REAAALLLY Long Time, No Blog

Well, a lot has happened since my last post: I ran my marathon (Woo and Hoo! - totally planning on doing that again), took a break from running (leading to an unfortunate weight gain), went through a stressful, painful pregnancy, and now have the most beautiful baby boy in the world.

 

In all of that, my running kind of fell by the wayside and I haven't really felt "worthy" of posting on my self-described "running" blog. But, hey - we're all human, right? I figure if I can show that it's possible to go from marathon runner, to morbidly obese, back to marathon runner - maybe it can inspire others to do the same. Plus, writing about progress is an awesome way to stay motivated and hold myself accountable.

I will say, taking a break from running has been one of my more foolish choices in life. When you get used to eating the number of calories required for marathon training... and then stop running... Let's just say it's not good, folks. My weight reached an unbelievably scary number during pregnancy and even after losing 30 pounds in the first two weeks postpartum, I found myself staring at a 112 pound weight loss to get me back to where is was in my last blog post. Scary...and embarrassing.

Two days postpartum...reality check.

One of the worst things about weighing just north of 300 pounds is that running on my already bad knees has had to be postponed. As my weight crept up, running (naturally) got more and more difficult and painful. Then, when I got pregnant, my normally loose joints were loosened painfully-further by pregnancy, which made walking even short distances extremely painful. This combined with a month of bed rest lead to my longest period of inactivity in my life and an all-time fitness low.

Now I'm back at square one and I've had to do the unthinkable and embrace walking (gasp!). My little man is four months old and I've worked up to walking about 15 miles a week. My pelvis and lower back have finally started to return to normal and I can start working toward becoming a runner once more. I did my first interval jog (I hate to use that word, but you couldn't really call it anything else) last weekend and I think I had a big stupid grin on my face the whole time.

Just after my little dude was born, I was hormonal and stressed, and freaking out that maybe we couldn't do the whole parent thing and I told my husband in between sobs that I needed to go for a run, but couldn't. Running has been my stress release, my outlet, and my safe place for years. I am going to focus on remembering that as I struggle to regain what I've lost... and lose the unwanted pounds along the way.