Pressure's Off

I had this idea in the back of my mind when I was pregnant, that I didn't want to use a baby as an excuse to not run, or to not run much. I didn't want my baby to be an excuse for becoming unfit. I set myself some very specific goals, despite having no idea how my body would recover from pregnancy and labour.

I still agree with my general idea that I shouldn't use it as an excuse, but I need to add a bit more to the end of that - don't use the baby as an excuse when it isn't one. Sometimes my daughter is a valid excuse. Despite the ideas I may have gotten from 'Save Our Sleep', I have found that I cannot simply schedule a run during one of V's naps for any number of reasons: she wakes up constantly thoughout the nap, she only naps for 30mins and I planned a 90 min run or simply, I need to use that time to have a shower and brush my teeth because she won't give me a chance to do that any other time. The thing is, that doesn't happen every day, and I can at least do something. If she wakes up every 10 minutes, well I can do some good interval training and if she wakes up after half an hour, well a half hour run is better than nothing. The biggest issue that I am facing is that I can never really leave the house without V these days. Most of the time Chris is at work and even when he isn't, I only have a short window of time where I can go out before V cracks it for a feed (and she won't take a bottle anymore). We do have a treadmill though, and I am starting to think that V will be able to go in the jogger pram soon. So I have other options.

I guess what I have learnt is that I need to be flexible. There is no point having a training program because most of the time I can't plan like that. So I have changed my goals. I no longer want to achieve x kilometres per week or finish a particular race. I simply want to get as fit as I reasonably can. Yesterday I had planned to do a 15km trail run, but by the time Chris got home I didn't have enough time to get to the forest and run, so instead I headed out the front door, on the road. After a few kilometres though, it occured to me that I wouldn't be able to do 15km before V needed a feed (I had forgotten that Chris getting home late affected that timing too), so instead I cut it down to 10km. So my 15km trail run turned into a 10km road run. According to my new goal though, I achieved what I set out to - I did the best I could.

I find it hard to let go of structure and training programs. Hard to let go of the races I want to do. Hard to let go of my particular relationship with running. I need to though. I need to take the pressure off myself. Otherwise I will never love running the way I used to.