Starting Over

My little girl will be 9 weeks old tomorrow. Motherhood is a new and exciting adventure that I am loving.

I am also loving running again. It took me a lot longer to get back into running than I expected, as the birth was a little more traumatic than I expected. My body needed a bit longer to recover and it wasn't until 7 weeks after the birth that I even felt like running. Here is a week by week summary of progress.

Week 1: The first few days I could shuffle from the maternity ward down to the special care nursery a few times a day. By the end of the week I was shuffling around the house.

Week 2: Walking with a bit more ease

Week 3: Starting to feel human. Went walking most days and included hills.

Week 4: Increased my mileage and got out on the trails. Hello trails, I love you.

Weeks 5 - 6: Lots of trails but still just walking. 

Week 7: Still mostly walking but I did my first trail 'run'. It was pretty awesome to be back out there.

Week 8: I would say this is the week that I started running again. I did 2 runs at the start of the week and I was really happy with my fitness on those. I wasn't too happy with my leg strength though and I got some strange lower abdominal pain. I went for a run with some friends a couple of days later and the abdominal pain was quite bad. Maybe I just did too much too soon, but I backed right off after that. It seemed to improve.

Week 9: I did a couple of runs early in the week and was quite happy with my fitness. My shins were a bit sore though and my knees felt pretty weak, like they weren't supporting me properly. Probably that relaxin hormone at work. The abdominal pain was pretty minimal but still there. In the middle of the week I got sick and did nothing for a few days. I then decided it was a good idea to go for a 10km trail run the first day I felt better. It wasn't a good idea. Very light headed and so very thirsty (ie I was dehydrated). The positive though was that my legs felt good and I didn't get the abdominal pain.

I am excited to see what week 10 brings. I guess my progress is slower than expected but I am feeling happy and positive. I am not in any rush to enter races. I would like to do GOW in October because it has always interested me, but I'm not too worried if I have to give it a miss. Oh and I love my new training partner. She is too tiny for the jogger pram still, but she joins me on all my walks.