Return to running

I'm running again!

I want to shout it from the roof tops!

Running after having a baby is a major sign that I'm getting my life back.

It makes me feel empowered and happy.

It makes me feel young.

Being a mom of four kids sometimes feels like responsibility, responsibility, responsibility all day long and running provides me that outlet to just do something for myself. Even if it's just 20 minutes. My entire attitude changes that day.

And it also burns calories, which is a major plus right now.

Micah turned 5 weeks old on Saturday, November 3rd.

So on Monday the 5th, I decided I would try walking a couple of miles and see how I felt.

I felt great.

So on Wednesday the 7th, I thought I would just see what would happen if I ran a mile.

I put it on a 12 minute mile, being super cautious.

It felt really easy.

It felt so easy, in fact, that I went ahead and did 2 miles.

I didn't run the next day to see how that initial run would affect my body.

Besides a little lower back pain and some sore inner thighs, I felt fantastic.

So that Friday I ran 2.5 miles, and on Saturday I did 3.2. I even dipped into the 10-something pace and still felt great! I could not believe how well my body was adjusting to running again. I still can't believe it. I've never had a comeback this strong. I don't know if it's because I ran those 2 half marathons while I was pregnant or because I let my body heal for almost the full 6 weeks or both. But whatever it is, I'm loving it.

This week Micah is 6 weeks old and I ran 2 miles on Monday and 3 miles yesterday (Wednesday) and felt great. Yesterday I did a 10:30 pace for the first 1.25, and then a 10:00 pace for the rest of the second mile. On my 3rd mile, I kept upping my speed little by little and finished at a 9:30 pace. I actually dipped down into an 8:57 sprint for the last tenth of a mile and I felt that a little, but it wasn't that bad! So far so good!! No weird pelvic pain or anything.

So, because I have been feeling so good, I decided to run a 10k turkey trot with some friends from my ward next week. I hope I don't pay for that. I'm going to run 5 this Saturday (realllly slow) and that should give me a good idea of whether or not I can really do it.

And speaking of girls from my ward, I have an amazing group of girls that love to do races together and today we all signed up for the Big Cottonwood Marathon in September. It's a new race (first time just a couple months ago) but everyone is RAVING about it. These girls did the half and said it was hands down the best race they've ever done. They said it was the only downhill course that was really downhill the entire time. And they give you your race photos for free! They said the organization was amazing, too. So I'm really excited about that. So now I've got the Utah Valley Marathon in June and the Big Cottonwood in September. Woo hoo!

**Update**

I set out to run 5 on Saturday and only made it 4. Yikes. I really felt like an idiot for registering for that 10k on Thursday. I'm so glad I did it though because I learned a valuable lesson- slow down!! Today I set out for a run and decided I would go way slower (11 minute miles +) and just see how far I felt like going. I got to 3 miles and felt great. Got to 4 and still felt great. So I did 5 and it wasn't hard (just took forever- 56 minutes). On Saturday I was trying to pull off a 10 minute pace and it was just too fast. So now I know that I need to take this 10k really slow, and that will be my ticket.  Seems silly to sign up for a RACE just to run slow, but it will be really cool to log a 10k before Micah is even 2 months old! Huge improvement on my recovery after Kyle- it took me 6 months to get up to a 10k! I know the biggest difference has been having my own treadmill, but I'm still stoked about how well my body is responding to running!