I have a sought-after entry to the Indianapolis Mini Marathon, which takes place in a few weeks.* Back in November I also signed up for a well-organized running club for which my employer provided a free pass. I was really looking forward to training for a half marathon again now that we’ve been sleeping through the night 70% of the time. I also thought the running club would be a great opportunity to meet some people. And then three weeks before the training began in January, I discovered I was pregnant and these dreams were dashed! Fine, fine. Yes, we purposefully tried to conceive. But I didn’t think it would actually work that quickly. I thought the window would close on my No Babies in the Late Fall or the Winter rule, and I would happily go along my running way and try again after the race.
Ah well.
As the weather improves, I see more and more serious runners training outside for the Mini, and I feel a tad more strangled by my growing body than usual. This happened when I was pregnant with Pitter in the springtime too: only when my body is in its most powerful female state do I yearn to trade my body with that of an athletic young man. They are gazelles–running machines–strong and lean, gliding with seemingly no effort across the lands. And I am a hippopotamus. A hippo full of new life, but a hippo nonetheless.
I actually considered training for the Mini despite (or in spite of?) my pregnancy. I thought, Hey, I could just approach it like it’s my very first race and intend to walk a good half of it. Then I went back to my first pregnancy journal and realized that although I was in tip-top shape, able to easily run six miles, etc. when I became pregnant the first time, at right around five months I had to give up jogging for good. It tweaked my back so badly that for days after an easy run every time I sat down or bent over, or walked, I couldn’t escape the sensation of knives being stuck into my lower back. I gave up spinning classes at this point too. So hmmm…to run a half marathon at about five months pregnant with Patter while quite out of shape seemed…selfish. Stupid. Possibly dangerous. And so I gave up the punishing dream of running myself silly and probably cooking Patter while I did.
But what I can do is walk a 5K.
And there’s much more story for me to tell about that. Tune in tomorrow for Part 2.
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*Shhhhh! If you or anyone you know is interested in using the Mini Marathon entry in my name, contact me! (But only if you promise not to have health problems if I sign the waiver for you and won’t take longer than 2 hours to complete the race because then you’ll cream my ego since every time someone googles my name and get race results they’ll think I’m really slow now that I’ve had a baby and we just can’t have that.)
