Pregnant and following a plan

[OreoCookie]

@lillmango

Ive been super lucky until now (soon in third semester) and have been able to ride about about 10 hrs per week during my pregnancy so far. Mainly Im doing it just because it makes me feel so much better and eventually I also hope not to loose so much of my form ( my FTP was about (260W/60kg) 4 w/kg when I got pregnant, and now Ive dropped to about 230 w in actual numbers in FTP, and thats not too bad. But Ive also gained about 10 kgs so the w/kg-ratio is not that good anymore but it doesnt matter as far as I can keep on riding ) .

Congratulations on your pregnancy. And you are a beast, training 10 hours per week in the third trimester!!

I’ve only been co-pregnant and my wife is not a cyclist (but a gym rat). I’d take it easy after birth. Your sleep schedule will in all likelihood be a mess. Our daughter didn’t want to be breastfed for the first three months, which means I did a whole lot of bottle feeding at night. Also don’t worry about weight, my wife got back to her pre-pregnancy weight within a year or so. Although I think you probably need to wait until you stop breastfeeding.

[Vic]

Thank you and thank you for your response! I think I need to start wearing my HR monitor for training. My max is like 205 on the bike, so quite high in general. I’ll just gauge it on effort & speaking etc
Did you follow a plan at all throughout? Were you able to do races etc at all (just back off?)

Thanks Victoria

[lillmango]

I got pregnant just when all the races got canceled due to Covid . But I did a xco (mtb) training race in week 8, a 320 km long “gran fondo” in week 12 and a 150 km long and 2500 meters of elevation training race in week 20. It worked out fine as long as I just thought about doing my own thing and didn’t try to catch up with other riders etc.

I had a schedule until maybe week 32 or so but I skipped all the harder weeks and was mainly on a base training plan from week 20. I tried to think that consistency was key ! Which I also think was great as I know feel like I have a solid base. My ftp it about the same in absolute numbers as before I got pregnant but I still have about 7 kg back to race weight . No need to hurry back though !!

[runriderandi]

So I was super incredibly shocked by how strong I got after giving birth! I was back on the bike 11 days post and was able to go hard without any concern at week 4 or so (from what I remember). I just did Zwift social rides and races. At 3 months PP was when I got back on a training plan and was shocked that my FTP was just shy of the peak I had hit about a month before getting pregnant (which had fallen like 50w during pregnancy). And then my FTP went even higher later!

Of note, my HR was so high in the beginning, but I was conversational at like 180bpm so I was good with it. I know that we have so much blood volume just coursing through us at that point. And the lung capacity, my gosh, that was amazing! The postpartum effect was good for me. Once our LO’s sleep settled into a routine, then I was really off to the races!

The beginning of January my husband prompted the discussion of having one more (despite him being adamant on one and done ) Anyway, at that point I lost all motivation and started doing free rides and just riding whatever I felt. We had a loss between then and now, so yeah, we will see what the near future holds! It’ll likely end up being like a 2 year age gap on the nose at this rate. And as a parent, I can’t say I’m upset about that…hehe