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Belle Cathy On Her Introduction to ‘Motherhood’

Posted by Julie on 02-02-2011 12:27

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Belle Cathy On Her Introduction to ‘Motherhood’

It has been nearly twelve months since the Belles mountain biking day in Kirroughtree that I told Julie and Taryn I was eight weeks pregnant....the exact words being 'I feel like I have to justify my rubbishness today, I'm pregnant'. I'm still not sure who was more shocked me or them!

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With all good intentions I had planned to keep a bit of a log of my training journey through pregnancy but combining training, working, wedding planning and pregnancy meant any spare time I had was used up with sleeping!?! Needless to say the nine months are a bit of a blur with regards what training I was doing but there were a few event highlights that stick out:

February - mountain biking in kirroughtree

March - Trailquesting

April - Roadbike leisure tours

May - Keswick mountain festival - four day Belle trip with Ghyll rambling, rock climbing, trailquesting, road biking

June - Belfast to Dublin Maracycle

July - Lough neagh triathlon swimleg only!

August - October - joined a gym and discovered Body Lab NI

All in all training while pregnant got more and more like resistance training the bigger I got with the Belles Wednesday night cycling having to stop as I couldn't reach the handlebars!

Thankfully I had a very 'pro-fitness' obstetrician who was very interested in what I was doing and supported 'most' things until the 39 week mark when I was put on bedrest...aaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh! That was the most painful week of the whole pregnancy!

And then came the day Ethan arrived....bit of an endurance event in itself. At four months old now getting back to training has been more about time management than anything else! Not only round his sleeps and feeds but also round my sleeps and feeds

I started back to Body Lab sessions after two weeks and to be honest felt like I had done ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Running followed at four weeks and still being conscious of injuries etc I took it quite easy - running being pretty easy to fit in with the buggy, again a bit of resistance training!! The bike only came out of the shed at week ten, the thought of it before then wasn't the most appealing (i'll not go into that!), with the first race being the CCAR adventure race - and the bug was rediscovered!

At week 14 everything seemed to be falling back into place (literally!) with turbo and run sessions during the days sleep times and the tag team approach with my fiance at nights to get out to some evening events like the WENT series. With a very understanding and hands on fiance weekends have been filled with days out on the mountain bike and belles events.....and it wont be long until Ethan will be on the back seat of my bike - again the resistance training approach!

Not only has my training got its routine back but Ethan also enjoys his cycle sessions and swim sessions at night.........whats that about starting em young.....well 2012's not that far off

Ding Dongx

Written by Cathy Thompson