towards the end of my first trimester I got in a  nice half marathon in Central Park. I ended up with a PR for the Central Park course, which was nice and I felt great doing it.

My next race was to be an Olympic Triathlon in the beginning of June. I ran into a little snag on that one. I was trained and ready to go, but I had no one to go to the race with. It was down at the beach and I was down there hanging out, but I since I didn't have any support crew, I just wasn't feeling comfortable doing it on my own, in the event that I didn't feel my best. So instead I spent the weekend at the beach and did some nice long runs instead.

Now, if I said that was all I was doing, you might think, well then what is your excuse for not blogging? You were training and racing....were you just lazy? NO! There is more!

In 2012, Nick has started to interview with companies to look for a possible new opportunity. Well one of the companies was located in Charlotte, NC. As it turned out, his company was not ready to give him up, so they made it worth his while to stick around in NYC a bit a longer. Well in February 2013 we get a call from the company in Charlotte and they tell Nick they are going to create a position for him and they want him to reconsider. So we talked it through and thought, there was no harm in considering.

Enter the pregnancy, and we started thinking that now with a child on the way, we may need to start thinking about the future and where we plan on "settling down" when we have a family since we were in the process of making one. Well in May, on mother's day, we let our parents know that they were going to be grandparents and then let them know, that we were going down to Charlotte to consider moving. At the end of May we headed down to Charlotte and fell in love. The job was good, the city was beautiful and we were sold!

At the end of June, we packed up our newly renovated apartment, and moved down to Charlotte and here we are! It was a bit of an adjustment, moving from the high paced New York City life, to a bit of a slower more relaxed culture, but we have welcomed it with open arms. We are living right near one of the big lakes down here and have spent our time taking advantage of the sunny weather and lake activities and as of right now, we believe we have found the place to start our family and create our home.

So there you have it! I have been busy! A lot has changed but all for the best. On the training front, with the big climate change that came with the move, I decided to take a hiatus from my team in July and have been getting in about an hour of cardio a day. I was able to run up until month 6 and now I have replaced running with the elliptical. The baby bouncing on your bladder can make anyone not want to run more than 3 steps without peeing in your pants! But I have remained active for sure.

I plan on entering back into training in January (as long as I am cleared by my doc) and heading into the 2014 completely renewed and refreshed. It has honestly been quite nice to retire the HR monitor for a few months and have less of a stringent plan. I think the break was needed and I am excited to come back fresh and try out this new racing circuit that I moved into!

I also plan on keeping up with this little site as much as I can in the next few months, but want back on full time in January.

So I hope you can forgive me for taking a bit of a break. Life in our family got a bit hectic but we have been enjoying it. Now we wait for Baby G to get here and then figure out what our new normal is. Then it is back to being a slave to the sport!

So now you are all caught up! Have a great week!

Energy Rollercoaster...You Must be This Tall to Ride

Welcome to my energy rollercoaster. Want a ride? It is a totally unexplainable and unpredictable approach to training! What fun!

I woke up yesterday, on the wrong side of the bed, wait make that the wrong side of the world. I pity anyone who entered into my path yesterday, since I was a force to be reckoned with. I had my grumpy pants on, high and tight.  I got up, started work and was absolutely beat. I was not in the mood to do really anything. So I did nothing. By the end of the work day a friend stopped by to try to change my mood. It took a while, but it finally worked and we headed out to dinner and I started to get out of my funk.

After a nice dinner, of steamed artichoke, eggplant rollantini and portobello mushrooms in balsamic and goat cheese, we headed back home to call it a day. It was when I got home that it hit. Energy, from nowhere! I had intended on just going to bed, and instead I sat up and watched tv for a few hours and finally my body gave up the fight and let me fall asleep.

I woke up this morning and jumped right out of bed. I got productive as soon as I got up, did some laundry, had some egg whites and hopped on the bike for an hour. Then it was lunch and an hour run and I am still going strong. I mean hey, I even got on here and am posting. What is going on!?

This weekend, as I mentioned I supposed to have a 5k, but since I will be at a bridal shower for most of my weekend and I can't seem to find a race, I will be doing 4 x 1 mile repeats instead on Sunday, barring I have energy, I guess? I seem to be in an every other day pattern, so if I stick to the pattern, I should be good to go on Sunday.

Then finally next week I go back to a normal work schedule with no late nights or anything crazy, so let's hope my energy levels go back to normal then!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for this weekend! Now I am off to watch Indiana in the NCAA tournament. HOO HOO HOO HOOSIERS!!

