Yeah, I'm still here and running and pregnant. My running has greatly slowed down, but that's fine. Below you can see a chart of my paces and a chart of my overall miles run per week during this pregnancy. My weekly mileage hasn't decreased too much, but my pace (over the last three weeks) has slowed by about two minutes per mile. Admittedly, the slow down primarily has to due with walking breaks. My actual running pace is still around 10 minute pace, but I'm also walking, which slows the overall pace. The pregnancy is progressing well. I've gained 21 pounds and with only 1.5 weeks left I don't expect to gain much more. The doctor is pleased with my overall health. So we'll be keeping our fingers crossed that about a week from now we'll have an uncomplicated delivery.
Running has definitely gotten more difficult over the last three weeks. I'm hypothesizing that the baby is sitting on my bladder, and every time I run I feel like I could pee my pants at any second. I haven't though, so that's a plus. I imagine that peeing my pants would make a mess of my beautiful treadmill. Other than my bladder being in a constant state of wanting to release, I don't have any complaints. My back doesn't hurt, my knees and hips are holding up nicely, and I'm breathing easy.
In fact, I received the nicest compliment from Nick last week. We finally had a week where the stars aligned and we were able to go for a four mile run together. It was about 80 degrees and ridiculously humid, but still great to actually get outside. When we started I could tell he was taking half strides, and it looked like he was trying hard to run as slow as I needed to run. After a mile, I was in my running groove and feeling good. We finished the four miler at 9:50 pace. Not even close to my pre-pregnant self, but I was still quite pleased. As we finished Nick turned to me and said, "I wouldn't even pretend to be in the same league as you as far as running is concerned, but it's a bit demoralizing running with you when you're almost 9 months pregnant. You're freaking amazing!" Isn't that sweetest thing you ever heard?
People also keep saying things "you probably can't wait to get that baby out." Truth is though, this pregnancy really hasn't been bad. I don't have too much trouble sleeping. My biggest issue is needing get up to pee a lot. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping because I feel some anxiety. Last time around the birth didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked, but everything that went wrong was just bad luck and completely out of our control. Which is partly why I feel anxiety. It's not like I have any lessons learned to make this birth better. There's really nothing we could have done to change things.
Oh, I do sometimes get swollen feet at night time. I've found wearing compression socks at night does wonders for swollen tootsies! I wake up in the morning and there's no swelling at all! So if any of you are pregnant out there, compression socks are awesome!
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