We've Got Some Answers
Our second book, Train Like a Mother, also holds answers to many of your running questions, especially about training and racing.
Sarah and Dimity dig up some running questions from their Facebook community and, at long last, provide answers. They tell folks in the same boat as Shelle how to train for a 10K or half-marathon on just three runs per week, and they discuss running underwear options for gals like Angie who don’t want to go commando. The mother runners lean in and give advice about how to juggle breastfeeding demands with running, and Sarah talks at length about dealing with plantar fasciitis. Finally, the gals come up with all sorts of solutions doing a 5K with a slower-than-you runner. First up, though: Find out why Dimity had a morning, “from H-E-double-skis,” the day they recorded the podcast.
If you’re digging our podcasts, we’d be super-grateful if you’d take a minute (because we *know* you have so many to spare!) to write a review on iTunes.[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.pagatim.fm/shows/amr/amr_121513.mp3] **Also, the quickest way to get our podcasts is to subscribe to the show via iTunes. Clicking this link will automatically download the shows to your iTunes account. It doesn’t get any simpler than that!
The Most Important Mile(s) of My Life: Sara Nakai
One year ago the news of a yet another school shooting shattered our hearts, leaving us all mourning the incomprehensible loss of 26 individuals at an elementary school that could have been where our own children spent their days learning. Mother runner Sara Nakai, living across the country in Chandler, AZ, was in the midst of marathon training at that time, gearing up for her longest run yet. Ultimately, this 20-miler a few days after the tragedy in Newtown, Conn. was a way for her to honor the precious young souls lost that day at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Sara first shared this dedication run on her blog My Little Batch of Sky, and she agreed to allow us to share it here.
Names of the children lost, loved and remembered always.
I’ve tried very hard to think of what my most important mile has been. I honestly can’t think of one. I can only think of 20.
I’ve told very few people about this. Not even my mother.
My marathon training plan was 26-weeks long. It started in July for a January race, and the longest distance I was going to have to run prior to the marathon was 20 miles. That 20-miler was scheduled for December 22, and I was dreading it for months with every sense of my being. But what happened a week before that training run changed how I felt about it.
You remember December 14, 2012. Everyone does. It was one of the worst days that ever happened.
I was home, checked the news online, read about a school shooting, then turned on CNN. The horror. Yet I couldn’t look away or stop sobbing. Every crying child could have been mine. Every distressed teacher could have been one of my friends. Every frantic parent could have been me. That’s what everyone was thinking. No one was unaffected by this. Everyone knows a child, a parent, a teacher. It was too easy to personalize it.
After you stop personalizing it, you empathize. You wrap your head around the fact that teachers hid their students in cabinets, that some of those teachers gave their lives for their students, that parents lost their children–children who were in their classrooms at school. Twenty kids and six adults were killed by a gunman in an elementary school. Unimaginable. Incomprehensible. Unfathomable. So senseless.
The next few days were dark for all of us as names, ages, and stories of the victims were released. I decided I would dedicate my next long run to the student victims. All twenty of them. In tribute, I would write each of their first names on my forearm and think of one while I ran each mile. So on Friday night, exactly one week after the tragedy, I took a ballpoint pen and started writing on my forearm.
Except there were so many names that the list passed my elbow and went halfway to my shoulder. I cried some more.
The next morning, I woke up and headed out the door. As soon as I started running I said, “Hi, Charlotte. Come run with me.” We ran a mile together. I didn’t know Charlotte or even what she looked like. I just pictured a happy six year old girl playing and smiling. When my Garmin chimed at a mile I said, “Thank you, Charlotte. Hi, Daniel. Come run with me.” I did that 20 times over. It wasn’t sad. I didn’t think about how they died; I imagined joyful children running around on the playground or reading with their parents or playing with Matchbox cars or Barbies. It really was as if each child was running next to me for a mile. They all deserved my best. I took extra care to give as much effort for Avielle at Mile 17 as I did for Josephine at Mile 4. I felt no physical pain during this run. I was completely outside of myself; I was running for those kids.
When my Garmin chimed at Mile 20, I thanked Allison and stopped running. I bent over, hands on my knees, finally feeling the exhaustion from running for three hours and 20 minutes straight and said to myself, That was a lot of miles. That was too many kids.
Those were the most meaningful miles of my life.
Sara and her family.
What was (or will be) the most important mile of your life? We want to know.
We’re going to make this an ongoing feature on the website (and potentially include some important miles in our yet-to-be-named third book, out in spring of 2015). Best way to submit is to email us your story with a picture: runmother {at} gmail {dot} com with “Most Important Mile” in the subject line. Please try to keep your mile stories under 300 words. Thank you!
Running While Pregnant, Peeing Your Pants, or Having Your Period
The doctor is in: Elizabeth Stevenson-Gargiulo all cleaned up and out of her running duds.
If you’re digging our podcasts, we’d be super-grateful if you’d take a minute (because we *know* you have so many to spare!) to write a review on iTunes.[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.pagatim.fm/shows/amr/amr_120713.mp3] **Also, the quickest way to get our podcasts is to subscribe to the show via iTunes. Clicking this link will automatically download the shows to your iTunes account. It doesn’t get any simpler than that!
