So here I am my daughter’s first birthday shortly
after my daughter’s first birthday. It’s August and my last post was in
November (of course I started the post on her birthday but it didn’t get posted
until now. Such is life). So it’s been a while. I had, indeed, all the best of
intentions to blog about what I was doing, particularly running. But alas,
motherhood and working has gotten the best of me. I thought I’d snap back more quickly than I have. Instead of
running, I’ve been slapped with this stack of exercises:
I’ve read a million running mom
blogs and read Runner’s World about professional running moms who were running
100 miles a week when their babies were just tiny. Well that wasn’t me. It is
hard to get out the door when the babe is relying on you (and only you!) for
food. And this is not even touching on the mom-guilt that comes with leaving
your baby for anything that you don’t “need.” Well I need running (otherwise
I’m a bear. Just ask my husband), but it’s still easy to convince yourself that
that should be the first thing to go when baby needs something. It’s also
discouraging when struggling with post-baby injury or other issues—in my case a
pelvic floor that just didn’t hold up very well to the childbirth process.
Slowly but surely I’ve been seeing some improvements with my
pelvis/hip/pelvic floor issues that have been plaguing me since pregnancy.
(More to come on what has helped me in a future post. I know that a lot of
women go through this but it’s most definitely not something people talk about
enough, in my opinion). I’m planning on running the Twin Cities Marathon on
October 7th. I would set a time goal, but at this point, my main
goal is to not pee my pants. It will be difficult, but I like to set lofty
goals. As for time, I just want to finish. I am fully aware that this first
race back after baby (albeit 15 months after baby) will likely not be my best.
I just needed a goal and a reason to get out the door. I had to run despite all
the pee and the wet shoes, because heaven knows you can’t fool a marathon into
thinking you trained when you really didn’t.
In a nutshell, here’s how training has gone: I’ll have a
good week, meaning that I run 2-3 times during the week and then get my long
run in the weekend. Usually a bad week follows where I run 1-2 times during the
week and (fingers crossed) have time for a long run on the weekend. I’m feeling
pretty confident in my ability to simply finish because of getting [most] of my
long runs in; however, I know I won’t excel at this race by any means. I
haven’t hit the gym once during training. My cross training has been quite
limited—I’ve been swimming a handful of times and done a couple 20-minute
sessions of deep water running.
I’ll try my best to keep posted how the rest of training for
this marathon goes as well as what else I have in store. Happy running (or
whatever it is that you love…happy that-ing)!
