4 Months

Four months post partum, I am finally starting to feel like myself. I am still much fatter and much slower, but my distance is coming back to me.

For January, my goal was to work on the 5 mile distance. However, in the first two weeks, I jumped to 7 miles. And it felt natural. It felt familiar. It felt better than the shorter distances, as it always did.

I have leaped ahead of my training schedule (distance-wise, absolutely not in pace), but I plan to stay here until I return to prepregnancy weight. Then I will move onto my coveted 10 mile distance. Hopefully, losing the weight in the interim will bump my pace up a bit. I need to shake two minutes per mile to return to my normal, three+ to achieve my ultimate goal.

We have also started working on our 10K route for run club. The full 10K route is quite brutal, so we have started with a 5 mile modification. The hills are still insanely challenging, and I still feel like a champion on the final spring.

I will consider myself back to normal (and where I want to be) when I am running a 5 mile, a 10K (run club), and a 10 mile run per week and when I am running in 11 minute miles. I would say that I am halfway there (much like my weight loss), but halfway seems far closer than when I started. I can appreciate the progress; I can see the light at the end of this tunnel.

I just keep pushing myself, obsessively as always. I run myself ruthlessly and punish myself for every pound.

I try not to focus on not being what I want or what I was; I try to accept that just because I am not there does not make my body wrong or repulsive. I try to permit myself the time to recover from creating a child. But I never was very good at being easy on myself.