Amy Tarpley, an avid distance runner, wasn’t prepared for the strain and drain that being pregnant would put on her fitness regimen. Even though she has run marathons and prides herself on her endurance, she has, at times, found herself sapped of the energy to work out.

She has been pregnant since the spring and, early on, was still logging between 30 and 40 miles a week. Now, with less than two months until her due date, she is resigned to walking about 10 miles a week.

“Healthy and pregnancy is sort of like an oxymoron,” she said. “I wish somebody had told me beforehand that it was going to be a struggle to keep eating healthy, to keep exercising.”

The journey to giving birth can be a triathlon of trimesters, a biological obstacle course for even the fittest of women. And doctors say that is why it can be beneficial for those who might be out of shape when they get pregnant to embark on pregnancy as a kind of mini marathon, a nine-month baby-bootie camp to gradually prepare their bodies for the delivery room.

One of the keys is avoiding the pitfalls of overeating or lazing your way through pregnancy, says Dr. John R. Lue, director of labor and delivery at the Medical College of Georgia.

“Yes, you want to rest, but you want to walk also and you want to swim,” Lue said.

To which some patients, not unlike everyday folks who are not pregnant, invariably complain that they’re too busy, too tired after a day’s work.

Lue’s reply: “Well, you know, when you get ready to have this baby, you’re gonna be pushing and you’re not gonna be in the shape to push as well as you can. ... Realize you’ve got a marathon to run. If you think of your delivery as a marathon, you’re going to get in shape for that marathon. You’re going to do your exercises. ... So that you can do what you have to do when it’s time to push. You can have the stamina and the strength to push.”

He says women who do some sort of exercise tend to tolerate labor better than women who do none.

“Some patients you need to tell, ‘You know, you can’t sit there and do nothing. You can’t just sit and eat and eat and eat.’ Then other ones who are the exercise fanatics ... those patients you have to slow down,” Lue said

“But the times of a woman not doing anything and basically being an incubator are over. Women used to sit, they couldn’t do anything. Now they have to be healthy. ... It’s still evolving. It’s been for the past about 15 years or so that more and more we’re finding ways where women are improving their health with nutrition and exercising.”

Lue says proper diet is a crucial component — what with the vast numbers of people already overweight, or, as he puts it, “a little on the heavier side” — in keeping weight gain during pregnancy within appropriate margins.

“It’s important to know how many calories you need,” Lue said. And it may not be as many as you think.

For the first trimester, women don’t need much of an increase over their normal caloric intake. In the second, upping the calories by about 300 a day is a general rule, which, Lue notes, isn’t much food. “Maybe a granola bar or something like that.”

The third trimester typically requires about 450 extra calories a day.

“If they want to add something that’s not gonna add a lot of fat — yogurt, whole wheat bread or bananas,” Lue said. “Try to eat a little more healthy, a little more roughage, green vegetables. Try to cook at home more than you eat out.”

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In the months before Wendy Chadwell gave birth to her baby girl, she was active in step aerobics. The aerobics later gave way to walking, but still afforded her something of a personal fitness breakthrough.

“I actually became more healthy when I got pregnant,” said Chadwell, 30, of Warner Robins, who had her daughter in July.

She attributes that to eating better, lots of salads and more nutritious dinners. She ate granola for breakfast and craved pineapple. Not to mention milk. Skim milk.

“I went through three gallons a week,” she said.

Maria Andrade of Macon, who is halfway into her pregnancy, is a distance runner who has turned to more walking and yoga and some cross training and stretching.

Andrade, 35, said, “My runs got slower and shorter and it was increasingly difficult. ... It wasn’t comfortable, so I’ve been walking more or been doing run-walks.”

Before she got pregnant, she ran a marathon in the spring.

When she became pregnant, she was still running three or four times a week, but that was soon down to two or three times a week, and then once and then walking. Early on, though, she was running 12 to 15 miles a week.

“I think I got to a point where my focus on my body shifted to the pregnancy and having a healthy baby and a healthy pregnancy. And it wasn’t about training and how much exercise I could do anymore, and it wasn’t about what shape my body is anymore because I just feel like nature has to take its course. And then I can train for another race in a year. There will always be more races, but I get one shot at having this baby,” Andrade said.

She gets her extra “pregnancy” calories from bananas and yogurt.

“Extra calories with soda pop and fast-food burgers and chips and cupcakes, all that stuff is gonna put on the pounds and make for an unhealthy diet if you’re pregnant or if you’re not,” Andrade said. “The trick is, I guess, to just be healthy, and if you get pregnant, try and stay healthy.”

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For Tarpley, the runner who has curtailed her mileage as her due date nears, finding the energy to fix dinner, much less work out, is tougher than she’d envisioned.

“You’re just so exhausted the whole time that it’s a lot easier to just go eat something you wouldn’t typically eat, like from the drive-through,” Tarpley, 34, of Macon, said. “You don’t feel like taking that extra time to prepare something healthy.”

And, she added, “I’m so tired at the end of the day, the last thing I want to do is even go for a walk.”

The last time she went running was in June. Pregnant since spring, she slowly cut back on the running miles and is walking now.

“It’s amazing how much my muscle mass has just completely disappeared. ... That’s tough for me to have to deal with,” Tarpley said.

She says she always had a weakness for sweets, cupcakes especially, and now that she’s pregnant, “it has become like 100 times worse.”

“If it’s got sugar,” she said, “I’ll pretty much eat it.”

Still, she eats a lot of fruit and stays away from fried food. She swims a couple of times a week and does some strength training, but 5-pound weights are the most she lifts. And she walks three or four times a week.

Oh, and she is signed up for a marathon. It’s in Savannah. Next November.

If she is cleared by her doctor to get back in running shape by late January, that should give her ample time to find her marathoner’s stride. Forty weeks to be precise.

“Which,” Tarpley said, “is the exact amount of weeks that you’re pregnant.”

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.