We Did It! .... 5k Mastered!

Wow! What a weekend. So P and I finally completed our 5k! We chose to do the USA Swimming Foundation 5k!

To preface all of the 5k race, I must say I didn't "complete" my last week of training via the couch to 5k app. I came down with a nasty sinus infection, and then it rained a TON. So, my last week was kind of blah. However, we still made it to the 5k and although hadn't completed the training per say, we still ran!

Packet pickup downtown was a nightmare, thanks to the swim trials. I won't even touch on the hassle of getting all of that.

BUT, we managed to get up, out of the house and downtown by 7:45am for our race. P enjoyed seeing all the various people and such. He loves exploring and seeing new things. This was definitely up his alley.

At 8:15am, the shotgun rang, and we were off!

Overall it was a great race, and we did awesome despite not having finished our training. We came in at 29 minutes and 50 seconds. Our goal was under 30, so we did it!

Overall, I think going into our next race I will be better prepared in the sense that running in the neighborhood or on trails early in the AM is MUCH MUCH MUCH different than running with a LARGE body of people.

I think we could have came in at a better time, but much time during the first 2 miles was spent weaving in and out of people, trying to pass them. If this was just me running alone, it would have been no problemo. However, with the jogger. Wow. What a challenge.

Overall, I'm really excited about the run, and VERY motivated for our next goal of a 10k. We are all signed up for Corporate Cup on September 25th. This leaves me with a few more months to train for that! Worst case scenario, I might have to run sans little man and jogger. But either way, I'm going to do it!

Anyways. Hope you mama's out there find this somewhat motivating or inspiring or whatever! Keep setting goals for yourself and working at them! You can do anything you set your mind to!

Quick shout out to the husband for pushing me and helping me so that I have the time to workout and exercise!

Keep on, keepin' on, mamas!

C25K Update!

Wow - has it really been almost one month since I've posted a blog?!? That's nuts. Since summer struck, I've been a busy bee. As I am always preaching about prioritization and such, I suppose the blog took the back burner.

We've also been dealing with a teething child who has been trying to get on a 2 nap sleep schedule for the last 2 months. We've had some rough days and nights.

In regards to the couch to 5k program... we are rocking it! we are currently in week 8 of a 9 week program! We are tentatively set for a July 3rd 5k! So exciting. We've also gone a little rogue and signed up for a 10k in September. That should be interesting.

The past few weeks/months of this training have been awesome. I'm so glad I challenged myself to this. I can say that we have had great days and we've had really hard days. The great days are when P is sleeping the whole way. The not so great days... when he cries the whole way. I think the crying was in part to weather conditions (i.e. too hot or too windy). We changed up the time I run and he seems to be doing better. We've lost quite a few pacifiers on our journey.

P also has become much more mobile in the last two months. He's walking everywhere with his push toys and on the brink of walking by himself. I think him sitting in the stroller for 30+ minutes multiple times a week was getting old for him.

We also had a couple times where it rained ALL week long so I wasn't able to get a run in. Coming back from a week of cardio at the gym was a STRUGGLE. The hills are relentless.

Overall it's been a great time with P. We get to see so many exciting things and it gets him out of the house and fresh air. I think doing the couch to 5k was great because it helped build my stamina slowly, and kept me motivated!

I think if I had to change anything going back and redoing it, I would probably change my jogger stroller. I love my Graco. It is great. But I think if I am going to do this seriously in the future, something a little more aerodynamic would be great. However, the Graco is getting the job done.

Here is my progress along with a few photos from the past few weeks.... B even got to join us a few times!

Managing the Household - Part 1 Cleaning

Something that I have had to learn how to deal with when becoming a new mom is learning how to manage the household with my husband. I am a pseduo-SAHM and I work full time. My husband also works full-time. Both of us work about 30-45 minutes (depending on traffic) away from work, resulting in at least 1-1.5 hours per workday of commuting time. As a nurse, I am fortunate that I work 3 days per week (12 hour shifts). This leaves me with 4 whole days that I am at home, hence the pseudo-SAHM ;)

As any couple knows, managing all the household duties can be difficult. It's definitely made more complex once baby comes along. Before our baby, I had 4 whole days off work, so I had no problem with spending one day running errands, cleaning, organizing, balancing the checkbook, laundry, etc. I had all the free time in the world during those 4 days off. Sometimes I try to think about how I spent my free time on those days. I always felt busy - that's laughable nowadays.

Anyways. Post child. How do I fit doing all those tasks in? Is it really my responsibility now that I have a child to take care of? Should I ask my husband who works 50-60 hours minimum per week (compared to my 40) to be helping out more? AH! The headaches and conundrums.

First and foremost with managing a household, the most important thing is COMMUNICATION. My husband and I sat down and discussed all of what we NEED done during the week, what can maybe be slacked upon, and what is super low priority. Some things like the floor being vacuumed/swept/mopped is becoming more of a priority because we have a baby crawling on the ground ALL the time and we also have a pet. Other things like deep cleaning have become a much lower priority that we will just "tolerate" because we would rather have family time.

Things that we deemed high priority (1xper week) were:
- working out (both of us)
- family dinners (on nights I am not working)
- balancing the checkbook & budgeting/financial planning
- laundry
- cleaning (some items)
- grocery shopping
- yard work

Things that had medium priority but could be slacked on:
- cleaning (some items)

Low priority (1x/month) items:
- deep cleaning
 
After discussing what we thought were high priority needs we also communicated about our schedules and how much time we had for our higher priority items.

