Coughing, Morning Sickness and Intervals Oh My

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. My last tale brought you the sad news of my first DNS due to illness. Well let me tell you, that illness moved into my home, made very good friends with each one of my family members and pretty much made itself comfy. It was a rough few weeks and my husband is still battling off the last of it. Not only did it last a couple of weeks for each victim, but the worst symptom was the cough. Having so much chest junk going made it hard to run. Throw in the rest of my "troubles" and running has not happened.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm also pregnant with #4. And while the woes of the first trimester haven't been nearly as bad as they were with #3, I still have been hit pretty hard. I am tired, absolutely wiped out. add the low level of all day "morning" sickness(such a cruel term for someone like myself who wakes up with it and goes to bed with it), on top of the illness and my treadmill has gotten dusty. Yes, I need to take care of myself, especially because I am now host to another spawn beautiful growing baby. But at the same time, I still have some pretty big races coming up.

Next up, the unofficial Tinkerbell challenge. Like it's buddies the Dumbo Double Dare and the Glass Slipper Challenge, it is a 10k on Saturday/Half Marathon Sunday combo, just without the extra medal you get during the other two race combos. And this combo is in less than 3 weeks. So I finally had to drag myself back to the treadmill. I don't feel like I'm too far gone, but obviously not exactly where I need to be.

I've had to change things up since being sick and getting pregnant. First being hydration. One of the awesome pregnancy symptoms I've been blessed with the last few pregnancies is a metallic type taste in my mouth. It lasts the first 15 weeks or so. It makes me kind of queasy, it makes food and drinks taste funny, especially water and coffee. The two things I need most in my life are the two drinks that turn me off. I've been trying to keep hydrated in other ways, chocolate milk, coconut water and Gatorade.

The second big change I've had to make is to my speed. I have seen some mamas to be maintaining speed through the early parts of their pregnancy. That is not me. It's hard enough for me to drag myself out for a run feeling like I do. I've found it comfortable to go from straight running to intervals. Since my break, I've had to move down to 2:1 intervals. And I'm ok with this. I feel like I met a lot of my speed/time goals over 2013 and at this point, I'm glad that I'm still moving. I have never been active during pregnancy, never. I feel like a rock star, albeit a slower rock star, just for doing what I'm doing, when I'd love to be in bed 20 hours out of the day. As long as I finish my upcoming races, I'll be happy.

The third change? Clothes. I had all of my awesome costumes planned out for the Tinkerbell 1/2 and Princess 1/2 marathons. I bought early, because I'm a planner like that. Being that this is the 5th child I've carried, I get a baby bump rather quickly. I made the sad discovery last night that the outfit I'd planned for PHM in 7.5 weeks is already on the snug side. It's not going to happen. My shirts are too short and tight and I just had to celebrate the extra weight loss and buy a size small skirt many months ago. So I'm experimenting with what is going to work the best with my growing midsection. Look for more on that later, because it's not as easy as buying maternity workout clothes, at least not unless I want to shell out a few hundred dollars on clothes I will wear for a few months.

So I will keep going. Keep plugging along and hope for the best when it comes to my Tinkerbell races. I'm just going to relax and have fun, something I've yet to do during a race, because no matter what I told myself, I was always trying to go for time. Now I don't have to worry about that, and I'm looking forward to having fun!!