This
is where it really got fun. After
the season ended, I knew that swimming would be the best and easiest sport to
continue with and really focus on during pregnancy. During the racing season, I went hard in all three sports,
and didn’t put any real extra focus on one in particular. I would adjust my training plan as I
went along, based on new things I learned and what I needed to do to get ready
for the next race, but I pounded out hard workouts weekly in all areas. It was only a week after the
half-marathon that I had the accident, a little bump in the road (not literally
in this case) that forced me to take six days off from running, a week from
biking, and almost a month from swimming in order to heal.
I
put quite a few miles on the bike while it was still nice out, and was able to
get some outdoor rides in until Thanksgiving (week 24 of pregnancy). I would still ride down in my aero
bars, but it became more frequent that I would come up out of them just to
relieve pressure. It also became
far more frequent than what I desired that I would have to stop for a bathroom
break during the middle of the ride.
The joys of training during pregnancy, I tell you! While I got some quality workouts on
the bike done during that time, it wasn’t a main focus for me any more at that
point. I had already had to slow
down and pull back on my running, so November seemed a good time to start
getting into swimming more.
I
had sprained my shoulder in the bike accident, so I took it easy as I got back
in the pool and slowly worked back into it. The month off was due to needing to let my wounds close up
before getting back in the water.
Once I did though, my frequency increased. I used to only swim 3 days per week, but I felt like
swimming was great for strengthening my shoulder. By the middle of October, I started pushing harder workouts
and paying attention to interval times again (with my initial return I
disregarded this), and starting to implement what would become my basic set of
weekly workouts for my swim training block (which lasted several months). Early in November, my “swim coach” took
me through a series of drills to work on technique. All of this set the stage for my focus on the swim, and the
substantial improvement that resulted.
This was definitely a great time to focus on technique!
I
had a few swim goals that would also help motivate me along the way and that
gave me something specific to work towards. My goal for the 2013 triathlon season was to do my first
half-ironman distance race. To
prepare for the swim portion of it, I wanted my build period to include working
up to 10,000 yards of swimming/week with a long swim distance workout totaling
4,000 yards. I also was given
interval time goals to try and work towards. This seemed as good a time as any to test these things
out. In November, I was averaging
10K yards/week (much more than I had been swimming)! By the middle of December, I hit my first swim workout of 4K
yards (easy swimming). I actually
continued to build on my weekly yardage, with my biggest week being over 17K in
December, and continued to average 13-14K per week after that. With the combination of technique work
and the increase of yardage I was regularly swimming, I saw my times drop
drastically. Monday I did
threshold 200’s, Tuesday was FAPA (fast as possible average) 100’s, Wednesday
was a long swim day, Thursday was unstructured (which included some drills and
non-freestyle swimming), and Friday was threshold 100’s. Monday, Tuesday, and Friday I swam very
hard.
I reached my interval goal times by
the middle of December (week 27 of pregnancy). A week later, I did a 1,000 yard time trial. I wanted to be able to use this as a
base for after the baby was born, figuring that I was hitting my peak and my
window for fast times would be closing as I got bigger with the pregnancy. Everything was just so unknown as to
what I would be able to do, or for how long. A week later I did another test set of 7x300 on 5
minutes. I killed it! All the swim work I did during
pregnancy definitely paid off. I
really feel like it was the best time to go through this. I swam up until the day before I
delivered. I greatly surpassed my
expectations of what I would be able to accomplish, and for how long I could keep
pushing it hard in the pool. This
experience was by far the most rewarding, motivating, and exciting part of
training while pregnant!
The most difficult limitations to
overcome, are those we put on ourselves.
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