My biggest concern/complaint that I communicated was that I was taking care of P all day long, and trying to work out, and it didn't leave me a ton of time to do some other things. I had felt like all of our high priority things were on my plate. B was under the presumption that I had more time to do these because I had 4 days off work. He didn't really stop to contemplate that I was also doing all the SAHM things with P.

One concern B had was that cleaning would take too long. For someone who has only maybe 5-10 minutes of spare time here and there, would cleaning be possible? Spending 1 hour cleaning everything isn't really feasible anymore now that we have a baby. 

We devised a plan for tackling cleaning, which is what I felt I needed help with most. This way, I could tackle making dinner, working out, and other household things, while tag-teaming the cleaning. We made a checklist (my specialty) of all the cleaning chores that we felt needed to get done during the week. This checklist is posted in our "hub" so that we can see it frequently, see what needs to be done, and when the last time something was done. We initial it once it's done. We broke down the chores into easy tasks that take approximately 5-10 minutes each. Nothing is ever that urgent where if it doesn't get done, we are having a mental breakdown. We simply see that it wasn't done the week prior and put it at the top of our list for the following week.

The other benefit of doing the chores like this is that everything maintains a baseline level of cleanliness. One thing B didn't realize was that if you keep things moderately clean, then when you go to clean them the next time, you don't have to put as much effort in because you aren't deep cleaning you are just maintaining. Ding ding ding. It finally clicked with him :)

Another thing that my husband and I are constantly doing is re-evaluating everything. We check in and let each other know how things are going. So far with our checklist, we are doing great. But we both know that if we are getting overwhelmed or feeling like this isn't the best way of doing things, then we can always re-evaluate a better way.

Check out below for what our checklist looks like.

Rain Rain Go Away

I think one of the hardest parts of becoming a mom (for me) is not the sleeplessness, the dirty diapers, managing schedules, having a dependent, etc. I would say the biggest challenge for me was learning FLEXIBILITY. Oh my gosh. Is it ever a challenge.

Prior to becoming a mom, I was your average type A, OCD, life.planned.to.a.t gal. (Okay lets be honest, I still am) Everything was planned out, schedules made, etc. Every morning I would get up, work out then eat breakfast (because who can workout on a full stomach?), do some housework, get ready for the day, run some errands, etc.

Life definitely changed when P came along.  The first few weeks I spent enjoying our new guy, dealing with postpartum "things." P grew, and so did I. We thought life was superb after 4 weeks. We had him on a schedule, he was sleeping through the night by 6 weeks, things were looking good. I  was getting a new routine down (because as I said before you can't work out with a full belly, and you can't workout with full boobs, but you have to eat constantly to maintain your supply - oh the conundrum). Then hit the 4 month sleep regression.

To all you new moms and mom's to be, JUST WAIT. It was rough. P went through teething, developmental leap, growth spurt, and sleep regression ALL at the same time. Nap times went from an hour and a half to 25 minutes at best, unless being held of course. Some days it took 20 minutes of rocking in the bathroom with the water running just to get him to actually fall asleep. Awake times were filled with a tad bit a lot more fussiness. Who was this child? Surely not the happy little child robot I programmed to fit into my perfect little routine? I was spinning out of control.

Trying to stay healthy and active was my priority (after the more important things like family and faith). This meant finding a new rhythm. Pumping and eating was done while the babe was awake. Workouts were now completed on a full (or partially full) stomach. After P would finally get to sleep. I'd run to the treadmill, hop on and go until lil' man woke up. Some days I would get 20 minutes of running in, some days maybe 40 (if I was lucky). Some days I would workout for 20 minutes, and then finish my run a few hours later during P's next nap. It may not have been ideal, but at least I was getting my workout in!

We are hopefully (knock on wood), getting to a point where teething is slowing (we have two already!), the developmental leap is leveling, the growth spurt has stopped and naps are maybe trending back to normal (we have had two days of hour and a half naps).

Tuesday marked the first day of my 5k training with P and the jogger. Of course, I was up, rearing and ready to go on Wednesday. I took a peek outside and pure down pour. Of course. I looked sadly at the workout calendar I posted on my door and realized again, flexibility. It rained and rained with no hopes of getting P out in the jogger for a run. I modified my day and did an "at home" circuit instead. I decided I would move a few days around and do my other two runs for the week Friday and Saturday. All will be okay. I'm typing to you now from the comfort of my couch with a raging Strep Throat infection and no hopes of running Friday or Saturday. The (recently) old me would have had a tizzy. The fairly new, attempting to be flexible, mom says ITS OKAY.

Life is funny like that always throwing curve balls. Flexibility is key to surviving this new mom thing. I'm sure all you moms with 2+ kids are laughing at my realizations :) Do the best you can moms! Just keep momma-ing on. It will all work itself out. You are awesome!

Here's the rain day workout I did:

100m run (equates to .06 miles on the treadmill) ***
10 burpees
10 push ups
10 mountain climbers
10 full situps
10 sumo squats

Repeat whole workout 5 times.  Afterwards, I walked on the treadmill for a bit until I got bored ;)

*** If you don't have a treadmill, you could always jog in place, high knees, jog up and down the stairs, etc. The 100 m run took me about 35-40 seconds, therefore just jog in place for that amount of time.