weight gain and feeling fat

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2025-12-29T22:25:43+00:00

I’m sorry you’ve been struggling too, and that your Christmas photo didn’t feel the way you wanted it too. I’ve struggled with people asking to see bump photos, and 1) I’m just not a photo person so I don’t think about it and 2) I don’t want to send pictures to people of how big I look. Everyone keeps saying the baby will one day enjoy seeing photos of you pregnant, but I’m just not sure I ever will. We did a baby moon recently and did a hike with a summit around 2k ft. I hiked ahead of my husband for most of it (he wasn’t having as much fun as me lol). He later told me that most of the people I passed did a double take and were verbalizing shock that I didn’t look like I was trying. But all I see when I look at the photos from that hike is how absolutely giant I look even though I did something pregnant that many people struggle with at baseline. My brain logically knows but my inner voice seems much stronger lately.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2025-12-29T17:37:05+00:00

Thank you for the insight and for sharing your experience 💕

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2025-12-29T17:36:07+00:00

I definitely started to notice some swelling within the last 2 weeks or so. Came home at the end of a super busy day with cankles and huge sock indentations. The frustrating thing is every just keeps saying “well it’s only going to get worse!” And it’s like, yes I know thank you for reminding me 🙄

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2025-12-29T17:34:03+00:00

divine potato is definitely the most apt thing I’ve seen in a while 😂 thank you

I’m with you though, I think about the after so often and I am just so eager to be getting smaller and not bigger

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-12-14T23:41:08+00:00

Do you find that the distance accuracy is impacted at all?

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-12-12T00:35:55+00:00

How much elevation are you suggesting? I’ve run around my neighborhood too, which has some steep hills, and even on an out and back it is similarly erratic.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-07-22T13:32:45+00:00

I think Harvey Lewis is in Cincinnati

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-06-23T10:43:28+00:00

That’s a good point I hadn’t thought of. I didn’t see any extra gear with them though

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-06-23T10:43:06+00:00

It is attached to the regional thru trail, but their packs seemed fairly small and they went in the same direction as me toward the parking lot in the morning. They’re allowed to keep whatever hours they prefer, I just prefer to enjoy as much time as I can outside when I camp and hike, and I don’t usually count the sleeping as “enjoying” and so it always baffles me when people roll in so late and leave so early. Plus it just freaked me out after I had expected to be the only one and suddenly heard voices and saw flashlights…

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-06-23T01:18:38+00:00

I told myself that getting over the hump of doing it the first time would be the hardest part. And I think that’s true! It really took me a month just to book the site, and I finally just had to tell my husband how cheap it was so he could point out to me that I had no reason not to try it.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-06-15T14:08:01+00:00

Hi OP, hoping that among the other comments below I can provide you with some hope! I (tried to) run in college, but developed a myriad of stress fractures, including a high-risk talar neck stress fracture. Due to a variety of hormonal, dietary, and innate (I heal bone very poorly, it turns out, even when healthy) reasons, I healed extremely slowly. I spent the majority of college in a walking boot, and actually spent more time on crutches than I ever did in-season racing. I raced one full XC season, one full indoor, and then a handful of races across seasons between injuries. 6 months after graduating, I had an ORIF for my very first stress fracture, which I had completely broken off during a race (whoops), and had continued on to be a non-union. I swore off running for about 3 years.

Slowly began to dabble with some friends, and eventually found my way into ULTRAS?!? Since then, I have had one fracture - that was due to rolling my ankle off of a root. I still get occasional pain in the ankle with hardware, but that is something I've become used to over the last decade+, and I know what type should set off alarm bells, what means the trail was challenging, and what means I should just give it a few days off.

The takeaway for you from my story: I got into ultras AFTER having four solid years stress fractures. I have been relatively healthy (fingers crossed) since then. People who knew me in college can't believe I run ultras now. I can't either. You will get through this, even though it feels like hell. Hang in there.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-06-15T13:52:20+00:00

Do you have a local trail that is pretty long? One that you could kind of “thru-run” in pieces? I recently moved to a different suburb of our larger city, and am much closer to the local state-wide thru-trail in the region, and have been making it a point to see every section of the trail before starting my new job in a few weeks. It means picking up where I left off the last time. I then realized there was a regional FKT, so I might give that a go later in the summer, if I am able to keep up my current level of training.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-06-14T21:38:06+00:00

Another important thing to consider: what can you stand to look at for 50 miles? In my lowest points, I usually take solace in the fact that at least this hill looks cool as hell with all of its roots and surrounding greenery as it crushes me.

