A few weeks ago I made a prenatal appointment with my women's health physical therapist. I first met with Cristin Zaimes, PT DPT, owner of Oceanside Physical Therapy after the delivery of my son Jack in 2012. I had returned to running three weeks postpartum, but was experiencing a "falling out" sensation and was leaking during every run. I was worried I had developed a some sort of ... Read More
I am not a licensed physical therapist or a certified personal trainer. The exercises in this post were recommended to me by a people who are. If you have weakness in your pelvic floor, imbalance in your hips or other running related injuries I would HIGHLY (Bold and italics AND all caps...that's a lot.) recommend that you see a women's health physical therapist who specializes in pelvic floor ... Read More
My road back to running postpartum has been a rocky one, filled with starts and stops. I started back too soon (three weeks postpartum) but put the brakes on when I realized I could have a prolapsed bladder. Thankfully there was no prolapse, but I did enough research to realize that if I continued running I could very easily cause damage that would affect my running for years to come. So I ... Read More
As many of you know postpartum journey back to running has had a few hiccups( You can read about that HERE and HERE). I returned to running too soon (3 weeks postpartum) and at the end of October thought I might have a prolapsed bladder. I took the entire month of November off and at my last post-partum appointment my midwife informed me that I did not have a prolapsed bladder (thank goodness) but ... Read More
Improving as a runner requires more than just running. I've talked frequently about the importance of strength training (HERE and HERE) as a way to prevent injury and increase overall strength, subsequently improving performance. Form drills are another way to improve running efficiency and speed without actually running. To understand why form drills are important you have to understand the ... Read More
When it comes to marathons I’d say I’ve had one “successful” experience-success defined not by the time on the clock but by how I felt during the race and after I crossed the finish line. All of my marathons have been a slow slog to the finish, the result of under training and improper pacing. Once I finally got a successful marathon under my belt I was sure I knew “what it took” to run a marathon ... Read More
This post is sponsored by Physiclo, however the views expressed here are my own and remain authentic to my experience and opinion. A few weeks ago I was contacted by Physiclo and asked if I was interested in giving their "resistance tights" a review. I was skeptical of the tights, but they piqued my curiosity: I wanted to know if they were effective. I've always considered cross training ... Read More
In his book, How Bad do You Want It?, author Matt Fitzgerald summarizes the professional triathlon career of Siri Lindy who won the world championship in 2001: “It’s not that Siri needed to bear the title of world champion to love herself; she had already transformed into the person she wanted to be through her total commitment to a dream. Paradoxically, it may seem, Siri had to let go of that ... Read More
This week was a bit of a breakthrough week in training. Breakthrough in the sense that I'm now pretty close to the fitness level I was at pre-pregnancy. I'm still lacking the deep endurance that comes with a complete marathon training cycle, but I've got my speed back and am building that deep endurance one long run at a time. I can't say that I'm "surprised" because this is really what I've been ... Read More
For the first time, I'm following the training advice from a coach. Up until now I've been completely self coached, but in October I started to rely on the advice of the coach who runs my running club's track workouts to chart my training. I finished up an eight week base-building phase two weeks ago and entered into a four week phase with workouts designed to build leg strength. I'm running lower ... Read More
