I had only been back on the bike for three or four weeks at that point, not feeling very fast or strong, yet I decided to make my return to racing with a time trial, just eleven weeks postpartum.
In spite of the fact that I was active all throughout my pregnancy, I realized I was going to have my work cut out for me to get back into the kind of shape I was in last spring.
I was expecting to teach until a week or so before my due date, but I was definitely not planning to ride on the day I gave birth, or so I thought.
Pregnancy is definitely something that will slow a female athlete down bit by bit, but it doesn’t mean you have to give up on future goals and aspirations.
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a bicycle oh yippee
I was starting to feel more of a toll on my body in different ways which posed some new challenges for me.
As you enter the second trimester your heart begins to work about forty percent harder and pump more blood than before and so your heartrate will be higher even during moderate efforts.
Every cyclist needs to learn some basic and more advanced skills, but at a certain point once you master those skills making gains becomes more about confidence in yourself on the bike.
This was fantastic news and something that I had wanted to happen, but what did this pregnancy mean for me in regard to my riding and training?
A car had come up behind me and decided that their need to make a left turn trumped mine and that they needed to scare the crap out of me to let me know it.