Pacing Myself
“I felt like I was running on stilts,” she said. “It was like torture. I thought I’d be a lot faster than I was. I was shocked.”
Well, that's a relief. Even the Olympians are human. This was coming from Blake Russell in a New York Times article about the recent wave of top female marathoners taking time off to do the baby thing.
“I felt like I was starting from scratch many, many times,” Russell said. “I felt like I didn’t know if I was ever going to get back to my old level of fitness.”
I so relate. At this point I'm just taking heart in the fact that I was able to up my distance to 1.6 miles at a time. Yesterday, I ran it at a blazing 11:25/mile pace. I'm still holding off from running every day, since my back and hips feel pretty creaky afterward. I keep reminding myself that my body is already under a lot of stress from the weird sleep patterns and constantly feeding the growing pup. There's no reason to rush the process, since the most counter-productive thing I could do is rush myself into an injury.
