Modern Mama

Growing up I played a lot of sports where I learned that I possessed the discipline to show up everyday and work hard to win games and keep my spot on the team. A skill that should stick with me for my entire life, right? Wrong. During college I also learned that without set expectations on how often and what kind of workouts I needed to do I did not have the discipline to consistently work out so as an adult my life hack around this was to find and sign up for physical challenges that scared the crap out of me enough to get me to work out consistently and make healthier choices. So when we found out that we were pregnant I knew that during the first year it was going to be extremely hard to find the time (and willpower) to work out consistently. So I gave myself a challenge.

I had to find the scariest and physically intimidating event that I thought I could effectively train for before my little one’s first birthday. It took me a few months and a lot of internal debating but I finally came to the conclusion after not finding a lot of nearby options within my timeframe that I needed to do a long distance run. To give you some background I really hate running. During high school soccer our coach decided we needed more conditioning and forced us to sign up for a cross country meet. The distance was 3 miles and it felt like forever so any type of long distance running was going to be way outside of my comfort zone. Thank goodness that the closest long distance run in our area only offered a 5k, 10k, and Half Marathon. I’m a little afraid of what I might have done if there had been a full Marathon option but there wasn’t so a Half Marathon it was.

And yes I had to look up that a half marathon is just over 13 miles which sounded a lot more doable from the comfort of my couch when I signed up thinking I had a year to train. The race was three weeks before our little one’s birthday and like most first time parents I had a great game plan. I found some helpful goal runs online for each week leading up to the race to make sure I was on target, got some new running shoes, and had a treadmill in the house to make sure I had somewhere to go on the cold winter days. All I had to do was execute. I’m sure you can all appreciate how well that went over.

At first I started really strong and somehow managed to run a few days a week when our little one was just a few months old. Part of this was probably due to building good habits while I was out on maternity leave and the fact that I was already up a lot pumping or feeding her so it felt easier to get up early and run while she was still sleeping, but then after she turned about 8 months I hit a wall. I was suddenly a lot more tired, my pumping wasn’t going as well as it had been, work was getting busier, and my little one was no where near sleeping through the night.

There was a good three months where I barely got a run in and could feel myself doing worse than I had done just a few months before. Essentially I was going backwards and hadn’t even broken through running more than 5 miles at a time. Luckily my husband at the last minute decided to join me and do the half marathon which meant for the entire last month I had someone else pushing me and it made the difference.

As I mentioned I grew up playing sports so naturally I am a pretty competitive person so once we started doing runs together I really wanted to keep up which is pretty tricky considering my husband is 6 ft 7 and I barely make 5 ft 4 so I worked harder. He also took on the extra challenge of pushing our little one in her stroller while we did most of our runs so that really opened up the time to be more consistent since it was now something we were doing as a family during normal daytime hours. This may not apply to all kids but ours loved being pushed in her stroller during our runs since it turns out she loves the speed (she definitely gets that from her dad). So as a word of caution this approach has now become a problem since she now eggs us on to go faster during our normal walks.

Thankfully all of the last minute prep did wonders. Did I fully run the entire race. No, I definitely walked a good portion of it. Did I finish in an above average time. No, bottom half of the pack here. Did I finish. Yes! And that is really all I wanted as well as a great excuse to work out which has always made me feel much better both physically and mentally. I also learned that its not something you need to do alone. So was the journey this great triumph and inspirational comeback story after being pregnant for nine months and raising a newborn. No, but it has been a great reminder that no matter what obstacles you run into along the way, keep pushing and finish the race. It looks different for all of us but at least we’re out there doing it. So no matter what your challenge is this year. You got this!