Me and my new trainer

When I have actually been working out lately, it's mostly been with My Fitness Coach for the Wii. My lack of motivation has led to the following interaction with Personal Trainer Maya about once a week or so:

















As you can see, we're really bonding.

How I came to not run and fail ridiculous pregnancy goal #1

I always assumed I'd continue running through pregnancy. I'll be honest about my motivations to do so.
1. While I realize I could not maintain the same level of conditioning, at least I wouldn't totally be starting from exercise scratch when it came time for post-baby body reclaiming.
2. Clearly, I would handle pregnancy fitness/nutrition better than those scores of women who just turn into lazy, continually-eating blobs. I have loads of other such promises to myself and those around me about how I will revolutionize pregnancy by doing it better. Examples include: not showing anybody ultrasound pics who doesn't ask to see them and not gazing down at my belly in every picture taken of me for 9 months. We'll see how I do on those other goals, because so far the whole running thing....not going so well.

It occurred to me that I have asthma and require an assortment of medicines to run depending on how hard I'm training. While all literature on the topic seems to agree that exercise is good while pregnant, I thought that perhaps, in my case, having to take my medicine might negate any goodness. I figured I should ask my doctor. Long story short, that particular appointment I ended up seeing somebody other than my normal doctor. Here's how our conversation on the topic went:

Me: I run but in order to run, I have to take asthma medicine. Would it be better for me to continue to run and use the medicine, or would it be better to lower the intensity of my workouts and not have to take the medicine? I can do lighter exercises and breath just fine.

Dr.: *Tone of voice and look on face clearly say she's appalled I would even ask such a thing* No! Continue with the exercise!! You being able to breath is more important than anything that the asthma medicine could do to your fetus!

Me: *To myself* I realize that in an emergency, I should take the medicine. But I'm talking about purposely inducing myself to need it here. And WTF is with the 'tude, woman?

Dr.: Just don't do any strenuous exercises...like jogging. Walk for exercise.

She then went on to give a long spiel about how if I just had to drink anything while pregnant, my baby might not come out completely retarded. After all, she's had patients who have drank half a beer daily for their complete term and still had normal babies. (For those of you who don't know me well personally, I've never in all my life had to have a drink, so I'm not entirely sure what prompted her to say that to me, in particular, or as a doctor, in general.)

So that appointment was a complete bust. Between my general confusion about what to do and the laziness I was already experiencing, I didn't do a whole lot of running. By the time I confirmed with a doctor that I didn't want to punch that my medicine is, in fact, safe to take, I had been away from running so much that I wasn't sure if it fit into the "anything you did before, you can continue to do now" rule anymore.

There you have it - the background on my current running situation. I haven't ran at all in a couple months now, and I don't see myself starting again until after the baby. And actually, it might not be a bad thing. I really had lost my running groove there, so maybe a nice hiatus will be just what I need. Unlike my previous running hiatus, I won't be beating myself up every day for skipping my run. It's just understood I won't be doing it for a while. At the moment, I'm looking forward to getting back into it when the time comes.

Status Update

I haven't blogged in a while. Obviously. I'm not even sure if anybody still checks this site. So if you're reading, thanks for sticking with me!

There are a number of reasons for my absence. They include:
1. Blogging laziness
2. Working out laziness
3. I've recently found myself in a new condition, which is to say I'm pregnant. My working out has changed as a result (more from paranoia than necessity), and since I haven't been ready to go public with the news until today, I haven't really been sure how I would handle blogging about it. So I didn't.

With that in mind, I hope that everybody is OK if this blog temporarily takes on a pregnancy focus. Then, maybe a reclaiming-my-body focus. Then, if I have my way, maybe another big race, but we'll have to see. Far too many changes coming my way for me to make much in the way of long-term plans, at least long-term plans that I'd get too upset about not being able to follow through on.

But enough about me. I hope all my running buddies are having an excellent winter. I'm looking forward to catching up on everybody's blogs. Though, by the unread count on my Google Reader, it looks like I'm not the only one who hasn't been blogging much lately. :)