Column: Savagemama

Running After Baby: Back on the Trail

By Jennifer Savage, 2-04-07

I did something the other day that I’ve not done since my daughter was born in August, something I’ve been dreading, something I was sure would be painful. I’ve put it off the past few months because I’ve been exhausted, because raising a baby is full-time work but mostly because I’ve been scared. After pushing a baby out, some parts of my body have been a little, well, sensitive, and the thought of certain activities, that I once engaged in regularly and even enjoyed, haven’t seemed so appealing. Even so, last Sunday I did it. I went running.

As I was dressing to go outside I shed my jeans and decided on a pair on comfortable pants, I traded boots for running shoes, smart wools for ankle socks and my nursing bra for a sports bra that was a little snug but still did the trick. I put the baby in the stroller that we bought expressly for this purpose and headed for the dirt road by my house. I still wasn’t even sure I’d do anything more than go for a walk. But as soon as I got to the end of my driveway I turned up the hill and started running just like I’d never stopped.

I’ve been a runner since I was fourteen. I don’t even remember how I became one, I just did. I’m not fast, not glamorous, not even that competitive. I just love to run. And I’ve missed it. Until last week, I hadn’t run in more than a year, the longest stretch I can ever remember. I ran through early twenties angst, moving across the country, Oregon rain, Montana ice, turning thirty but pregnancy was one thing I could not run through. Summer before last I was training for a 26-mile trail run and, though I didn’t know I was pregnant, ran right into a miscarriage.

Most doctors told me the running had nothing to do with it. “Maybe so,” another said, “but give it a rest and see what happens.” I gave up the trail run that summer because I just didn’t bounce back from the miscarriage in time but I kept running. I was training for the Seattle marathon that fall. That doctor’s voice kept coming back to me and one day I just stopped. I went to Seattle for Thanksgiving, the weekend of the marathon that year, to see family and as we drove out of town that morning I saw marathoners stretched out in a long line across the city. Two weeks later I found out I was pregnant with my daughter.

The first three months of my pregnancy I felt plain gross. On top of being nauseous all day and all night, I was lying to everyone I knew because I was afraid to tell anyone I was pregnant. I didn’t want to jinx it. After the queasiness subsided and I came clean, I began to walk. I realized I had been right about walking all these years. It’s boring. But I did it anyway to stay in some kind of shape. In the end, walking just didn’t do it for me. It didn’t prevent me from gaining 40 pounds, nor did it keep me off of bed rest the last few weeks of pregnancy or keep my ankles from swelling to the size of tree trunks but that’s beside the point. I missed running. I missed the endorphins; I missed seeing the world through a runner’s eye.

The first mile last week felt like the first day of track practice in spring. After a winter of eating bad lunch room pizza and drinking Coke, Coach Norton would make us, out of shape and in pain, run up the hill behind our high school. We’d get the bottom and line up to run up it again. I don’t know how many times he made us do this. He called it conditioning. I was a distance runner but on these days in early spring distance runners ran with sprinters and it hurt. I remember lining up beside Kendall Watson who was tall, broad and curvy in the 10th grade. I was skinny and lanky, and she’d pass me still struggling to get up the hill on her way back down. I felt like that kid last week. Scrawny, a little uncomfortable in my own body, breathing hard, going up a hill I’d run up a thousand times.

By mile No. 2, my breathing had leveled out a bit and my feet settled into a familiar rhythm. By mile four I remembered why I do this and I started thinking of the Missoula marathon some of my friends are talking about. Mostly, though, I thought of the cool air of a winter Montana Sunday, of what my daughter, cooing in her stroller, must have thought of her bumpy ride and of my running shoes and how they still fit after all this time.

Jennifer Savage writes about being a new mom on her own blog here on NewWest.Net. Read more from “Savagemama” at http://www.newwest.net/savagemama (bookmark it!)

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.