New bike

I got a new bike yesterday! I already had a bike, but it was an Electra cruiser, which looks awesome and is very comfy to ride to the store, it cannot get up hills or go with any sort of speed at all. So, I picked up a Specialized Vita, which is an entry level sort of bike that I could do a triathlon on, but mostly I will be using it for cross training as I prepare for a marathon.

I need to figure out how to post pictures of my rides. This area is so beautiful and that beauty is uplifting to my tired, mommied-out soul. Yesterday I rode 9 miles and today I rode just shy of 6 miles. I was planning to go just a bit further, but my husband got called out to work so I needed to get home to take over kid-duty while he earned a paycheck.

There are now parts of my anatomy that hurt that I didn't even realize existed. I now understand padded bike shorts. I think tomorrow I better run so that I can allow my lady business to recover. Running is a bit rough right now because of arthritis acting up in my joints and the fact that I don't have the stamina that I had pre-baby. It was so fun to just go and run for 90 minutes without really thinking about it, but now I just can't quite do that. Also, even though I am out without my baby, I am not really baby-free. I check my phone every 5-10 minutes to be sure my husband doesn't need me to come back yet and if I think about the baby too much then my sports bra starts to fill with milk. He is effecting my run even when he isn't with me :)

We will see what I can bust out tomorrow!

Running, exercise, baby, and food

My youngest was born now 5 weeks ago. I know that wasn't very long ago, but I feel the need to hurry up and get back on track. Prior to getting pregnant I was training for a half-marathon and early in my pregnancy I was still running 7 miles at a time. As my pregnancy progressed, all my joints started hurting more and running became difficult so I spent my time swimming and walking and on my elliptical. I eventually cut back on how much I was doing because I was not gaining weight at all. I didn't cut out exercise, but took away the really long or intense workouts. I was staying pretty active, but then at about 35/36 weeks I started having excrutiating nerve pain through my hip and leg. I would have these pains shoot through and then all the muscles would spasm and I would often find myself on the floor. That put an end to exercise. It put an end to even running errands or living a normal life. Thankfully, the pain was gone as soon as he was born, but now I have been really inactive for 2 months!

I have a marathon to run in September! Yay! I am going to try for a full and we will see what happens. I have started this last week to return to exercise. I went running one day and used my elliptical again and have just started walking around town with baby as well. It is difficult because he really doesn't want me to have even 30 minutes to myself, but hopefully that will change as he gets a bit older. Of course, yesterday I had to have some abnormal skin cells removed which put a whole lot of stitches into my belly button, which means that for the next 2 weeks or so I am going to be pretty sore and pretty limited once again on what I can and cannot do for activity. Good fun! Oh well, small price to pay to be sure those cells are removed.

I am now trying to balance out nutrition with breastfeeding and exercise. I think this can be such a challenge because, ideally, I would still like to lose about 10 more pounds, but breastfeeding also makes me killer hungry. Breastfeeding actually burns more calories than pregnancy! I find that often I need to have a snack in the middle of the night while nursing, which is nuts. The exercise I am currently doing is no real big deal for calories.... to go for a short run or walk really burns very little. HOWEVER, once I get back to running for 1 hour or more without stopping, that is when I am going to have a few more needs for nutrition. I don't eat sugar and I try to take in mostly healthy carbs (fruits, veggies, and a few whole grains), lots of protein, and some healthy fats. It is just hard for me to balance out my hunger, my want to lose a touch more weight, and the needs of my body while I nurse my little man and get back into exercising regularly and training up for a marathon. Hopefully, we will figure it out!