Zapped

Where did my energy go this week? Last week I was all over the place after working nights for the entire weekend, I came out of the gate and 100 mph and this week I could just curl up and sleep my way through it.

This past weekend I got in a good two days of rest, movie watching and workouts. I trashed my legs a bit, but no more than any other normal training weekend and felt great. Well I got up on Monday for spin and I was beat! I never "cheat" when I teach because I feel guilty, but man did I cheat on Monday. Then I came home and went right back to bed. I got up a second time for work and then managed to get in 2 more solid workouts.

Then yesterday, I crashed again! I slept until I absolutely had to get up and start working, skipping my original plan of an early morning workout, and then worked until after lunch. Then I attempted a pretty easy ride and about half way through I felt shaky and wanted to pass out. So I gave up and hit the couch. By my 7pm spin I was ready to go and I ended up teaching a pretty hard class with no cheating this time and came home wired. But now again, I am exhausted! What gives???

This week is a somewhat rest week because I am supposed to race another 5k this weekend, which I guess is good considering how I am feeling. But I mean seriously! I am hoping to snap out of this today, but I doubt it since I have been up since 4am working on an event. As for the 5k, I haven't found one yet, so it might just be race simulation for this girl!

Ok so now I need to focus on getting some food and coffee into my belly so I can fuel through today's workouts. Wish me luck!

Time Flies....

Well this past month just seemed to have flown by. With training and working no stop, my writing has been at an all time low! So let's get caught up here....

My training has picked up and I am spending a lot more time on my bike and treadmill. Coach P's rule is that if I ride on the trainer, I can divide the ride time by 1.2 since I will be at constant resistance for the entire ride. So far this year I have decided to just stick to the actual times and skip the dividing, so I am have been logging some long hours on the bike for sure.

My run fitness seems to be improving the last few months, which is also encouraging. As always it is nice to see improvement. I ran my first 5k a few weeks ago and I really kicked some ass! To be honest, going into it, I was not sure how I would do. I haven't just run a race in a long time. My runs usually come right after a nice swim and bike, so it was hard to gauge how my run would be. So I decided since it was just 3.1 miles, that I would run as hard as possible and see how far I could push my limits. And push my limits, I did. The race went like so:

Mile 1 7:19
Mile 2: 7:46
Mile 3: 7:47

I crossed the finish line and was like "WHAT?!?!" This was my fastest 5k yet and I maintained three, under 8 minute miles. I am not sure who I thought I was that day, but I would like that girl to show up to all races from here on out!

As for swimming, I have successfully forced myself to get back into it. I have  been in the pool at least twice a week for the past few weeks and I need to get that number up to three times a week, but come on, baby steps here!

My next race is going to be the More Half Marathon in April. I have run this one before and the hills are the thing that I find a bit daunting, but hey, been there, done that. I have also completed my race schedule for this year, but I think I am going to end up having to do some tweaking as I go. I would like to get in a few more running races and I am considering doing a few tri relays with a some people from my gym.

As for life in general, we are heading in out hibernation period in our household. It is usually around this time of year that we decide to stay in the house on the weekend and just lounge and keep warm. All of our renovations from the storm are complete and the last thing we need to do is buy a kitchen table and we are all set. Which would have meant the project was done, but then we decided, since everything but the tile in our guest bath got upgraded after the storm, that we are just going to take the plunge and get that done as well, then we will have an absolutely brand new home.

Today I decided to take a rest day because I am feeling a little under the weather, but tomorrow I will be on the trainer for a good 2.5 hours. Then is off to the tile store for what I hope to be the last time!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Finally Back to "Normal"

OK, so where have I been? Well, I thought just moving back into our I could hit the ground running, but it turns out that unpacking and reorganizing an entire apartment can take some time! But I can thankfully say that I am now back on track and we are starting to feel a bit normal. We are in and all construction is complete, and the house is back to just me and the dog during the day!

On the training front, I have been back at it since Jan 21st and I am starting to feel the effects. I have some races picked out and I am currently working towards a half marathon in April. Originally I wanted to go for the Ocean Drive Marathon in March, but much like the rest of the US, I got attacked by the flu and it has taken a good 4 weeks to get my body back to normal. So I am going to just keep it to one marathon this year, The NYC Marathon. After my half, I will be gearing up for May and June triathlons. But first I will focus on the half.

So there you have it, two months in two paragraphs! Now I have to head out for a quick run before I get ready for a fun girls night in NYC with three amazing ladies!