First Race Run While Noticeably Pregnant (At Least To Me)

To clarify the title, I'm definitely showing sooner with this child - they say that happens with the second child.  I feel like I'm looking pregnant at this point, although it's possible it's not too noticeable to others yet.  I ran Big D Half Marathon 6 weeks pregnant in April, but I was so newly pregnant at that time, that Sunday was the first race I've run while noticeably pregnant (at 16 weeks now).

Yesterday, I ran the Summer Solstice 5K race at White Rock Lake in Dallas.  Saturday afternoon, I was sad and demotivated after 2 straight days of allergies and difficulty breathing had ruined my outdoor run plans.  But I was starting to feel better Saturday afternoon so I pulled up the local racing calendar.  I liked that Summer Solstice had a duathlon at the same time as the 5K (so I knew the place wouldn't be a ghost town by the time I finished), and I liked the earlier start time of 7:30 am, since it has been so hot and humid in the mornings.  Committing to a race would help me get that mileage in when I was otherwise not feeling motivated to get outside.  I reached out to friends and found a group going so that motivated me also. And the race director is a friend, so I contacted him and found out there were 4 Athenas registered as of Friday, so maybe my slow time would even get a trophy, which is kinda fun.

Race day morning, I felt good, not nervous - I was just getting in a 3.1 mile run as far as I was concerned and practicing the new run routine the doctor and I had agreed upon for this time of the pregnancy.  I ran for 5 minutes at a heartrate of right around 160 bpm, and then would take a long enough walk break for my heart rate to recover to at or below 140 before I would run again.  This meant about 1 1/2 minute walk breaks most of the time with I think one or two walk breaks that were 2 minutes.  My pace was definitely slowed, even just my run pace because of the heart rate restriction, but I adhered to the rules.

I've been doing a great job hydrating the past week and a half, drinking about 150 ozs of water a day.  So I actually felt pretty good out there the whole time. I finished 3.1 miles in 40:30.  I didn't want to stay in the sun so headed home right away.

Later I checked the race results and had placed 4th in Athena! More interestingly is that my normal pre-pregnancy 5K average pace would have resulted in 1st place Athena on this day.  But most interesting was the fact that, while placing in Athena is usually a higher probability than placing in my age group, for this race, if I had chosen to run in my age group instead of the Athena weight class, I would have brought home a 1st place age group trophy! Why is that never the case when I do a race that doesn't have an Athena category? Sigh.

Happy to have gone out there.  It did tire me out more than I expected, and I dropped asleep unexpectedly for a 1 1/2 hour nap about 11 am.

Happy Running!