Poor communication: the story of my body and me this week

Total steps yesterday:  18,165
Exercise for today:  1.5 mile walk

So I have talked frequently about the important of listening to your body.  I was glad I had a race training foundation in this prior to pregnancy, and it's  been immensely helpful as I've navigated the various diet and exercise challenges of this particular phase of my life.

This week, though, my body's not talking.  Or maybe I have in ear plugs and can't hear it.  Or possibly I'm just a bad listener.  Either way, I can't quite figure out what's going on.  I've been relatively tired despite getting plenty of sleep.  My diet has been on track.  My workouts, however, are suffering.  I just don't have the motivation and when I do start I just want to quit.  Seriously, for today's workout I walked for 25 minutes, or about a mile and a half, and then quit and got a scone.

And I'm totally cool with that, if it's what my body really needs.  I feel like food-wise I can hear my body - I'm feeding it well, but occasionally indulging in an extra snack or eating lunch at 10:30 because that's when I want my caesar salad.  I can't tell with exercise though if I'm legitimately this tired or looking for an excuse to slack off.

In the past, I can tell when I'm getting burned out on exercise, and normally either take a few days off or just push through the pain and look ahead to when it will be awesome again.  I feel like that's not an option right now, though.  Partially that's because I feel up against a bit of a time crunch - there's only so many more weeks of possible exercise, and I want to make the most of them, and I refuse to  believe that 22 weeks is when  my body decides that exercise is no more.  So I don't want to slow down.  But at the same time, despite my refusals, if my body really is ready to  be done, I have to figure out how to accept that and move on. 

So, I now have to figure out how to tell if I'm ready to slow things down.  I might switch up my exercises just a little.  Maybe try switching to the bike instead of walking on my off running days.  That way, if this is just boredom with routine instead of actual signs I should stop, I'll give myself some other avenues to explore.  And I think I'll do my run tomorrow at a slightly slower pace.  Not super slowed down, but 11:30 minute miles or so instead of 11 minute miles.  We'll see if that extra 30 seconds give me some breathing room.  And if after a few more days of fiddling, and some long weekend sleep, I'm still feeling sluggish, then I'll start coming up with a "how to exercise when I can no longer exercise" plan.

In good news, I currently work a four day a week schedule, and was able to switch around my schedule for this weekend so that I have both Friday and Monday off, thus giving me a four day weekend with James.  I plan to sleep, go to yoga, exercise, try to get all our chores done on Friday so we have three days of nothing, and then make this soup which is the best ever but also requires about 3 hours of prep so doesn't get made very often.  I figure as long as James isn't allowed to work, we might as well enjoy the pre-baby time together as much as possible.

Wouldn't it just be super ironic if I rearranged my whole schedule and then he ended up going back to work?  I don't see that happening in the next few days, but it would make me laugh.  And I'd still be making that soup.