Postpartum Running – 4 Month Update

I am happy to report that things continue to go well with my return to running after having Bjorn a little over 4 months ago. I did a recap at 2 months postpartum, which you can read HERE if you missed it. And I plan to continue to write a recap every couple of months during my postpartum journey.

The worst part about this past month has been the downright frigid temps we’ve been having. Usually I get both boys outside at least 2-3 times a week, but I didn’t make it outside with Bjorn at all the entire month of January. My cut-off temp is about 20*F for a baby, and we didn’t have a day that warm the entire month. Most days were in the single digits and below zero. I did get Cullen outside a few times but not nearly as much as I normally do. The cold temps did result in several photos like this though!

I have continued to be very cautious with my return to running these past two months. This time postpartum I have been even more cautious than I was after having Cullen. But I have caught up to about the same point in my training and am actually running faster than I did postpartum with Cullen!

Here’s a recap of my mileage since giving birth to Bjorn:

4 weeks postpartum: 5 miles
5 weeks postpartum: 4.5 miles
6 weeks postpartum: 7.5 miles
7 weeks postpartum: 9 miles
8 weeks postpartum: 6 miles
9 weeks postpartum: 7 miles
10 weeks postpartum: 13 miles
11 weeks postpartum: 17 miles
12 weeks postpartum: 20 miles
13 weeks postpartum: 24 miles
14 weeks postpartum: 28 miles
15 weeks postpartum: 30 miles
16 weeks postpartum: 21 miles
17 weeks postpartum: 24 miles
18 weeks postpartum: 35 miles
19 weeks postpartum: 40 miles

Overall, things were going really well until halfway through week 16. All of a sudden I started feeling really sluggish and tired, but now it is obvious when I look back at my mileage. I increased my mileage for 6 weeks before taking a down-week, which is a lot. Usually I will take a down-week every 4 weeks, but a combination of feeling well and not paying attention to how many weeks I had been increasing ultimately took its toll on me. I took the rest of that week off and then did a full down week during week 17. This proved to be a good choice because these last two weeks I have felt a million times better, and I even killed some splits on my workout these past couple of weeks.

I have been following my plan postpartum with Cullen pretty closely–doing the same hard workouts and trying to stick to similar mileage although I am at a slightly different point this time around. I ended up having Bjorn about a month prior to having Cullen, so I am now doing workouts I did in March postpartum with Cullen. This is good for the spring/summer races because it gives me an extra month to train before racing season.

I’ve had two workouts in particular that have gone really well!

Two weeks ago, I did an interval workout of 400, 800, 1200, 1600 meters. Postpartum with Cullen (5 years ago) I ran the following splits:

400 – 1:25
800 – 3:09
1200 – 4:41
1600 – 6:27

When I saw these splits, I was really nervous because just two weeks prior I had only run 400s in 1:30 and 2 weeks prior to that ran mile repeats at 6:50 pace.

But I tightened my shoelaces, doubled knotted them, and got to work. Shockingly I actually blew these splits out of the water. Here’s what I ran:

400 – 1:22
800 – 2:57
1200 – 4:36
1600 – 6:09

I don’t even know how I ran that fast, but I was ecstatic after that workout.

The other workout that went well was a workout I did this past week:

4 x 200 meters
(0:41, 0:41, 0:40, 0:40)

2 x 400 meters
(1:24, 1:27)

1 x 800 meters
(3:01)

2 x 400 meters
(1:26, 1:25)

4 x 200 meters
(0:40, 0:40, 0:40, 0:37)

This was a much bigger workout, which is why I didn’t run as fast compared to the previous workout, but I was still really happy with how this went!

Now the dreaming has begun! How much faster will I be able to run this summer? Will I finally be able to get my sub-3 marathon goal I have been trying to run since the idea was planted in my head nearly 7 years ago by my coach? Obviously only time will tell, but I’m looking forward to what the future holds!