Challenge completed!

The race is run and I have exceeded my £500 fundraising target for Sense! Thank you so much everybody!
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Mary-King4

The Royal Parks Half is predictably an absolutely beautiful course and we had a lovely sunny morning for it...ideal running conditions. I was NOT in ideal running condition due to my mild tendonitis, so my race "strategy" was a bit confused as I wavered between the attitude of "I'm just going to run through the pain and not care about the state of my tendon" versus "I will be sensible and walk the whole thing slowly to avoid further injury". I was determined that I WOULD complete the course and I'm proud to say that I succeeded in that.

Gearing up pre-run with Vic as part of Team Sense. Mario and Carolina came to support us.


After a unnecessarily long wait for the loos pre-run (I totally do not believe that "more queues = less time queuing" as the organisers claimed: one queue for multiple toilets, much better) I started off running with a friend who was aiming for a 2 hour 17 minute half-marathon (and who beat her target!) at a steady pace. I quickly realised I should drop back as I could feel twinges in my tendon and didn't want to unconsciously push myself too hard too soon by wanting to keep up with her, so I left her at Buckingham Palace and deliberately slowed myself down, letting hundreds of people pass me (and resisting telling runners and onlookers "it's not that I'm unfit...I've just got an injury! honest!"

I struggled with that need to justify myself throughout the 2 hours 47 minutes I took to complete the run, but kept telling myself that it wasn't a race. Well, actually it WAS a race but it wasn't a race where I (or anyone else) needed to compete on speed...and going fast is not what gives the activity its worth...and...things like that. I did slow jogging and first felt the need to slow to a walk as we went round the Aldwych. Both my hips, by this point, were pretty sore, and as I walked back up the Strand, the Mall and into Green Park I reflected that probably any physiotherapist would advise me to give up at this point. I cogitated on this option. I could just quit. Nothing bad would happen. Everyone would understand.

But the great run atmosphere, the huge range of people running for different charities and in memory of people who'd died or to celebrate people who hadn't died, the people there to cheer everybody on, the clearly massively unfit people who were nevertheless getting on with it and determined to finish...all of these convinced me that I should keep going.

I also thought about labour - I suppose this was an inevitable comparison for me to make as this was my maternity leave challenge, after all. I had a very long and slow labour which stretched from Friday night to Sunday night (Angel was born at 23:13 so it was very much a full weekend). I pretty much blame the stress of transferring to hospital on Sunday morning with slowing things down by about 12 hours...but mind you it had already been a pretty long labour (30 hours or so) before we even thought of going into hospital. I didn't give up then, did I? I asked myself as I power-walked towards Hyde Park. So I'm not going to give up now. (I also wondered what "giving up" in labour would actually constitute - it's pretty much a one-way process obviously).

So I determined to finish the race for Angel. My husband and a friend were there cheering me on at multiple points along the course, which also helped. I alternated slow jogging with fast walking and finished in under 3 hours, which was a big achievement in context. Additionally, writing this 4 days on, I do not seem to have worsened my tendonitis significantly which is good news!

The other important thing that I did on the half marathon was reflect on my life and on the biggest development we're going through at the moment, which is me gearing up to returning to work and settling Angel into her nursery. She's been settling in for an extended period, but this and last week have been the first times I've left her at nursery for almost full days - 9.30-4 as opposed to the full 8.30-5.30 - while I've been doing KIT days at work to prepare for starting teaching after half term. I've been absolutely wracked with guilt about it, constantly berating myself, feeling sick to the stomach and unable to relax or enjoy ANYTHING while apart from her. Thinking about this on the run (no guilt when I know she's with her daddy) I decided I need to assert some positive attitude around this. I have made the decisions I have about work and childcare and now I need to make the best of them. I like and trust the staff at nursery, and I need to accept that she is fine there and do what I can to enjoy the novelty of my baby-free time. I know I have a lot of power over my emotions and I am perfectly capable of thinking positively and being strong rather than wallowing in self-pity!

I've felt much better this week.

Now for lots and lots of gluteus strengthening exercises and no running for a few months and then hopefully I can get back to running properly. I'd quite like to do the same run again next year but I guess I need to wait and see how things go...

Post-run!!

2 day countdown

In 48 hours time I will be about to start the half marathon!!!

This is a bit of a sad feeling, because although I am still determined to start and finish the race, I will not be able to run it "well", and I will certainly not beat my personal best from the one other half marathon I have run (the Bristol half marathon in 2011) when I finished in just over 2 hours, tying with my dad and beating both my brothers by minutes. (Now THAT was a proud moment). Instead, due to a really low-key, non-dramatic, tendon problem I have been unable to train and anything more than a REALLY slow jog starts to hurt, so I anticipate doing the race at a walk-speed jogging pace, taking more than 3 hours I reckon. Because I know you really shouldn't keep running through the pain, even though it's really minor pain.

