I wouldn't say that I'm a runner. Instead, I'll say I run. I'm not any of the things I associate with runners - a past high school or college runner, fast, elegant, someone who knows her PRs, totally confident about using the word "fartlek" in a sentence, an A cup. Pre-baby, I'd done three marathons and a half a dozen or so half marathons, with a whole mess of 5 and 10ks. Even though I plod along at the pace of a stubborn tortoise, I love to run. It helps me think, and, sometimes, it helps keep me from thinking. I love running alone in the cool pre-dawn hours, or in the silence that late afternoon snowfall brings to the city. I love the sort of shaky high that comes when my whole body's spent, but I know I can keep going just a little further, and how everything - the view of the mountains to the west of Denver, or the sight of Axel in his stroller, his lips sucking on an imaginary pacifier in his sleep - seems stronger, brighter, deeper, more real.
I kept running through pregnancy, until the evil of sciatica just made it too hard, around six months or so. Then, I walked and, from time to time - usually when I was filled with hormonal pregnancy rage about someone telling me I was bigger than a Volkswagen - I'd run a mile or two. Three weeks after Axel's birth, I started running again, though very slowly and for no more than a few blocks in a stretch. By the time he was two months old, I was running two or three miles at a stretch a couple times a week. My primary motivation for running was getting out of the house, and having a few minutes alone in which I didn't have to rock a colicky baby, in which I could feel a little bit like myself. I would sneak out for a bit on days when Sean wasn't on shift, lugged Axel in the jogging stroller with the infant carseat attachment on days when Sean was at the station for 24 hours and the baby and I were getting fussy indoors, and wedged runs into the spots of the week where I had enough time and almost enough energy for it. I didn't - still don't - have the time to drive across town to the gym, or to figure out how to get all the work/baby schedules to align so that I can take 90 minutes for yoga, but I could throw on my shoes and run, even if just for two or three miles. Axel's usually pretty happy in the jogging stroller, as long as it's under an hour and, the times when he very loudly lets me know he is so over being strapped down and spits his pacifier at me in disgust, his yells are a good motivator for sprinting the last half mile.
When I was pregnant, I had the very, very ambitious plan of running a marathon in June - seven months after having a baby. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. The longest run I've been able to do before today was ten miles, and, halfway through, I had to run back to our hotel (this was in Cape Cod), nurse Axel, and then went back out in the wind and rain. On another run around a local park, Axel was rebelling in the stroller and I thought that, this time, it was out of hunger, so my running budy and I pulled over our strollers, and I wrestled my way out of a sports bra and tried to nurse Axel on a park bench, underneath a blue flannel blanket. It was very, very public nursing. These are not long runs of the sort I used to do, and running as a nursing mother is a new experience. I had to have pretty industrial sports bras before, but now my sports bras go by the name of Helga, and they beat my leaky bosom into submission and dig grooves in my shoulders.
Another thing that's kept me running: my friend Adrienne. Adrienne and I work together, and she has a four and a half month old chubby bundle of baby love named Mateo. We've been running on the trail near our office once a week over lunch and sometimes on weekends, talking about our boys, working, new motherhood, and all that comes with it. We've gotten cheered on by other women at the park - I guess they felt the sight of two women running with children under six months deserved vocal support, which we appreciated, though not as much as the time a guy in a pick-up honked at us. Yeah, we're sweaty postpartum pin-ups. A coworker started calling us the Rubberband girls - as in, they had babies and bounced right back. While that's flattering, I don't really feel like the flab left around my belly is bouncing anywhere but up and down - though it's my own fault because, even after an eight mile run and breastfeeding, I don't really need to eat half the batch of oatmeal raisin cookies I just made.
On one of the runs we talked about doing a half marathon. I was thinking maybe October. Adrienne wanted to do the local Colfax Half Marathon in May. She'd done it for the past few years, and had done the math, working out the time up to the race and the number of miles to run each Saturday. This was about six weeks ago; I was worried I couldn't do a half but, I figured, if Adrienne, who had a baby two months after I did, thought she could do it, I could, too.
The half marathon was today, starting at six am. During the race, our conversations about our boys, wearing socks during labor, and the unique deliciousness of the Snickers bar helped pass the time. It was different than the races I've done in the past. Slower by about a half hour, for one, and it included more bathroom breaks (two. Thanks, Axel.), but I also felt stronger and happier. We carried and delivered healthy babies, nursed them for their short lives thus far, and could still run 13.1 miles. At the finish line, our husbands and babies were waiting to cheer us on. Though sore and sweaty, I felt great. We both sprinted to the finish line, and I thought, we are mothers, we are runners, and, in this moment, we are fabulous.
