Back in the Saddle

Back in the saddle, on the road again, back in commission: I could use any number of cliches or idioms to preface this post, but you get the idea. I ran my first road race after Gabriel this past weekend, exactly 10 weeks to the day he was born. It felt really good to get back out on the race course, but it was also quite challenging. My primary goal was to run this 4-miler faster than I ran my last 4-miler back in April when I was 8 months pregnant...mission accomplished. I ran a 39:01, which is a sub 10-min per mile pace. It was definitely harder to race with my (ahem) extra baggage shall I say :). Although I can tell my fitness level is returning (although at a glacial pace), I can really feel the excess baby pounds (who knew baby pounds have the equivalence to actual lead!). But enough about that subject.

All in all I am pleased with my first race and hope to continue to run races and whip myself back into pre-Gabriel shape. I have to say though that it has been such a joy to incorporate Gabriel into my daily runs, a whole new dimension of running I hadn't anticipated. I wouldn't trade it for anything (lead and all).