I have two friends running with me so I guess I'll aim to start with them and keep up with them for as long as it doesn't feel too detrimental to my gluteal tendon, and then drop back. This was certainly not the running strategy I envisioned when I set the challenge with Vic back in May! It was supposed to be a really triumphal, end of maternity leave, look how super fit I am despite having a baby 10 months ago moment.

If I think hard enough, I feel like there's a lesson in here somewhere...there's definitely something about hubris, possibly something about not overdoing it so soon after pregnancy (although actually I had this tendon problem in 2014, well before getting pregnant! so I'm not convinced it's related. It's probably due to my posture or gait in some really boring way), and if I want to look on the bright side, something about perseverance and how it's important to complete the challenge even in the face of obstacles. Well, I will do my best.

Modelling my half-marathon outfit on Monday! I walk/jogged all the way to the Blackbird Bakery where I ate a bakewell tart...oops.

Over the last month, while I haven't done any running, I have continued with my regime of lots of walking with an 8.6 kilo baby on my back/front, and lots of cycling of the super heavy Bakfiets bike laden down with said baby. The Bakfiets is super for transporting Angel to and from nursery, which I have now started doing as she's settling in. It's not so super for cycling up hills, but as we live at the bottom of a hill (Telegraph Hill) and there is quite a lot of desirable/essential stuff at the top of the hill (Telegraph Hill play club; the Hill Station cafe; my place of work; Hilly Fields park; the Horniman museum (up multiple additional hills)) I seem to end up doing so quite a lot. So I think I've maintained a certain level of fitness. I'm not anticipating a heart attack, at least.

Settling Angel into nursery has been a real emotional rollercoaster. Actually, a rollercoaster goes up AND down whereas this has been fairly consistently a negative feeling so more of an emotional skydive. However, I really love our nursery - the staff, the manager, the room, the toys, the garden, the location - and I do honestly think Angel is happy there. It's just hard to judge because as soon as I enter with her, or arrive to take her away, her response is to burst into massive, angry, confused, heartbroken sobs in anticipation/memory of our separation. They tell me she's doing fine when I'm not there. I suppose the ability to be ok with both mummy AND nursery at the same time is something she'll grow into (hopefully).

Online/offline...update

There's one month to go until the Royal Parks Half Marathon and the bad news is I'm still not training due to gluteal tendonitis. Last time I suffered from this (in 2013-14) it took months before I was back to running. I really only just got my running fitness back before getting pregnant (April 2015) and I remember being really pleased I was able to run during pregnancy.

I went to physiotherapists (first private, then NHS) so I have an exercise programme to do and I just need to follow it. I've been out for a couple of little short run/walks to check whether it's possible...and it always makes the pain worse which is a big indication that I shouldn't be doing it.

However!!! there's no way I can drop out now after all the fundraising for Sense and kind donations from friends and family. I'll be doing the race, maybe mainly walking or maybe slow gentle jogging. I'm considering bringing Angel along in the pushchair as a visible justification of why I'm not going faster...I need to check whether that's allowed for a start. So never fear, I will go ahead with it.

Incidentally, my training partner Vic has just run a full marathon in 30 degree heat in Germany...so she's doing rather better than I am. If you want to donate to her efforts she's at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=VictoriaHowarth1

Anyway. In between doing my tendon stretches and looking after Angel, there's been a few other things going on over the summer. My husband finished his masters dissertation on the 10th of August, which was a big event. He's worked so hard, which has left me with the baby more, so it's a big relief all round now he's more freed up to be with us. Since he finished we've been mainly cycling round London with Angel in the Bakfiets, visiting all the great places round here...Surrey Docks Farm, Russia Docks woodland, Southwark Park, Burgess Park, the river, Greenwich, the Emirates Skyway, Peckham Pulse, Dulwich Park, Peckham Rye, Hyde Park and...many many other parks.

We're going away in 10 days to visit family in Italy, which will be our main summer holiday this year (taking advantage of about the only time we'll ever be able to go away out of school term time). However, we've had two beautiful weekend "holidays": one at my parents' in Christchurch, where we swam in the sea, paddle boarded, barbequed, had a baby-free lunch date, walked in the woods and generally enjoyed their massive garden; and a "staycation" at home over the bank holiday weekend, which mainly involved plenty of picnics and cycle rides.

The staycation genuinely felt like a holiday to me, partly because I took a holiday from the internet for the duration. Well, I still responded to the odd WhatsApp message, but I had a break from Facebook and other websites and bought the paper in hard copy for once. And it felt great.

