It's official - having a baby changes you!

So I've been noticing how our life has changed since Sam entered the world........summarized into a few words I can say that things don't matter at all anymore. Spending time as a family is what it is all about. I can only hope she will continue to feel that way as she grows. Heck we even leave Nebraska football games at halftime so we can get back to her! The best part of my day is when Travis, Sam & I are just hanging out in the living room. I better stop or I'll start getting tears in my eyes.

Exercise: On to what happened this last week training wise. I finished week #2 of the 12K training plan. I'm still loving running 4 times a week. It allows my body to recover and I'm actually enjoying my runs. Today was another 7 mile long run and it was, dare I say, enjoyable. Here is a summary of my week.

Bike Distance: 19.59 Mi
Bike Time: 1h 10m
Run Distance: 17.61 Mi
Run Time: 2h 56m 52s

Pilates: 10 minutes

Sam Update: She is still dealing with a bit of a cold. The day care ladies say she will probably deal with a snotty nose on and off for the next several months. Other than that she is doing great. We weighed her this morning at Krissy's and she was tipping the scales at 11 1/4 lbs with her diaper on. I don't think the scale is 100% accurate but it gives us an idea of where she is at. She continues to develop a personality and interacts with us more every day. She is so smiley in the morning and has started really cooing and it seems like she is starting to giggle a bit. She still hates tummy time but she did hold her head up really well while on her belly yesterday. We also moved up to the next bigger nipple size this week. It was taking her forever to eat a bottle at day care and she was always falling asleep several times before finishing. So far so good.

Week one of 12K training

Exercise: So week #1 of my training program for the 7 mile cross country run we will be doing in November went ok. I find that only running 4 times a week is good for me. My legs recover and I am able to get much more out of my workouts. I think I'll stick to this schedule. I also squeezed in 2 pilate sessions. My core isn't anywhere near where it was prior to Sam being born. I have to work on that. My goal is 2 sessions per week. Right now I'm doing the beginner mat workout.

I did a 7 mile run on Sunday and after the first 4 miles I felt great. With Sam around we have had to make some minor adjustments to how we do a long run (if you call 7 miles long). It seems like she is content with a half hour to an hour in the BOB right now so I ran 4 miles on the treadmill then headed out with the entire family for the remaining 3. I then came back to the house with Sam & Travis continued on with Dakota for another 4. It worked out well. I could have ran farther but figured this is a big enough jump in my weekly mileage so I better keep it under control.

Here is my training week:

Total time: 5:31:57

Bike time: 0:50:00

Bike distance: 13.50 mi

Run time 2:52:55

Run distance: 17.81 mi

Pilates time: 0:22:00

Elliptical: 0:42:00

Walk time: 0:45:02

Walk distnace: 2.4 mi

Diet: I have a new goal and that is to eat less processed food and a little less sugar. I'm not intending to keep track of all the things I eat just to update on a weekly basis how I did. I really do have a good diet in general but I do fall of the wagon with sweets at least twice a week I would like to cut that back a bit. Don't get me wrong, I'm not striving for perfection here & food from Old Chicago and Jimmy John's will still find its way to my belly often!

Anyway, I'll give my first update next week.

Sam Update: Sam is 12 weeks old as of today. I can't believe it! She is growing up so fast already! Nothing monumental happened this week. She is still doing good with day care and has slept from 10pm - 5:30am or so the past 3 nights in a row. She is still getting more interactive every day. I love her happy moments which are getting much more frequent. Today we went to Bass Pro and she had fun looking at all of the animals and such.

My 7 mile trail race training plan from Runner's World. I start tomorrow!

9/14 to 9/20
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 2 mi@10:42
Rest/ XT
Tempo RunDist: 5 mi, inc Warm; 3 mi @ 9:07; Cool
Easy RunDist: 2 mi@10:42
Rest/ XT
Long RunDist: 7 mi@10:42
16 miles

9/21 to 9/27
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:42
Rest/ XT
SpeedworkDist: 5 mi, incWarm; 3x800 in 4:05w/400 jogs; Cool
Easy RunDist: 2 mi@10:42
Rest/ XT
Long RunDist: 7 mi@10:42
17 miles

9/28 to 10/4
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:42
Rest/ XT
Tempo RunDist: 5 mi, incWarm; 3 mi @ 9:07; Cool
Easy RunDist: 2 mi@10:42
Rest/ XT
Long RunDist: 8 mi@10:42
18 miles

10/5 to 10/11
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:42
Rest/ XT
Tempo RunDist: 6 mi, incWarm; 4 mi @ 9:12; Cool
Easy RunDist: 2 mi@10:42
Rest/ XT
Long RunDist: 8 mi@10:42
19 miles

10/12 to 10/18
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 5 mi@10:36
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 5 mi@10:36
Rest/ XT
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 5 mi@10:36
15 miles

10/19 to 10/25
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:36
Rest/ XT
SpeedworkDist: 5 mi, incWarm; 4x800 in 4:03w/400 jogs; Cool
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:36
Rest/ XT
Long RunDist: 9 mi@10:36
20 miles