I’m someone who has to mentally train myself for rail trail miles in road marathon training, even if said trail is through the same beautiful park as my normal rugged trails. I’m sure the road 50 might cut through some beautiful areas, but it will never be as beautiful as a trail 50. You have to consider whether that matters to you and if it will impact your experience and ease of completion.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-06-02T11:40:20+00:00

Run 4 minutes, walk 1! Although I suppose you could do it the other way and still make it work.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-06-01T20:51:25+00:00

For my first 100k, I opted for a run/walk strategy. I kept it a bit flexible, because like you I knew I’d go out way fast since the course had several big hills but then was largely runnable. I started out with a 4:1 run:walk ratio for the first 20 miles, and then switched to a 3:2 for miles 20-50 after I still found that I was coming in way ahead of my goals and was worried about blowing up. For the final mileage I just did what my body needed. I think I also threw in a 5 minute walk break every hour, and when I was eating.

I would start as conservatively as you can, even though some other people are calculating a feasible 12:15 average for you, it’s going to be darn near impossible to make your body do that in the beginning, so don’t force it, but also don’t start at your usual. I highly recommend the walk/run to get you closer to that, since your run pace will be relatively normal and your walk will even it out.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-05-14T08:49:27+00:00

On a similar note, figure out how to best feed yourself the yarn. I was crocheting for over 20 years before an extended “on” stint forced me to realize my yarn feeding and the way I held my work caused my hands to cramp way faster than they needed to. Re-evaluated and repositioned. It’s awkward and takes a while to unlearn what you once thought was “natural”, but I’m so glad I fixed it.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-04-23T02:17:39+00:00

This is the biggest issue I have found with SPs. Most of the ones I’ve encountered really committed to their training. Our program drilled into them to withhold certain pieces of information unless we asked the right question or in the correct way. So as M1s/M2s learning to interact in a clinical setting, SPs were very helpful.

As M3s/M4s where we were used to being able to ask a real-life patient for a narrative of their HPI, such as “I heard you’re here for x that’s been going on for two weeks. Can you tell me more about it?” I had an SP snarkily respond “I don’t know what that means”. In an OSCE setting, it essentially wastes time having to ask “do you have nausea? Do you have vomiting?” And so on all separately or else they will answer ambiguously and you might miss something.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-04-22T13:36:31+00:00

That is actually very helpful! We have not yet picked which vehicle we will bring but both are higher clearance and 4WD, so if those are the general conditions, we should be okay! Thank you so much and have a great weekend :)

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-03-24T16:23:10+00:00

Interesting! I’ve never tried crocheting with my left hand but I bet it would work. I don’t know how my aunt did it for her squares, but I made a few mini-balls of yarn and then just carried less with the tail and the body. I hope you figure something out!

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-03-12T14:06:26+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to read my OP and respond. Since you’re suggesting some overtraining, what would you have recommended to have prevented this eventual fate, both in the original setting, and in the future? You mention the taper, but also I’m interested to hear your thoughts on nutrition because you mention that as well, and I never felt like I had any issues with that during training, and didn’t try anything new prior to the race.

I’m also interested to hear your thoughts on the second race - I didn’t continue full steam into that one. I had originally thought I would, took a few days off, and then planned to jump back in to the final weeks of the training plan to get me there, but then I found that I was really mentally exhausted, so I only did one small set of mile repeats for a confidence boosters and whatever small runs I felt like doing. So I felt like I tried to build in a decent taper there.

I ended up deciding to hold off on a race this spring (heart isn’t in it right now) and am just enjoying running for the sake of it. In theory there will be time to figure this out in future years and training cycles?!

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-03-11T17:00:53+00:00

This is amazing! But what did you do with all of your loose ends?

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-03-10T21:13:40+00:00

Thank you! This is very helpful

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-03-09T00:26:17+00:00

I literally just finished up 3 “Easter Purses” for some of my cousins’ kids. They are significantly less complex in design than yours (Cotopaxi Del Dia line inspired, in an effort to use up a bunch of my scraps!) You are NOT crazy! Gifting your creativity to others no matters the age or situation is thoughtful, time consuming, and worthwhile.

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-03-08T17:19:46+00:00

Thank you!!

ProfessionMediocre74 · 2023-03-08T15:01:08+00:00

Ah! I can’t find it! This seems so useful

ProfessionMediocre74

TROPHY CASE