It's already become a cliche, people taking to the internet to blog about how great life is off the internet... and I don't want to be too negative, because I love all the things the internet enables. And I totally agree that we need to be sceptical about pre-computer nostalgia as discussed on the Like Real Life blog here: http://www.likereallifeblog.com/2016/04/26/so-glad-i-grew-up-doing-this/ But staying away from the internet for 3 days made me feel more relaxed and, crucially, it made me pay more attention to my daughter. I also read the book "Toxic Childhood" on my staycation, parts of which I found interesting and alarming. I didn't love or agree with all the book - I thought there were far too many class-based assumptions about acceptable positive culture and I thought the author took a lot of ideas about gender far too much at face value (buying into what my gender in education lecturer at the IoE called "the poor boys discourse"...patriarchy has ensured boys have far more opportunities than girls for the last few thousand years but now that a few girls are able to out-perform a few boys in a few subjects in a few public exams we're going to wring our hands and declare a crisis? ;-) ) but I definitely bought the basis for recommending that babies under two have no screen-time whatsoever, and for limiting it from then on.

I don't want Angel to grow up thinking mummy always has her phone in her hand, feeling jealous of it, or never having my full attention because it's always partially shared with whatever article I'm reading online. Equally, the internet (and easy portable smartphone access to the internet) has been a lifeline while stuck at home with a small baby, awake all night with a small baby, or trapped on the sofa under a small sleeping baby who just won't be put down. So I don't want to be too apologetic about it. However, following the staycation I resolved to set a few more limits about what is acceptable while I'm alone with Angel. The current rules are...no Facebook while she's awake: concentrate more on what's going on around us. I'm not stopping myself from checking the odd message but I'm trying to be more aware of how I spend her waking time. And I'm in the process of getting devices out of the bedroom, to which end I've purchased us an old-school alarm clock. Now I need an actual watch so that I can rely less on checking my phone (and getting distracted by it) when I really just need to know the time.

How the public reacts to a baby on a Bakfiets

Apologies for the almost month-long absence from this blog. Unfortunately, that has been a month of ZERO RUNNING as I am still haunted by my old injury (gluteal tendonitis). The half-marathon is still a little way in the future (9th October) so I'm still confident that I'll be able to run it. Worst case scenario, I'll walk it! (My husband keeps joking that I'll need to give back all the sponsorship money I've collected. No chance! Thanks to everyone who has donated...Sense will be very grateful for the funds).

So, how have I been filling all those gaping hours when I would have been going for training runs? What could I possibly be doing to fill all that free time I have? Well, amongst other things Angel and I have done a fair amount of riding round South London on the cargo bike. We've been to Surrey Docks City Farm, Russia Dock Woodland, Burgess Park and Southwark Park, all of which can be easily reached by quiet roads and off-road cycle paths from our flat.

Less salubrious destinations have included Lewisham shopping centre (I definitely over-reached myself cycling round the big roundabout at Lewisham, which is a mess of construction work, without a clear idea of which exit/lane I needed...terrifying) and the Old Kent Road. I am volunteering with Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers, which is based in a church close to Elephant and Castle. It's either a slow, sweaty bus journey away, or about 20 minutes' cycle straight up the Old Kent Road. I took Angel there on the bike last Thursday, and we both survived, but it certainly tested my resolve around where I will and will not take a 7-month-old on a bike.

However, what I've been really pleasantly surprised by is the positive reception the baby on the bike has had from passers by. The first few times I took her out I was bracing myself for comment and criticism - after all, everyone loves to tell people how to bring up their children, and (from experience) everyone loves to go on about how supposedly dangerous cycling in London is. (But it's actually not! you are more likely to be injured in an hour of gardening than an hour of cycling!!! I don't even have a garden so think how safe I am!!!) A few weeks ago I got into a really stupid discussion on the internet about the safety of taking a baby/toddler on a bike, in London, during rush hour...it was a typical internet argument where everybody weighed in to condemn the "irresponsible" mother who had been seen with her child on a bike, NOT wearing a helmet, but nobody bothered to read the comments of other people or my excellent arguments and links to research showing that there's actually no conclusive evidence that helmets make cycling safer, as there are other factors which confuse the issue (such as the possibility that drivers are less careful around helmet-wearing cyclists)*. I got extremely frustrated and had to unfollow that parenting group, and it was a good reminder never to get too emotionally involved in an argument on the internet! Anyway, following that experience I was ready to be told off for taking Angel out on the cargo bike. I was prepping myself to respond politely and firmly to people suggesting it was a stupid and irresponsible thing to do.

