My last update was about 8 months ago. A few things have happened since then.
My last run before the baby was the Cancer Challenge 5k in June. The goal to keep preggo-running until this race and then turn my attention to yoga for the last 3 months of baby-baking. It's funny to see what a difference a year makes......
2013 race- 23:41 7:38/mile. I ran by myself, for myself.
2014 race- 32:26 10:28/mile. I ran 6 months pregnant pushing 2 kiddos in a stroller. It was epic.
Then I did a lot of yoga and a lot of walking to work.
Then I birthed a child on Sept 10, 2014. Her name is Mara and her sisters adore her. Mara's name is a nod to the stage of life the husband and I are in right now. We've been doing a lot of running and marathoning. So we took inspiration from the word "marathon" and decided Mara would be an appropriately awesome name.
I'm back on the running wagon now and (mostly) loving it! I get questions about starting running again after baby #3 and how it's going. I have two answers:
1. Being in pretty good shape when we got preggo and staying active throughout made a huge difference. It was pretty easy to go out and run 3 miles my first time out, which was about 7 weeks after Mara showed up.
2. On the flip side of #1, I had worked really hard for quite a while to get my body to where I wanted it to be physically. Nine months of baby-cooking pretty much throws all of that out the window. I'm left with a more difficult mental battle than I was prepared for. Toning and tightening takes a long time to accomplish and I need to be patient with it. I have remind myself of that everyday.
I signed up for the Bentonville Half Marathon training program and I love it! It's great to have something to work for and an accountability aspect since you meet every week. And man, those folks at Rush Running and all the volunteers they've recruited to show up every Saturday are just unreal. Such supportive, amazing, inspiring, and awesome runners. Even though they may not know who I am, I love them. You know what else is great? Having a spouse whose motivation for you to do well is (almost) greater than your own motivation. I love that he willingly and happily takes all three girls and kicks my butt out the door for a run, or yoga, or barre. He is also supportive, amazing, inspiring, and awesome. And cute.
