My experience of the ball game

Spoiler: it was not actually a ball game

Wow, what an incredible accomplishment to be back here flaunting my presence in inboxes sooner than 20 months after my last send. Many people are saying I should be nominated for sainthood because of this. 👼

~
I’ve always found the disclaimer “everyone’s experience is completely different, it’s really such a personal thing” annoying. The number of times it’s said, about such a wide range of topics, has rendered it meaningless in my mind. It becomes a chorus that I skip over, nodding, yes of course, definitely, of course and thinking, sure, sure, yada, yada, let’s get to what it is you want to say. It’s a carbon copy of my reaction to user manuals. I have never once read one of those. I want to get on with the using immediately!!! [Somewhere, my dad just did a spit take.]

So I say this, and I mean it – that returning to running postpartum really seems to be an entirely different ball game for everyone – and I fully expect that to carry zero weight. I understand it carries such little weight because I’m about to offer up my own experience, which if you believe the disclaimer, isn’t worth paying much mind to since it’s not likely to be similar to anyone else’s. But this is the human condition: offering your own perceptions and perspectives to others on the off chance there’s half a kernel of potential connection lurking in your experience.

Thanks to the gift of partial hindsight – which should definitely be an oxymoron – since I’m admittedly still in the trenches of running postpartum, I think my past seven months can be broken into four distinct chunks.

CHUNK 1: March 11 - April 15
Purposefully not running

I was determined to give myself time to recover. When I could finally move around and go up and down stairs without pain or soreness after birth, I started walking at exorbitant levels. I loved it. It felt great to be on my feet for hours at a time again. I was nervous to hop back into running because I really didn’t want to get injured, so I luxuriated in walking. It was spring and the trees around the city were blooming dramatically.

Directly from my STRAVA – this is subtle product placement at its finest, thank you.

After 3 weeks of just walking, I biked a few times, which was nice. But biking takes a while to get a good workout from and strapping a baby to your chest while you do it seems to be generally frowned upon, whether you’re at the gym or on the streets.

I don’t have any Strava data to show for this because I didn’t log it (shame on me), but I also did some pelvic floor and deep core work exercises starting around March 11 or maybe a few days later.

CHUNK 2: April 15 - 28
Walk-jogging as a way of life

The first walk-jog I did was on a gorgeously sunny day and I smiled like a maniac the entire time. I jogged very gingerly for 30 seconds, then walked aggressively down the sidewalk in Brooklyn with a running backpack on. I replicated this scenario twice before deciding I could venture 60 seconds of jogging at a time. I did 8 x 60s on/off and could have cried with how happy I was to feel tiny bursts of familiarity physically and emotionally and heck even spiritually. It didn’t feel 1000% normal, but it was more good than bad! 

absurdly, foolishly happy

From there I slowly built up my walk-jogs every other day over the course of two weeks. After two weeks, I was still running every other day, but I was doing full-tilt jogs, NO WALKS. This chunk of the return went by so much faster than I’d anticipated. Momentum, baby. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, walk-jogs are a top-notch drug of choice for a momentum fanatic like myself. 

CHUNK 3: April 30 - September 21
Unstructured running (aka decidedly NOT training)

Holy cow. When I type out that date range, it strikes me as a wildly large swath of time. Nearly five months! A previous version of me would’ve thought of that as almost two separate marathon builds! Instead, it was decidedly not a build. Or, a different kind of build. 

I struggled. It was daunting and discouraging to come back to running in the peak of New York City heat and humidity. I felt bad so many runs in a row. And I knew in the back of my mind I didn’t want to be held to a specific plan while I raged against the machine that was and is lack of fitness. I wanted to be able to adjust plans on the fly and prioritize hopping into runs where I’d have the company of people I’d really missed running with when I was wicked pregnant and after birth. It made me less focused on how I felt to be able to tell myself I was doing someone else’s workout, and was there to lend my support and help. It’s really not often that you get to be the loose equivalent of a running domestique. So I tried to focus on the good of this murky, shapeless, densely difficult block of time. I did some workouts, aiming for 1-2/week. I did some long runs. I built up mileage slowly and prioritized taking at least one day off of running a week most weeks. 

There’s something I want to say here about the internalized pressure I felt to run fast, and get back to pre-pregnancy paces during this time. I wanted to prove – to myself, mostly – that I hadn’t completely ruined my running by choosing to give birth to an adorable creature. I now don’t think that this is something you even prove. It’s something you decide. Is my running ruined if I haven’t PR’ed in 3-4 different distances within 6 months of running after birth? I have the power to choose: nope, not ruined. Only ruined if I delude myself into believing it is. But of course, avoiding delusions is easier said than done. 

CHUNK 4: September 23 - *the future* 
STRUCTURE

You know the unmistakable feeling/song lyrics where you don’t realize how much you’ve missed something until it’s gone? I’ll argue that it’s actually not as strong as the feeling of realizing how much you’ve missed something only when it suddenly reappears. 

Structure and plans and not having to be the one steering this old, rickety, impetuous ship, how I MISSED YOU. 

I truly felt a wave of relief wash across my shoulders when I saw an email notification flash across my screen. Your coach updated your calendar. 

Wowow. There’s nothing like those five little words to make you feel a sense of purpose again. So that’s where I’m at! Feeling a burgeoning sensation of purpose and getting excited about that sensation coinciding with notably more hospitable weather in New York and also the beginning of the weaning process. 

I didn’t really get into my experience with breastfeeding here, because it’s a whole other slog of a tale, but I have noticed a correlation between weaning and starting to feel better while running. I feel a sense of returning to myself, by which I mean: I’m more energized, have more pep in my step and am less generally likely to feel depleted throughout the day. 

I don’t regret my period of floundering without a specific, built-for-me plan, because there’s something to be said for giving your mind and body time to explore what it wants to do, without that exploration butting up against what it *should* be doing. 

have you ever seen anything more beautiful?

ENOUGH OF MY YAP. Thanks for reading. Pls send questions/comments if you too have ever returned to running postpartum or postinjury or know someone who has. I am genuinely always curious to compare notes! 

<3 Jeanne