But I haven't needed those responses at all! It seems that the vast majority of people have a knee-jerk, reflex response to seeing us of "awwwwwww SO CUTE!!!" while others prefer "look at the baby!" or "oh my god so sweet!!!"

A few people appreciate the Bakfiets Dutch engineering with "that's useful" or "great idea."

And the dodgy, marijuana-smoking man with facial tattoos who was sitting by the side of the path through the park the other day expressed the views of many succinctly with a simple "nice bike."

*FYI I do wear a helmet when I cycle on the roads. Angel doesn't, because she's too small and it's not supposed to be good for babies' necks to wear a helmet while they're in the type of seat that she's in.

Parent and baby fundraiser

Things are in such a mess politically at the moment: I keep thinking "well, it can't get any worse, surely..." and then next time I turn on the radio/TV or check the internet it totally has, whether it's a racist incident, terrorist bombing (ok, admittedly, so far I have no heard anything to link the Istanbul airport bombings with the UK's referendum so I think that's something that I *can't* blame on David Cameron), the Labour party falling apart, Nigel Farage being rude and nasty and getting loads of press attention for it, the economy suffering or speculation on how the rights and status of EU nationals in the UK (such as my husband) might change.

Plus it keeps raining. Plus I have a baby who has decided 5am is a great time to wake up and start the day.

But in the midst of all this negativity, yesterday something really positive and lovely happened, which was my parent and baby fundraiser for Sense.

As I stated in my first blog post, my friend Vic and I picked the race we want to do first (the Royal Parks half marathon) and it was already full, so we then looked for ways we could get a place and found Sense were looking for runners. To get the place you have to pledge to raise at least £300 in sponsorship, and PR person from Sense rings you up to check you're sincere and are actually going to do the race and not just signing up on a whim. That person asked me if I had any ideas for other ways to fund raise, in addition to the basic collecting of sponsorship money, and on the spur of the moment I said that being on maternity leave I know and meet a lot of mums and babies, and that I could do some kind of baby event. Chatting at my regular Friday baby group that week I came up with a potential venue - the communal garden of my block of flats! It's summer, everyone likes to be outside in green space, the garden is very little used on weekdays when most residents are at work...why not?

Admittedly, it was touch and go at several points as my initial enthusiasm waned and I considered potential pitfalls. What if other residents were not happy about me having lots of guests in the garden? Should I ask permission from the housing association? I nearly did (and got as far as dialling the housing officer's number on day) but I was concerned permission might be refused for reasons of health and safety or bureaucracy if I made a formal request, whereas the garden is for residents to use and if I was just having a few friends round, it would never occur to me to seek permission. So we went ahead, guerilla-style.

I picked a date I didn't have any other appointments and chose a morning time slot. My lovely NCT friends and my talented mother volunteered cakes/refreshments. Debbie who runs my Friday baby group offered to lend out the stash of toys and playmats which made things much easier and simpler. I printed some invitations and started inviting people through all my maternity-leave social networks - my NCT group, Friday baby group, baby yoga class, the post-natal group I go to on a Thursday, the Facebook group for "East Dulwich winter 2015-16 babies" that I am a member of (despite living in the less genteel environs of New Cross rather than East Dulwich), the "New Cross Bumps and Babies" group. I even popped into a mum and baby exercise class that I was walking past one morning to invite them.

It was such a gamble given the VERY unpredictable English weather this June, so beforehand I had many worries: what if no one turned up? what if it rained? should I just cancel? what if it rained just beforehand so the ground was super wet? what if it was blazing hot and we all got sunburnt? what if there was an accident? what if someone's baby got kidnapped and I was held responsible? what if the neighbours all complained and I got us evicted from our flat?

However, none of these things came to pass - not even the rain. It was a really lovely morning with a great turn out of over 30 mothers (plus a very few dads; I tried to keep the invitations gender-neutral so as not to be sexist, but the reality is that it does tend to be women who spend the first months looking after a baby instead of working, so the majority of parents I meet at my maternity leave activities are mums) with their babies. My parents helped me a huge amount with the setting up, clearing away and hosting, the selection of toys from the Waldron Health Centre kept the babies entertained, my mum and my NCT friends provided delicious cake, and I managed to meet a few more neighbours who came out to see what was going on.

I collected cash donations, but I didn't expect to make a huge amount of money, especially considering the outlay on things like a folding table, picnic rugs, and drinks, but people were incredibly generous and the final tally was £159.65...a really impressive amount! Thanks to everyone who came and donated.

A lot of people were asking about my training and I had to admit I'm currently on a break from running, but "the race is ages away [October] so it'll be fine..." hmm: I might need to get a bit more serious about training soon.