Tell Me Tuesday: Running after a Breast Lift, Reduction, or Enlargement
Ha.
A while ago, mother runner Kim emailed us with several questions: What are the effects of a breast lift on long- and short-term training? How long after the surgery can you start running again? How does running feel with the revised girls? The answers poured in from the tribe, not only with advice on running after a breast lift, but also on running after a reduction or enlargement.
Heidi mentions her friend, who had recently gotten a lift: “She started slowly running in about a month or so…but she had to be wrapped up and wore two bras. She loves her revised girls and wears Enell bras to keep them in check now. She said at first she felt like her center of gravity was off a bit, but after she adapted to that she was back to normal and running just as fast (if not faster) than she had been pre-surgery. So you’ll likely be down for the short term…but for the long term you should be just fine. Just listen to your doctor and keep those girls sung when you run.”
Michele adds, “After a month I was back to distance running, no problems at all…just be sure to get a good sports bra.”
Shay recommends consulting with your physician: “Your doctor will tell you when it safe to get running again. I started walking right away and the running came in time.”
RunnerGirl adds, “Expect about 3-4 weeks of no running. You need the scar areas to heal and close up so they don’t get infected. If you run too soon, the sweat will get in there and cause infection. Once everything is closed up and you don’t have pain, which isn’t much anyway, you will be good to go.” She also emphasizes the differences in healing time between a breast lift and breast reduction: “A lift is very different from a reduction. A true reduction is much more complicated, and will take longer to heal. A lift will have you running in 3-4 weeks.”
Casey gives us a quick fix for balance changes: “I had a reduction and lift last Christmas. Went from a DD to a small C/large B. I took a good 8 weeks off from running, although started walking again at 4. I ran a half-marathon in April and never felt better. I noticed a shift in my center of balance, so I concentrated on thinking about how my body was moving through space.”
Elizabeth comments healing time after a breast enlargement, “My girlfriend had an augmentation over Christmas break and she was back on the treadmill within a week. They made her wear a really restrictive sports bra anyway, so she had virtually no movement to start, and once the residual pain went away she was back into her normal routine.”
Jennifer continues the conversation about enlargement: “I had an enhancement 2 years ago and was running again 2 months afterward. I’m not sure if the type—over vs. under the muscle—influences recovery. I did silicone over the muscle, so that might have sped up the recovery time.” She agrees with the other mother runners about the need for a good, supportive sports bra. (Dimity regularly writes the sports bra review for Runner’s World, and discovered Sturdy Girl Sports through it; the bras were originally designed for women with breast enhancements.)
Hollie adds, “I’m two years out from going bigger. This surgery is a much easier recovery than a reduction. If you are serious, find a good doctor and make an appointment as soon as possible, and ask many questions. Every surgery and doctor has different recovery requirements.” Don’t be afraid to ask questions!
And of course, Clisty warns, “Don’t sacrifice the outcome of the surgery just so you can get running again.” It is always better to be safe than sorry.
Have you had a lift, reduction, or enlargement? How long did you wait before lacing up those running shoes again? Got any advice for mother runners considering this surgery?
#AMRHoliday Craftiness
Festive, drool-inducing, and clever: mother runner cookies by Rebecca (a.k.a. The Cookie Architect)
Dimity and I have creativity in spades–professional magazine writers, we’ve written books that we hope is dog-eared on your nightstand or stashed in your gym back–yet we lack craftiness. Asking us to knit, crochet, embroider, felt, scrapbook, sew, mold, tool, tat, weave, bead, quilt, cast, or stencil something would be on par with asking us to handwrite our two books…in long hand…in Latin…blindfolded. My sole crafty endeavor is needlepointing, but the kind I do is basically high-end Paint-by-Numbers except I “color” with yarn, not acrylics.
An ornament celebrating our Ragnar Relay showdown, complete with a painted Tough Girl Tutu.
But dang if we don’t admire the heck out of crafts done by other mother runners. Like the ornament sent to me by Nicole to commemorate the Ragnar Relay we ran together this fall. That ornament makes me smile every time my eyes land on it–and it makes me want to see more running-related holiday crafts.
So this month, we want to encourage you to share your running-related crafts with the mother runner community on Twitter and Instagram. Whether it’s a running-themed, homemade Advent calendar; silvery snowflakes made out of re-purposed race medals; or a pinecone wreath festooned with Salted Caramel GU packets, we want to you to share it on social media, called out with the hashtag #AMRHoliday.
Tomorrow on our Facebook page, we’re going to ask gals to share their Instagram handles so it’ll be easier to find each other on that app. But by using hashtag #AMRHoliday when you post a running-related holiday craft, other mother runners will be able to search Twitter or Instagram to marvel at your crafty creation.
Then, come Christmas Eve, we’ll share a collage (or two, or three) of images shared during the next few weeks. (And, for the record, our intern will be assembling the collage because, well, like I said, we’re not crafty.) Remember: Tag your tweets and Instagram images with #AMRHoliday, and have a happy!
I get a “kick” out of this felted running shoe ornament created by mother runner Denise.