Marathon Mom
I am personally very happy for Paula Radcliffe, who had a baby and nine months later ran the New York marathon. Go, Paula, go.
Just don't make this one more accomplishment other child-bearing women think they have to aim for.
Pregnancy and the recovery time from childbirth have been, for many women, one of the few sacred times in their lives when they can give themselves a little space, a little grace and respect their bodies without trying to correct or improve upon them.
Pregnancy isn't an illness, as people used to believe, but it is still a tremendously demanding physical event that women need and deserve time to recover from.
Paula Radcliffe is the women's marathon record holder who ran throughout her pregnancy. She did something amazing when she ran a two-hour, 23 minute marathon so soon after giving birth, and she did it beautifully, happily and well.
Other women can celebrate that fact without feeling the urge to extract a performance standard from it.
posted by Krista Ramsey at 3:52 PM
2 Comments:
at 6:13 PM, November 12, 2007 
Cincinnatalie said...
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at 1:06 PM, November 13, 2007 
Anonymous said...
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Post a Comment*As a new mom and a runner, it was neat to watch her. But it was just as scary to read the NY Times article I read the day before. She started running TWO WEEKS after giving birth, and subsequently injured herself, which required more than 4 weeks off. A few months later, she suffered another overuse injury.
She is a BAD EXAMPLE. Because of people like her (who don't have injuries but run too soon), I wondered what was wrong with me when I couldn't run without hurting my knees until 4 months post-partum. Later, I learned that you shouldn't run until 4 months because of all of the relaxin hormone still in your body, position of your hips, etc.
So, I celebrate her post-partum achievements, but certainly she is no one to emulate in how she approached her training.
Natalie Hastings
Why the snarky comment, Ms. Ramsey? Why not just celebrate this woman (and new mother) for her achievement, instead of automatically assuming that she's going to the source of other women placing "unrealistic" expectation on themselves?
Furthermore, who are YOU to determine what people should look up to? I'd rather aspire to be a marathon runner than another of the growing ranks of morbidly obese Americans.
The bottom line is that very very very few new mothers (if any) are going to look at this woman's accomplishment and feel like they need to run a marathon tomorrow--unless they were perhaps hard-core, dedicated marathon runners before.
It's sad when we can't just celebrate another's significant accomplishment without adding snark, bitterness, and maybe a bit of jealousy to the mix.
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