Injury setback...and alternative forms of transport

I started this blog post about a week ago and never quite finished it. In the wake of the referendum result and ensuing chaos...I just reopened it and it made me smile that I started it with "the bad news"...post 24th June I have a different perspective on bad news! But anyway, here it is...


The bad news is that I am having a forced rest from buggy running due to an aching hip - the same pain I suffered from a couple of years ago, which was diagnosed as "gluteal tendonitis". I went to physiotherapy for it in 2014, so I have exercises that I should probably still have been doing, so when I started to notice that running was hurting again I decided to take a 2 week break from running and make sure I do my exercises every day. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to training asap.

In the meantime I have continued the routine of babywearing for my exercise...carting a ~9 kilo baby around with me as I walk around Peckham and Lewisham should help maintain my fitness level! I've learnt how to carry Angel on my back in the Manduca soft structured carrier, which is much more comfortable. She also seems very happy with it. I've been trying to learn how to back-carry using a woven wrap but so far it is proving challenging - I keep trying to get her on my back with the "santa toss" technique as show-cased in this video but it's tricky. It doesn't help that every time I pick to try it seems to coincide with a screaming fit from the baby, guaranteed to make mastering a new skill impossible...

And for longer journeys we have now ordered a Bakfiets cargo bike from London Green Cycles!

This is going to be our transport method for taking Angel to and from nursery when I go back to work in November, and we hired it for a week last month to test it out. It's extremely fun to ride and feels very stable. "Why not just put a child seat on the back of a normal bike?" you may be asking yourself. Well...mainly just because it's fun. But additionally the Bakfiets has a great rain cover so Angel will not get wet. We can carry two children easily with no modifications. There's space to carry shopping which will be useful (we are a car-free household). Some people (admittedly, this would be the people who sell cargo bikes...) say that it's a safer option for cycling with a child, as the wider frame means cars give you a wider berth (and, I suppose, because the width forces you to cycle rather sedately - no popping out and overtaking buses on narrow roads). Safety is a priority for obvious reasons and because we live very close to the Old Kent Road which is not the quietest of roads.

How (not) to get out for a run on a Sunday morning/stress

Buggy running means that in addition to your own training schedule, you need to keep your child's sleep needs in mind, as being in a pushchair pushed at running pace is one of the most soporific things for a baby. I've been pretty baby-led up until now when it comes to daytime nap routines, but I am aware that I would like to help Angel sleep for longer stretches during the day and that the timing of my runs could really help with that.

Angel, like a lot of babies, needs her first nap of the day pretty early on. If she's not asleep 2 hours after waking up then she'll probably be screaming instead.

If she wakes up at 7am then the first nap is 9am; if she wakes up at 8am (like today...thank you for our Sunday morning lie-in!) then it's 10am. On a weekday she'd normally have that nap in the sling on our way to whatever morning activity we're doing, but at the weekend things are a bit different and today I thought we'd head out for a morning run. I knew I needed to be downstairs strapping Angel into the Maclaren by 10am to time things well for her nap. There are a number of things I wanted to do before that:
- eat breakfast
- fit in some nappy-free time for her skin health
- catch up on social media
- express some milk for the milk bank
- get dressed
- brush my teeth
and this morning I seemed to mis-time things so that Angel started whinging and crying before I was anywhere near ready to go out. Since it's a Sunday my husband was still at home, but he was clearing up in the kitchen which I didn't want to interrupt.

I knew that the quickest way to calm her down and help her fall asleep when she got whingey would be to get her into the Manduca (the baby carrier). I suppose if I didn't have two floors worth of stairs to negotiate I would put her straight into the pushchair, but I do...plus the pushchair stationary is a bit useless whereas the closeness of the sling gives immediate comfort even if we don't go anywhere straight away. However, as I was in my nightie I couldn't strap her straight on (because then I would be unable to go out) so I gave up on points 3 and 4 on the above list and headed to the bedroom to get dressed, taking my whinging baby with me.

I put her down on the bed and started to look for my running gear only to find that it all seemed to be in the wash. Angel was not screaming urgently but was emitting plaintive bleating cries every 5-10 seconds. I hunted through the pile of clothes on the floor of my wardrobe, through the pile of clothes on the bedroom floor...nothing. Should I put a dressing gown on to go out to the balcony and see if there was something there drying, or just wear pyjama bottoms for running? In which case, which ones?

