{"id":2398,"date":"2011-08-25T17:19:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-25T16:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/?p=2398"},"modified":"2011-08-25T17:19:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T16:19:37","slug":"running-in-pregnancy-first-trimester-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/running-in-pregnancy-first-trimester-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Running in Pregnancy – First Trimester (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Snowdon International Mountain Race – 22nd July 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

My pregnancy was a bit of a surprise. A woman of my age has about 0.5% chance of conceiving naturally if she’s trying hard, and after a distressing miscarriage over New Year I’d conceded that I was past my best, in the baby producing sense, and had thrown myself into my running. I ran Paris Marathon in April with a bit of a knee injury and amazed myself with a 3.16 finish. In May and June I tried some shorter distances, including a few track races, and set quite a few PB’s. Then I experienced a real drop off in form. I still had speed but couldn’t sustain it and had 2 really poor performances over 10k. The first inkling I had that I might be pregnant was after a 15 mile off-road race. I’d not expected to perform brilliantly as my training had been lacking in the long run department, but I just didn’t feel right and finished behind a few people I should have beaten comfortably. A 16 miler the next week was even worse, and after 2 complete rest days I crawled around a regular 5 mile route and the penny finally dropped. I figured I was almost 6 weeks pregnant. Stunned!<\/p>\n

About 10 days later I was due to run the International Snowdon Race<\/a>\u00a0– a tough 10 mile fell race, straight up and down a 3500 ft mountain. I’d won my age category 2 years ago and then bettered my time last year despite a bad fall. Snowdon preparation had been a focus of my training since Paris. Bum!<\/p>\n

Obviously, pregnancy is no time for racing (especially up and down mountains) so I thought about ‘doing it easy’. What a ridiculous idea!! I struggle to take it easy at the best of times, and nothing<\/strong> about Snowdon is ‘easy’! I wasn’t worried about myself, but I was very worried about the little life inside me, and battled with myself right up until the gun. I set off steadily, still uncertain, and didn’t feel too bad for the first part of the climb. It was a hot day, however, and it didn’t take long for me to get very hot. They say that overheating is bad for the baby, so I decided there and then that I was going to walk the steep climbs. I’m good at that, and I still managed to overtake people all the way to the top. In fact, I reached the summit in 1.08 which is not too shoddy.<\/p>\n

Coming down was always a worry. I’m very good at descending normally, but last year I’d had a bad fall which had been playing on my mind all the way up. The mountain was busy with regular climbers which added to the risk, and I was wearing relatively untested shoes. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I had a very good descent – 33 minutes and some seconds. I think the key was being relaxed about my time and more focussed on staying upright. As usual, my legs turned to jelly when I hit the flat ground, so I lost about 30 seconds to the person in front, but I really didn’t care. I’d taken it easy, stayed in one piece, and earned my t-shirt (which is potentially an excellent maternity top)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snowdon International Mountain Race – 22nd July 2011 My pregnancy was a bit of a surprise. A woman of my age has about 0.5% chance of conceiving naturally if she’s trying hard, and after a distressing miscarriage over New Year I’d conceded that I was past my best, in the baby producing sense, and had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[380,379],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-running-over-40","category-running-pregnant","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2398"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3160,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398\/revisions\/3160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runningtrainingplan.com\/runningpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}