7 months pregnant, huge, and still running

I've been on a two week hiatus from blog country. Mostly due to being tired. I'm a fairly busy person, but truth be told I could find time to blog in the evening hours. The issue right now is that when eight o'clock rolls around, I'm a zombie. I blame my zombie state on being 30 weeks pregnant. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, I do have a number of random tidbits to share with all my blogging buddies.

The New Doctor
I met my new OB last week. She's gets the Katie seal of awesomeness approval. It felt a little odd going to see her just to meet and talk, but it was important to me to have a new doctor that shares my general philosophy towards birth. You see, last time around I had an emergency C-section. I'm the 1% that actually needed to have general anesthesia, and I didn't give birth at a backwards hospital. It was Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which is consistently named one of the top 50 hospitals in the country for OB. This time around I'm trying for a VBAC (still at Beth Israel). Not all doctors are thrilled to have patients that want to try a VBAC. Hence my desire to meet the doctor before simply changing over. Our philosophies align quite nicely, so I'm pleased. It also seems that she has a number of patients of who run during their pregnancies. She even indicated she thought running might increase my chances of a successful natural birth. Good stuff all around.

Nike Free Update
Last week I was able to start running in my Nike Frees again. I had to wait a few weeks for that blister on my arch to heal. I don't know how you guys get blisters to heal, but I have the darnedest time. I can't get band-aids to stay on. I even bought a box of band-aids that claimed to be like "duct-tape." And the sticky parts really did look like duct-tape, but even those wouldn't stay put. Basically I wound up wearing the (very large) band-aids at night and going band-aid less during the day, which was fine but it took two weeks before I felt comfortable trying out my Frees again. I've probably run 40-50 miles in the Nike Frees now including an 11 miler, and I'm happy with them. I'm not having anymore blister issues and overall they feel great! I'm not really a Nike shoe fan when it comes to running, so I'm surprised that I like them as much as I do.

New Running Skirt
A week or so ago I received a late birthday present in the mail. A ridiculously cool maternity running skirt! Truth be told, I've had my eye on this skirt for a few months, but after reading this post over on Marathon Mama I was too chicken to buy one. Running cloths have been giving me some major issues during this pregnancy. I get chaffed and cut constantly. It might sound crazy, but the discomfort from my running cloths has been the most difficult aspect of running for me during this pregnancy. Every time I get into the shower it's a shock. And yes, I'm using glide. I've used more glide in the last 6 months than over my entire running career. My regular size running shorts are cutting into my hips, but larger shorts cause even worse chaffing. It probably has something to do with the fact that I run 8-11 miles at a time. If I was just going 4, then I don't think it would be an issue. Anyway, the skirt is amazing! It's a few inches longer than most running skirts, doesn't ride up, and doesn't chafe or cut me. I try to wash it every day. It's my new favorite...

Running Pregnancy Paces
Over on the left, you can see a graph of my weekly average running paces throughout my pregnancy. If you click on the graph you'll be able to actually read it. It's funny, the first trimester is all over the map. The second trimester consistently hovers around the 8:38 per mile line. I'm only a few weeks into the third trimester, but it's clear that my paces are getting slower. From here on in, I expect my pace to drop off dramatically. During my last pregnancy, I was averaging 10:20 pace in my 7th month. I'm expecting that over the next few weeks I'll slow down to somewhere around there.

My Poor Buttercup
At the end of last week Kaylee came down with a nasty stomach bug. Kaylee is almost never sick. Seriously. She's never had an ear infection and never needed antibiotics. Of course, she's had colds, but her only symptom is a runny nose that clears up in a few days. This is the sickest she's ever been. It was absolutely awful. She threw up for 27 hours and wasn't able to eat solid food for almost three days. We thought we were going to have to take her to the ER, but her pediatrician assessed her dehydration status on Saturday and had us stay in the office for a few hours to try and see if we could get her to keep down some juice and Pedialyte in hopes to avoid an ER visit. Luckily we didn't have to go to the ER and she is finally back to her usual self. On the downside, I had three days of almost no sleep and wound up sick (not vomiting though). I seem to just have a cold, which has unfortunately triggered my asthma. The last 3.5 months I haven't needed my inhalers, but now I'm back on them. I'm hoping that within a couple weeks I'll be able to stop using them again. We'll see. On a more happy note, we bought Kaylee her first real pair of sneakers. Now she only wants to wear sneakers and she keeps telling us that "these are my first pair of running shoes!" Yesterday she picked out some crazy polka-dotted shorts to wear and told me that "these are my running shorts for when we first go running together." Nick has plainly stated that I'm creating a monster, but I don't think so. She's so cute!

Training Journal 6/7 - 6/13
Total Miles Run: 56
Total Time Running: 8:19
Average Running Pace: 8:54

Training Journal 6/14 - 6/20
Total Miles Run: 36 (Kaylee's sickness limited my mileage)
Total Time Running: 5:23
Average Pace: 8:55