10/26 to 11/1
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:36
Rest/ XT
Tempo RunDist: 6 mi, incWarm; 4 mi @ 9:06; Cool
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:36
Rest/ XT
Long RunDist: 9 mi@10:36
21 miles

11/2 to 11/8
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:36
Rest/ XT
Tempo RunDist: 7 mi, incWarm; 5 mi @ 9:11; Cool
Easy RunDist: 2 mi@10:36
Rest/ XT
Long RunDist: 10 mi@10:36
22 miles

11/9 to 11/15
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 4 mi@10:30
Rest/ XT
SpeedworkDist: 6 mi, incWarm; 5x800 in 4:00w/400 jogs; Cool
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:30
Rest/ XT
Long RunDist: 10 mi@10:30
23 miles

11/16 to 11/22
Rest/ XT
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:42
Easy RunDist: 3 mi@10:42
Tempo RunDist: 5 mi, incWarm; 3 mi @ 9:07; Cool
Rest/ XT
Rest/ XT
Race DayDist: 12 K@8:45Time: 1:05:22
19 miles

Last Week's Workouts & Sam's First Cold

Here is the workout load for last week. I took it pretty easy. Running has felt really hard. I will be starting a 10K training plan for a cross country run we do every year the Saturday before Thanksgiving though. Hopefully the motivation of training for an event will kick me in the butt a bit. I also want to make a serious effort to do pilates 2 days a week.

Total workout time: 5:35:21
Bike(Time)1:45:00
Bike(Distance)29.51 mi
Run(Time)1:47:32
Run(Distance)10.10 mi
Hiking (Time)2:02:50
Hiking (Distance)4.50 mi

Sam update: She has her first cold. It was pretty bad Friday night. She sounded really stuffy but didn't have a fever. We were at Travis' sister's and almost nixed going to the Nebraska game on Saturday to come home and take her to the doctor. She did better the second half of the night sleeping and seemed pretty good on Saturday morning though. We went to the game, but left at halftime. She did good all day and only minorly congested. She woke up at 2:30am both nights wanting a little snack (sucked for 5 minutes only) and I figured the fluid was good for her so I didn't give her time to try and fall back to sleep before going to her. She is doing good today.


Here is beautiful Husker Family picture - thanks for taking this mom it looks great!
And some hiking pictures from this week:
I love this picture:

Last Day of Maternity Leave

Today is my last day of maternity leave. I have mixed feelings right now. On one hand I am ready to go back to work and start having something to focus on and get myself out of constant snacking mode. I missed eating cookie dough so much during my pregnancy that I think I have eaten a tub of it a week for the past nine weeks! It will be interesting to see if I lose any more weight after I am back at work.

On the other hand, I'm not excited to have Sam in day care. Don't get me wrong, I know they will take good care of her but it won't be the same as if me or her daddy were providing the care. I'm also a little worried about her getting sick. I'm not consumed by the the fear of H1N1 but it is concerning. I still don't know if Travis and I should get the vaccine when it is available in October. I'm almost more concerned with the fact that it is being fast tracked than I am about the possiblity of us getting the actual flu. I need to talk to our pediatrician and my doctor to see what they think.

I think tonight will be a longer run (gotta work off that cookie dough I ate a few minutes ago) tonight. I'll post on that later. I'm upset because I was keeping track of my workouts on trainingpeaks.com but for some reason when my old laptop crashed I lost all of my workouts as well. Strange, I thought the benefit of an online record system was just that it is online. Oh well. Just got done with 4.55 miles. It was hard. I think I'm feeling the effects of hard tri training & a little lack of sleep. That and I haven't been eating very well the last couple of weeks. I also haven't been drinking enough water. Time to get that all back on track.

I am thinking I need a half marathon to train for over the late fall and winter. Maybe the Rock 'n Roll 1/2 in Phoenix in mid January. The only thing is that training for a race in the winter in the upper midwest is tough!

Tomorrow is the first Husker game of the season. We are going to Travis' sister & brother-in-law's house tomorrow and they will watch Sam while we go to the game. She is having a baby boy in October (their first) so this will give her some practice. If you are reading this, thanks Kris, you are awesome - and you don't need any practice!

Sam slept through the night!!!

10:30pm-5:30am with just a little bit of wimpering at 3:30am. How awesome is this!

And since this blog is supposed to be about working out it is time I got back to documenting my efforts there.

Tonight my mom watched Sam and Travis & I went for a 22 mile bike ride. My back got a bit sore as I am not used to sitting on a bike for that long. The ride was fun though. We stay on paved bike trails and are fortunate to have miles and miles of them right outside our front door. A biker was killed on Sunday riding down the highway to the trail we rode on tonight. The person who hit him didn't stop. Come on, if you hit someone with your car you have to stop! It's not like you are going to get away with it so you might as well own up to it and see if you can save their life. I wouldn't think they were drunk as it occured during the day but I guess you never can tell. It's just sad.