Valentine's Day Date Dash 5k

Time to start racing again!

I can't even begin to express how excited I am that Spring racing is here, despite the fact that it's still winter.  No complaints on my end, I have running friends who are having races snowed out at this point.  Others who are snowshoe racing because they have so much snow.

Today, in mid February, I got to race in shorts.
Unreal!

It was a little windier than I would have chosen, but with as warm as it was (nearly 40!), the wind was doable for sure.

I talked Aaron into doing this race last week.  What a good sport.
I also may or may not have signed him up for a half marathon with me in June as a Christmas gift.
Good thing he loves me!

With his working out of town currently, I actually was left wondering if he would even be here to run with me today.  His flight was supposed to get home Thursday night around midnight, he got stuck in Atlanta overnight, and then the weather was bad there leaving us wondering if he would make it home at all this weekend before he had to be back in Tennessee on Sunday night.

I told him if he really didn't want to race he could have just told me no in the first place instead of going through all of that hoopla to avoid it.
He didn't find that as funny as I did.

Hey, grasping at straws when the whole weekend schedule gets bumped and you play single parent all week to nine kids is completely understandable, isn't it?

Thankfully he did make it home for a fun Valentine's night with the kids, and for the race on Saturday.

We had to have our traditional arm's length photo for all of the races we do together.

 The race was good, course was nice.  I could have done without the uphill in the last mile, but I played the mental game I do on hills ("I am a strong hill runner!  Keep pushing!"), which seems to work well and let me pass two people.

I didn't set out to really race this, as with every pregnancy race my first priority is baby and how my body is reacting.  I happened to be blessed with a very comfortable running day and a little speed in my legs, which was a fabulous treat!  I realized at about mile 2 that I would at least be in the top 10 women, and toyed with the thought of being able to pull an age group placing.  Am I the only person who tries to gage people's age group from behind in races?  This is a much easier job in triathlon than it is in running.
I was able to pick of a few more people before the end, which is always fun.

Finishing a little quicker than I thought I would, especially with the uphill (25:10) was a treat.
I ended up taking 4th overall female, and 1st in my age group, which was even more of a treat!

Before I go, your fetal trivia of the day, at 21 weeks baby is now approximately as long as two tubes of Nuun.  And is poking out to say hi.

Proof that God has a sense of humor

I'm going to need a new picture on the blog.

This one.

Ok, so back in October we had that fun uterus rant.  It really was good natured at that point.  Hopefully it read that way here.
Heck, my friend and I even tried to have a little fun with it, and tried to spin the rumor in the neighborhood into her being a surrogate for those twins I was supposedly expecting.  Even though she has had a hysterectomy.  It got a few people talking but didn't catch on as well as we'd hoped. Dang.

Things got a little hairy when my kids started getting approached at school that very day questioning whether or not I was pregnant.  They had friends, and kids who were merely acquaintances, asking on behalf of their parents to find out if there was any validity to the rumors.  Come on people.
At that point I got irritated, and ended up throwing that out on Facebook.  While I'm not typically one to rant or throw personal issues on Facebook, the fact that my kids were being bugged at school multiple days in a row really bugged me.  So I put that out there.  Told people to suck it up and ask me if they had a personal question about me, and to leave my kids out of it.  That was also mostly good natured, a little obnoxious in my attempt to use the word uterus as many times as possible in the actual post and in the comments, but apparently a lot of people read it as me being very angry and mean.  Irritated, sure. Angry, no.
Apparently my overuse of the word uterus-it was in the post/comments 26 times-made a number of people uncomfortable though.  My apologies if you were one of them, because when I learned that I laughed.  Hard.

ANYWAY.

Life is funny.  So all we could do was laugh when we found not too long after all of that hoopla that I was actually pregnant.
Well, laugh and make a pact that this would stay a secret for as long as possible.

Aaron has a hard time not sharing exciting news.  Like the man can't keep gifts hidden away for intended occasions because he can't not share!
I really wanted to hit the halfway point before spilling the beans, and I got close.  He was a good sport and kept his lips zipped even after finding out it was a boy back in January.  That was even harder than just keeping the pregnancy a secret!

I pushed for a February spilling of the beans, and though I would have loved to have held off a couple more weeks, he was beyond ready to tell, and I am getting to the point where it's harder to keep it hidden, especially at night.

So there it is!  Baby boy on the way, due in July.

(Though if I were putting money on it I'd bet he's out by the end of June.  I could be wrong.  We'll see.)
Yes we are excited, even if we are a little overwhelmed some days.  Some days we were overwhelmed with one kid, two kids, three kids....kids can be overwhelming sometimes!  Anyone who has kids understands that!  The kids are also very excited, which was kind of a relief to me as I was honestly a little nervous about how the older ones might react.  Thank heaven for great kids who appreciate a big family even though some days it is hard.

And to answer the question that I'll most frequently be asked regarding this pregnancy, yes we were planning on another.  The follow up, "is the the last one?" will, I'm sure, be asked nearly as frequently.  While our first thought is yes, this is our caboose, time will tell if we are still missing someone after this little guy's arrival.  We'll see.  I never thought we'd have more than 4 or 5 kids to begin with; life is often full of twists and turns we didn't expect!

I am still running and hope to run to the very last day of pregnancy this time like I was able to do last time around.  Baby already has three races under his belt (two 5k's and one half marathon), with a handful more "races" planned before his arrival.  I say "races" because let's be honest, there isn't much actual racing happening with a baby on board!  I love participating in the events and soaking up the race atmosphere, and even though I'm not going out to be speedy (a big change after last year!), I sure enjoy every minute of it!  It is good mental training for me to really listen to my body and adjust my efforts accordingly, and to be willing to not pay as much attention to the numbers.  Good therapy for the number obsessive side of me!

And as always, belly pics will be happening.  Weekly for me, not sure how frequently I'll subject you to them.  We shall see.  For the squeamish folks (example: you can't handle the word uterus), know in advance that I will be taking pics in a sports bra and my beloved Roga shorts each week.  If that's too much skin for you, I apologize.

Also look away now.

Almost halfway, baby #10.