Running a Marathon Pregnant!

Colorado Marathon 2013 Recap.

Prelude:

For 4 months I trained my buns off for this race. Every morning I ran before the kids woke up, once a week doubled the morning run with an afternoon run during Tristan’s nap time, and twice a week doubled the morning run with a core and strength workout. Then, most importantly: the weekend long runs, including a couple of 18 milers, three 20 milers and a 22 miler. I had a specific time goal in mind and dreamed of crossing the finish line in this time! Training was going well: I was feeling strong, confident, injury free and confident of my time goal.

Then, two weeks out from the race I had my last semi-long run scheduled and wanted to make this a marathon pace run (or at least several miles of it) to give me confidence for the race. But, it was hard to hold that pace: I was very out of breath!  The feeling felt slightly familiar, but I didn’t think much of it…some days you just can’t run as fast as others.  The next day was Sunday and as I was cutting raw chicken early in the morning for an after church lunch a wave of nausea came on. Now that feeling was very familiar!  ….  Within seconds I had a positive pregnancy test in my hands J  Surprise!

While I (we) was very happy with this news (a #3, and a surprise even, what a God given Miracle!) I couldn’t help but feel very bummed about the timing as I knew this meant racing the marathon and all my hard work were out the window (and trust me: these are all the emotions and thoughts on that in a tiny nutshell).

After two weeks of contemplating what to do race weekend was here and I decided to run the race anyway. Even if I couldn’t race it I could still just run it: my body was prepared for the distance.

Race Day:

3 am wake-up call in a hotel in FtCollins.  Eat breakfast, get ready, leave hotel by 3:45 am.  I boarded the mandatory shuttle bus at the FtCollins bus depot at 4:15 am, which brought us up to the start 17 miles into the Poudre Canyon.  I arrived at the start at 5am, and had to wait 1.5 hrs in 30F for the start time of 6:30am.  COLD!
6:30am: we’re off!  It was still really chilly at the start so I ran with 2 of my throw-away layers on. We ran East into the rising sun so soon it started warming up. What a beautiful day and place to run: Sunrise in the Canyon, running all along the Poudre River!

Bib #219 Somewhere in the Poudre Canyon - pace around 8:30 min/mile

 

I don’t have a detailed mile by mile coverage (unlike last year's marathon), as really this “race” was all just about running comfortably with no pressure.  There was no mental rough parts (Can I do this? Can I keep the pace I need to PR?), just enjoying and running whatever pace I wanted. Part of the no time pressure was really slowing down past all the aid stations to make sure I drink enough and stay PLENTY hydrated for the little one on board!  Apparently I did a good job at this, because I made 5 (!!) bathroom breaks along the course!

Around mile 18 - checking in with Ben "I'm gonna finish!"

 

 Mile 17 marked Ted’s Place along highway 287, the first place where spectators (Ben!) could watch.  There was Ben, with some gold fish crackers for possible morning sickness :)   I had originally thought of the possibility of dropping out at the half-marathon mark, but after I realized I “had to” run until 17 miles anyway because that’s the first point to catch up with Ben I figured “already did 17, only 9 more to go…let’s just finish this!”.  I talked it over with Ben really quick and he also said: “go for it!”.  I did slow down considerably though. By mile 21 things were starting to get painful…not internally baby-wise, but overall 'I-m-running-26.2-miles-kind-of-pain'.  In training you train yourself to push through this pain and focus on keeping your pace and getting to that finish line in the time you want, but pregnancy is NOT the time to push through that kind of pain, so I slowed down even more.

I knew this was most likely going to happen and that was actually the biggest reason I wore the “Baby on Board” sign on my back:  usually during the end of a race when the going gets tough fellow runners will spur on runners that seem to be slowing down to push through and I didn’t want people to do that to me necessarily as I wasn’t going slow for MY sake, but for my baby’s sake.  Instead, the sign got me some wonderful comments and that made going slow a lot more fun!

Eating some goldfish crackers against morning sickness. Baby on Board!

When I finally crossed the finish line I felt proud! I’m not just a marathoner, but a pregnant marathoner! 

 

However….. I had no idea in what time I crossed the finish as I completely forgot to look at the clock (was looking for my kids and Ben instead!) or stop my garmin. So when that night I looked up my official results I still couldn’t help but feel bummed by the time listed behind my name. Yes I was proud of crossing the finish in ‘my state’ but that was NOT the time I wanted to see and what I trained so hard for. To be honest, I think that is OK….it just means I have the drive to do it all over again someday! I’ll be back, hopefully with three beautiful kids and husband awaiting me at the finish!