Angel's cries went up a notch in volume. She was feeling REALLY tired and somehow REALLY unable to recognise what she needed to do about it. This first nap of the day often seems to be the hardest for her and involve the most crying. There's a lot of controversy about whether you can/should try to teach babies to "self-soothe" alone or whether it's ok to actively intervene to comfort them, and I've found this blog really useful on this subject: he basically says that every time you comfort your baby and help them calm down with your assistance, you actually are showing them how to go from stressed to calm, so that's how they learn about calming down - you don't have to leave them to cry alone.

That's all very well, but what about now when I need to get those pyjama trousers, a T shirt and socks on before I put on the Manduca, the baby is crying and there's so many things I need to do before I'll be ready to help her fall asleep in the pushchair? There's something so uniquely stressful about listening to your baby cry when you're trying to do something else. I usually find the solution to this is to put the "something else" on hold and attend to the baby, but in this situation I needed to get those socks on, dammit!

I had a moment of "Oh my goodness just shut that baby up!!!" a flash of insight into why parents might shake their babies or throw them against the wall...*

Then I got the second sock on, grabbed the Manduca in one hand and the baby in the other and charged off to the kitchen to enlist my husband's help. Teeth...shoes...stairs...Maclaren...rain cover...by 10:05am we were on the road and Angel had a peaceful 50 minute nap while I had a very wet run to the river and back.

*please don't call social services! I would never hurt her.

Running and tiredness/ sleep deprivation

Before having a baby I would usually expect to be on top form before I'd go for a run. Had less than 9 hours sleep? starting a cold? near the end of a cold? had to get up earlier than normal? Had a broken night? Don't run, wait until you feel better.

Now that I never get an UNbroken night, I have realised that actually it's possible to run no problem even if you're not feeling entirely on top form. I should add the usual disclaimer that I don't try to run particularly fast and I'm relaxed about stopping for drink and photo breaks...but nevertheless I would never have expected that I'd be able to train relatively regularly (I'm aiming for 3 runs per week) despite feeding the baby every 3-ish hours around the clock.

I actually (shh, whisper...this is tempting fate) feel relatively ok despite Angel's comprehensive feeding demands. There are a variety of ways that parents try to deal with babies waking up at night, many of which are more or less controversial, and infant sleep is a MASSIVE topic that so much has been written about: one of those things that you just don't realise until you have a baby...see blogs like http://www.sweetmadeleine.ca/2013/10/14/here-are-some-lies-people-tell-you-about-infant-sleep/ for a run through some of the issues if you're interested!

My husband and I have gone for the "just have her in bed with you" sleeping option which works wonderfully for us: Angel can wake me up for feeds without needing to cry (in the early days I was so sensitive to her that I'd be awake as soon as she started stirring, whereas nowadays I've got a bit more relaxed and she sometimes has to do some hearty kicking), I can latch her on to feed and fall straight back to sleep, she goes straight back to sleep once she's fed and I very rarely have to actually get out of bed during the night. As I've got more used to it I've started to lose track of how many feeds she's woken for, and most wonderfully of all, I feel ok in the mornings. I can't recommend co-sleeping enough (as some friends of mine who've had babies recently can vouch for...but clearly, everyone can choose where they want their baby to sleep themselves) and it's ridiculous that the NHS routinely advise against it because it's supposedly dangerous (it's not, but you do have to follow certain guidelines to reduce risks: https://www.nct.org.uk/parenting/co-sleeping-safely-your-baby).

So in general, I feel pretty good in myself at the moment, but this Friday was a massive exception, which was NOT Angel's fault. She was sleeping beautifully beside me at 11pm on Thursday night, my husband on the other side, while I was still awake reading my book and very close to drifting off...when I thought "what is that strange crackling noise? And is there a weird chemical smell in here? hmm...it's probably nothing, but I'd better check."

Thank goodness I did - as soon as I reached the kitchen which was in a cloud of evil-smelling smoke, I remembered that I'd put a load of breast-pump attachments on to sterilise in boiling water on the stove top after finishing dinner that evening...at about 8.30pm. And promptly forgotten about them. The pan was a mass of molten, boiling and strangely crackling plastic, though luckily no flames had yet broken out, and in my horror and haste to move it off the heat and throw open all the windows I moved the pan onto the laminate kitchen worktop, which will never be the same again.

Once I'd sorted the immediate threat I had a crisis about how I could have let something like that happen with a baby in the house...while said baby continued to sleep peacefully. (Luckily our bedroom is at the far end of the flat from the kitchen so she was pretty protected from the smoke). Altogether, I was up very late and then woken at 6am because the bedroom was boiling hot - having left all the windows open to clear the smell, we'd forgotten to turn off the central heating which had kicked in!

