At the 2017 Super Half-Marathon

The Garden of the Gods 10-Mile Run has come and gone. Last time I ran it felt like another lifetime ago, AND it was a different course, but it was still hard not to compare my performance to my "past me" time, despite it all.

The dialog that comes up around and about pregnant and postpartum women is interesting. I ran through my whole pregnancy, so it felt like everyone assumed I would bounce back "so fast" and "lose so much weight breastfeeding." A lot of people repeated these phrases to me, I think to be encouraging, but when it didn't happen like I expected, I only became more discouraged.

Like I said in my recap of running while pregnant, it's such an individual journey, especially after the baby is on the outside.

Nine months later, the scale is still stuck at a place higher than I'm used to seeing. I'm still not back in my prebaby running shorts, and I might not be for a long time.

All this is OK. The result is more than worth it. I've made peace with it, and I'm much less harder on myself now than I was when I was first starting back. It just didn't happen quite as fast as I expected it to. In the whirlwind of new parenthood, running was my connection to my social circle and was something I did just for me, but sometimes I struggled mightily when the miles didn't tick by like they used to.

Anyway, back to the Garden race. Carrie and I had run the dress rehearsal a few weeks before, so I knew all the fun we had in store, especially that hill in mile 8. Woof. We ran the dress rehearsal at about a 10:00 pace, so our only goal for the race was to beat that time. When we reached the halfway point in about 45:00, I thought, if we run a negative split, we can beat my previous time and that will prove I'm back for real!

This new course is MUCH harder to negative split, it turns out, and we came in about 3 minutes slower than my previous time. However, we ran the whole thing together, pushing each other (I think we each doubted our ability to keep up with the other), and staying pretty consistent. Our 1:32 is something I'm really proud of and another notch in my comeback belt.

Those old times will fall if and when they're meant to. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the miles as they start to go by a little easier, and I'll treasure my "me time" and time with friends on the trails.

To echo Carrie's words from her race recap, I couldn't have done all this without the stellar, supportive Colorado Springs running community. We've truly got something special going here.