Hey Everyone! Well, I have made it to 21 weeks!! Here is a current picture of me and all my baby glory. I found out last week that I will have a girl! Yay!

Man, I have been struggling with expectations! First of all, I really have been putting on the weight this time! I also have had a hard time controlling the cravings. Turns out, I really like Arbys. Like a lot. That gooey cheese in the beef and cheddar is pretty much the best thing in the world. Oh…. how am I am going to avoid becoming a blimp??

Anyway, this pregnancy is much harder. I can’t really seem to ever put in the full workout. Because my motivation is wavering at times, I tend to jump at any excuse I get to cut it short. My 3 year old has recently decided he LOVES to climb, so he has been hitting the auto-belays and kiddie boulder at the gym. While I am thrilled that he is so interested, this also means a lot of my gym time is spent spotting him, hooking him into the auto-belay, or simply cheering him on. I have been trying the whole “let’s take turns” approach, but he is so stoked to climb, he isn’t really willing to give me a turn.

So, my expectations need to be re-evaluated. One, I need to accept that any gym time is good gym time, and two, when I climb outside, I need to realize that 12s are now really much harder than they used to be! I remarked to my hubby the other day that 11s aren’t really as fun as they used to be. I really love the feeling of flowing and climbing “well”, but that seems to be harder now because my body doesn’t quite do what I expect. So, I am losing the “flow” while I climb anything harder than 11a/b. This is sort of taking the fun out of it. I realize now, I need to take a different approach. Hard 11 is now in my mind hard 12. So, I should approach it that way. I also need to spend more time on 10s and even 9s to get that fun feelin’ again! So I am gonna try.

Endurance Workout

I am doing a weekly or 2x a week projecting/endurance workout. This is of course courtesy of Power Company Climbing. Essentially, the plan is as follows:

1-2 easy warmups (currently, these are low 10s for me)

2 “rooting” routes (currently, these are hard 10s or easy 11s) Rooting is where you focus on pulling with your arms and pushing with your legs all the way through a move. You feel like you “root” into each hold. I also feel like I am squeezing my glutes and back. Here is a link to the rooting exercise explanation:

1-2 attempts on a project (this is typically a hard 12, but the auto-belay doesn’t always offer this, so sometime I make it up by taking holds out of a low 12) I am still onsighting easy 12s on the autobelay

My program then calls for steep and vertical laps, but I don’t actually have access to that on the auto belay. So, instead I either hit the tread wall OR I just do 3-6 laps on 10s and 11s. This is truthfully the part that might get cut short due to my 3 year old.

I most enjoy this workout of all my workouts. I think it is the most enjoyable because I am actually climbing! And, because so much of it is climbing easy stuff, it feels like I still know how.

Cheers!!