Running with a Baby

This is another post moved over from my old blog, originally published May 26, 2011:

Yay! I had a fellow blogger ask me a question about running with a baby. Perfect! I needed something to blog about besides I feel like I'm going to puke 24/7 now, how I'm wearing sea bands to control it which means I am now wearing sweaters in the 90 degree heat to hide them or the fact that my monster red headed 18 month old likes to eat earrings. (clearly I was pregnant with Annabel when I wrote this!!)

So running, with the monster, here we go:

The longest run I've done with Annika was 6 miles when I first started training for my first half marathon. It was on the beach, where the sand is sort of hard right by the water. I ran with a group so I believe we took about 1 1/2 hours to complete it since they have this "we won't leave anyone behind" stuff. Sorry, I like to run my speed and leave some behind, that would be why I run alone now!

How did I survive the 6 miles with Annika or any distance for that matter??? I feed her, a lot. I won't lie. It's a thing we call "shut up food" and it's awful (and we never leave home without some sort of "shut up food" packed with her). If she cries I feed. We have a jogging stroller with a large basket below. I carry in there my water, my Gatorade, Annika's sippy cup of water, and a large container of goldfish. I sprinkle some goldfish on her tray and she snacks. Then she usually sits back and relaxes a bit and takes in the scenery, then she freaks the fuck out, I give her more goldfish and the process continues. Another thing that helps her is if I listen to the i-Pod without headphones on so she can listen. She loves listening to music and sometimes I can see her feet moving to the music.

It works though. I was doing 5 miles at least once a week with her for a while and she was handling it well even though the goldfish consumption in our house tripled.

The other question was how long will Annika tolerate her stroller? As long as there are goldfish she's pretty good. I wouldn't take her for longer than 2 hours though because she'd probably get uncomfortable but on that 6 mile run she actually fell asleep about 30 minutes before we finished which was wonderful!