So altogether I was not feeling my best on Friday, but I had planned to do a longer run, and determined not to let a little sleep deprivation put me off. I set off with the Maclaren at about 4pm with the aim of covering 10km and also popping into Mothercare to see if I could replace the melted breast pump attachments. This meant abandoning my usual routes (either the Southwark Park one I have blogged about, or Greenwich) and heading to Peckham instead.




The great thing about running with a buggy, as well as being able to take your baby, is that you have scope for stopping at the shops as well without it cramping your style...on this run I impulse bought a quarter watermelon and there was no problem carrying it shoved under the buggy for the final 4 km. My trip to Mothercare was fruitless, but it gave me a nice mid-run breather.

I have a quiet route into Peckham via Meeting House Lane, and then from Peckham Library I was followed the Surrey Canal path all the way to Burgess Park where a funfair was setting up across the lake.

London's parks are really wonderful. People fish in this lake, and there's an amazing children's playground that I can't wait to bring Angel to when she's old enough to appreciate it. On a Friday afternoon pre-bank holiday weekend the park was full of families playing, kite flying and cycling, couples walking, colleagues drinking beer after work, and groups of teenagers relaxing post-GCSE exams.Additionally on this run I discovered the old lime kiln which apparently was used during London's rapid growth in the 19th century.

On the topic of London's rapid growth, this view from the park is wonderful for showcasing London's changing housing fashions...the block on the left looks EXACTLY like our flat, as a lot of current new builds do. The middle one is super modern, while the right hand block is classic 1960s/70s housing estate. (My husband is studying a Masters in housing, and researched an essay on the history and controversial regeneration of the Heygate and Aylesbury estates in this area, which makes me take more notice of housing than I used to).

By winding around Burgess park before returning home by the same route I'd come by (I could have experimented by coming home via the Old Kent Road but decided not to for two reasons: it might have cut my route too short and stopped me reaching my 10km goal; and I try to protect Angel from the worst of London's terrible air quality by keeping her off congested roads with lots of micro-particle spewing buses and polluting HGVs, since reading this article about it) I reached my 10km goal in 1 hour 17 minutes, according to my Runkeeper app (the "pause" function of which is very unreliable, to the extent that I don't know if that time estimate is likely to err on the side of generosity or caution!). I still felt sleepy, and my kitchen counter was still ruined, but the post-run endorphins had certainly cheered me up. Plus the baby had got in a solid hour of naptime, which as all parents know is a very positive outcome!

Evening training, or, how is it possible to organise evenings with a baby?!

Most people with babies will tell you evenings are the most difficult time. Children are getting tired and grumpy, adults are getting tired and grumpy. There's the main meal of the day to cook, eat and clean up, and there's bedtime to tackle (often an extremely emotive issue!). Plus you've got to finish work, get home, and crucially stop stressing about it (I'm trying not to think about how we'll manage once I go back to teaching after maternity leave). So, already a lot of pressure on the evening, which unfortunately is ALSO my favourite time to run.

It's not that I'm not a "morning person"...I can go running in the mornings, and occasionally I've even managed it at 6am before work. It's lovely to be out on a sunny June morning before most people are awake. But it's also lovely running at the end of the day, when it's a great time to wind down and process everything that's been going on. I also feel like my body is most energetic and read for exercise at about 5 or 6pm...although that could just be psychological as I'm sure I've read multiple contradictory articles about the "best" times of day to work out.

Until having our baby my husband and I were pretty relaxed about dinner time and happy to eat at 8 or 9pm so that one or both of us could fit in a run first. Maybe this is left over from the fact that we met in Rome...I used to work teaching evening classes so I'd finish at 8:15 or 9pm, THEN make my way to his flat on the metro and bus, and THEN we'd start cooking dinner, so we were often eating at 11pm. It's the south European way...

And up until now, Angel has been a very late-sleeping baby so there hasn't been particular pressure to get her to bed early. In the early months she used to be an evening crier several nights a week on average - we'd do our best to get her to sleep when our friends' babies slept, at 7, but no matter what relaxing activities we tried (bath, massage, story, feed...) from about 8 - 10.30pm was her cry time and we just had to comfort her as best we could and wait it out. She grew out of that at about 3 months thank goodness, and since then she's kept up a late nap at 7pm which means she's a chilled and lovely evening companion until we all go to bed together around 10.30.

However, now at 5 months it feels like we're in a period of flux. I think she's starting to drop the last nap of the day and need bed a bit earlier - it's moved from 10, to 9pm and this week around 8 she's started getting shrieky and rubbing her eyes, clear signals that it's bedtime.

