Run, Mama, Run: tale of a half-marathon

Due to my post-race physical breakdown, I never had a chance to post about the half-marathon I ran on Sunday. I trained with a group of friends who are all working mamas; three of us have two children, and I'm not even the one who has most recently given birth. Hau had her baby Cole in late July.

We've been doing long runs on Saturday mornings, building up to the big 13.1-mile Run Like Hell race on October 30. And most everyone has been running during lunch at work to build up their mileage. Well, except me. I work from home and my husband's schedule has been crazy - and as you know I haven't worked up the faith in my coordination to buy a double jogger. So my training during the week was sporadic.

Guess what? That matters. And what else matters: planning. And what’s more than planning: execution. The day of the race dawned, and I had my alarm set, my clothes laid out, a small bottle pumped for Truman. I even had tied the race chip to my shoe and safety-pinned my number to the shirt I was wearing. I planned to take the bus, at 6:10 a.m.

I woke up when the alarm went off, planning to nurse Truman, use the restroom, get dressed, and hit the bus stop. The next one wouldn’t arrive until 7:10 a.m., ten minutes after the start of the race. I had to be early.

Well, I nursed Truman, for a few minutes, and promptly fell back to sleep. He woke me up at 6 a.m., hungry. When I was single? This wouldn’t have been a problem (well, there would have been no baby to help me fall back to sleep, but you understand). I would have donned my race gear and been off in the time it took me to use the facilities. But now, I was stuck with a hungry baby, a cranky husband (who’d worked until nearly 3 a.m. the night before), and not nearly enough thawed breastmilk.

The baby was sad, the husband was pissed, the bus was early. I ended up calling a cab from the grocery store and making it downtown with plenty of time, and guilt, to spare. I did my race, fairly well I might add, but lost my goal pace around the five-mile marker. And then at 11 miles, my breasts started hurting. I attribute the perils of lactation for my failure to make it under two hours (my time was something around 2:14), but it was probably my training. This racing stuff with babies: it’s not so easy. Thank God we had cute t-shirts. It made it all worthwhile. That and (a) the awesome camaraderie of the other mamas who ran the last six blocks with me, even though they were already done; and (b) the gobstobbing adorability of the babies and daddies cheering for us along the way.

(The t-shirts, btw, were the result of my design and Shetha’s magic with the iron-ons. At about $4 apiece, it’s the cheapest way to do t-shirts in a hurry! The shirts, they say: ”. run . mama . run . (good mama)”)