Laura Mcelhone I have been training with Janet since mid 2009 to improve my general health and fitness. I continued to train right up until a couple of weeks before my daughter, Emily, was born in February 2011, and Janet helped me adjust my work outs as my pregnancy progressed. I knew I wanted to get back to training as soon as possible after Emily was born to avoid getting into bad habits with a young child.After a C-section with complications and almost 3 weeks in hospital I was in pretty bad shape, and my first attempt to leave the house saw me struggling to walk to the first lamp post from the end of my drive, but each day it got a little bit easier and I was surprised how quickly I was able to push the buggy around the block and start thinking about getting back to training again. I am sure that keeping up my training into late pregnancy was key to recovering so quickly. After I was cleared to exercise again at 6 weeks, I started back training with Janet. I had gained about 10kg during pregnancy and lost the first couple of kilos quite quickly once I started to train again. However, after a few weeks, I could feel things started to stagnate and I needed an extra punch of motivation to get my eating and exercise properly on track. So I announced to Janet that I had entered the Krank off-road duathlon in Hanmer springs in October and asked if she could put together a training plan for me. So that was my mission ... a 5k off road run and 12k mountain bike. I wasn’t worried about time, I just wanted to finish... and if I wasn’t last then that would be a bonus. It was only at that point that I suddenly realised that I couldn’t actually run 1k without stopping for a breather, let alone 5k with enough left in the tank to get on a bike afterwards. Oh yes, and I had to fit my training around looking after a young baby and avoid aggravating a long standing ankle problem. However, Janet assured me that 15 weeks I had was plenty of time to get into good enough shape to complete it. And so it began... we talked about what time I was able to commit to training and Janet put together a day by day plan that allowed me to train with Emily in tow (or more likely being pushed up a large hill) on the days when I didn’t have childcare. Actually, pushing a baby up a large hill is the ideal incremental training. As you get fitter, the baby gets heavier. I was given the plan in 5 week chunks so I couldn’t get too frightened at what was to come. Each week when we met for my personal training session we would talk about how things were going, as well as working on strength and stability. Janet always found a great balance between telling me how well I was going, whilst also just making me think I could push just a little bit harder. I would email her after each of my training sessions to let her know how I had gone, and if it all went quiet for a little while she would check in with some encouraging words and make sure I was okay. She also helped with that rather delicate subject of nutrition – an area that has long been a challenge for me. Focusing on training for an event rather than simply trying to lose weight certainly made a huge difference. Whenever I wanted to eat bad food I simply thought about how much harder the run was going to be carrying so much extra weight. And it was great to finally be able to answer Janet’s gentle inquiry of ‘Soooo.... how’s the nutrition going?’ with ‘Really great thanks’, rather than mumbling something about ‘too busy’, ‘wasn’t feeling good’ or similar under my breath and hurriedly changing the subject. As I went through my training and reached the point where I started to feel like I could do it, and realised that although I was a slow runner my biking was respectable, I started to set myself other goals and went into the race wanting to finish in under 1 hr 30 mins, not be last on the run and overtake some people on the bike. So, I took the 15 weeks day by day, training session by training session... and the results speak for themselves... I started the race 13kg lighter than when I returned to training post-pregnancy, went into transition with 1 person still behind me, and overtook 6 people on the bike. And I finished in 1.21.36 – well within my target time. I am extremely grateful to Janet for her ongoing support and encouragement, as well as giving me a swift kick up the bum when that was what was needed. Her training plan has kept me just at that point of pushing hard enough to improve without getting injured or demoralised that it was beyond me. She has showed me that I am capable of much more than I thought if I just put the work in. Next week we start the training for a triathlon... hell, why not! |
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