The journey of pregnancy and mother hood for sure is the biggest challenge training wise I have experienced so far in my 35 year old life.
Photo: 38 weeks pregnant. Gosh isn´t so amazing the body? ! Creating a little one. In a big bump!
I have always knew I wanted kids, (preferable many !) and the timing is never but at the same time, always perfect. I knew I wanted to get back to racing, or at least give it a proper try.
I have been through a phase when I my motivation for racing was not high, but also really contemplating why, and I figure I lost my way in the training-racing-mountain ratio a little.
So here I am, mother of 2, with 2 pretty close pregnancies, doing a proper work of training to reach a higher level of myself performance wise. If I had doubts? Sometimes yes.
As unfit as I have been this year I have never been in my life. As many setbacks I´ve had over the last 6 months I have never had.
But, I changed things, got back to the basic and started over.
To get back to the beginning,
2018 was the year I got pregnant with Maj. I was super tired the 14 first weeks, where I trained very light, and then felt pretty bad running from week 20, so I had some easier weeks until I could ski. I had a good pregnancy all in all with no bigger problems.
The journey back to fitness went pretty fast after the first pregnancy, but I think I was living on old merits, I cheated a little with strength training, and ran more than I think was good, looking back. I think we always need to push our limits to evolve, but of course finding the best balance and outcome is hard to know!
I did a few races with good times and feelings, both running and skimo, and then I got pregnant again!
I was even more tired this time, 2020, autumn, but managed to at least move around!
X country skiing felt very good and skimo to, same as previous time.
As Ylva-Li was born in the middle of april had promised myself to start running not before 3 months later, but instead try to focus on biking and strength. That plan I was following, but then life and covid restrictions got me close to a big burnout. I could not train due to the heartrate was just insane, so I needed to give my body a break for a while.
In the end of June I slowly started to train, and slowly started to build kilometres.
When the kilometres comes easier, it´s easy to feel that I´m getting strong, and also forgetting the important core work! 2 pregnancies does not give you a strong core!
After a very muddy race in September I got pain in my back, and decided to take a step back with running for some weeks and focus again on building up my core. I got to meet a pelvic floor expert (WHY IS THIS NOT THE NORM FOR EVERY WOMAN AFTER GIVING BIRTH? IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY THAT IT´S NOT!) , she agreed that it could be smart to focus on getting my transverse abdominals stronger and give running a rest. It´s very common that after pregnancies it´s hard to connect to them, and as they are so important for the control of all the core. So my back pain came from week transverse, we concluded! And it went away, and step by step I started to run a little again. With strength training as prio 1, if I did not do the exercises, I was not allowed to run! It worked. Especially as I made a plan of 15 minutes strength every day, so that was easy to keep.
In Oktober I once again saw the light in the tunnel of getting stronger, and then more or less 8 weeks of Maj´s cold got me back to zero or close by.
The fun part I save for the next post! The training weeks where nothing felt easy, but just getting it done to start to feel the response!
I will also explain the exercises I did for my core. Very basic. I still do them!