Additionally I'm looking ahead now that she's nearly 6 months to starting baby-led weaning. It's key with this approach that meals are eating together so that the baby learns to eat along with the rest of the family...so that means we'll need to have dinner early enough that she's not too tired, and be ready to put her to bed soon afterwards. This all points to the need for more organisation in the evenings: I'm thinking we need to be eating dinner no later than 7 to catch Angel in a good window, assuming that she's not having the late nap. That means correspondingly getting the cooking done a bit earlier. Now 7pm sounds pretty reasonable, but what if she starts needing to go to bed even earlier? I know babies who are ready for their night's sleep at 7 or even 6.30pm! That would involve major habit-change for both me and my husband, juggling all our other commitments (work/exercise/shopping/socialising...) so that we're home and cooking earlier.

And this is already sounding stressful while I'm off on maternity leave...let along when I'm back working full days of teaching with all the marking, planning and admin that goes along with it! But I know there are a lot of people out there with more children, more stressful jobs, longer work hours and more commitments than us. How do they do it?

Yesterday was a Sunday, so a bit more manageable than a weekday to begin with. Angel and I woke up from a nap at about 5pm, and I was planning a buggy run before it got towards dinner time, while my husband studied. However, just as I was getting my trainers on, the heavens opened. I briefly considered going anyway, in waterproofs. Angel would be fine in the Maclaren with rain cover, but my feet would get wet, and that is no fun. As an alternative, I decided to get dinner (mushroom risotto) ready first, and see if the rain eased up enough for a run a little later.

Sure enough, it did, but what with one thing and another (cooking, nappy changes, getting the pushchair down the stairs...) it was 6.50pm before I set off. "But I want us to start eating at 7!" I told my husband, who sensibly pointed out that I wanted to run and I should do it.

So, I followed my usual route to Southwark Park, as detailed in my last blog post. The rain held off and I made good time with the buggy...5km in 33 minutes according to Runkeeper, which is perfectly respectable while pushing a 7.5 kilo buggy containing a 7+ kilo baby. The evening light was lovely, the streets quiet after the downpour. I felt energised, refreshed and happy...only to notice about 10 minutes in that the motion had proved irresistible to Angel, who'd decided to reinstate that 7pm nap, thus rendering all my planning, scheming and agonising totally null and void. The one thing I'm learning about babies is that you just CAN'T control them!

What can you do? ultimately I had a great run, my husband and I had dinner, and Angel got to bed, just a bit later than planned. If anyone has any tips or magic tricks for how to organise the evenings so that everything gets done and the baby gets to bed at a consistent bedtime, PLEASE post them in the comments!

The run, or, hidden beauty in New Cross

My partner and I moved to this area at the end of August. We didn't have a huge amount of CHOICE about the area we moved to, since we wanted to stay in London and buy through shared ownership, and the options were limited. We consider it huge good fortune that out of the few shared ownership developments that were available and that we were eligible for, we got a place in south east london a 5-10 minute cycle away from both of our places of work. London with no commuting? awesome!

I try to remind myself about that good fortune every time I leave the house sweaty, flustered, with a screaming baby and unbrushed hair and hear a "Hi Ms King!" pipe up from an ex or current student. If I'm feeling good, then walking around the area at 3.30pm on a schoolday makes me feel like a celebrity. On a bad day, it has me cowering round corners and crossing the street to avoid eye contact. (Sometimes I'm just not up to the "Yes, this is my baby...how's English going?" conversations).

Anyway, we started the process of buying our flat before it was finished and we occasionally used to rock up on our bikes at the weekend to check how the building work was going and explore. It was on one of those excursions that we discovered the cycle path that today is my favourite training route when I go out for buggy runs.

Leaving our flat, you turn away from the Old Kent Road and head towards the chimney of the waste recycling centre which looms over the New Cross skyline. First of all, you come to a little undeveloped park, bounded on the west by the Overground railway tracks.

It may not look like much, but it's a welcome little patch of green in a very urban area and is a lifesaver to the dogowners of New Cross. It has a sparkly view of Canary Wharf to the north and the Shard to the west...and on a recent sunny afternoon I spotted not one but two families having makeshift barbecues there. (Maybe disposable barbecues aren't the best thing for the grass or the environment...but they are fun and it's nice that people with no gardens have a space to enjoy).

Continuing up the cycle path you come to the super urban/post industrial landscape of the waste recycling centre on your right, while Millwall football stadium looms on the left. They've just opened a new stretch of cycle path which leads from here to South Bermondsey station, with spectacular views of the Gherkin.

Following the cycle path another 800 metres or so along the Overground tracks, you just have to cross Rotherhithe New Road and navigate a short section or busy road near Surrey Quays station and you arrive at the leafy oasis of Southwark Park. It's about 2 km from our house to the park, which means once there I can choose to prolong the run (over 5k) by going all the way to the river at King's Stairs (The Angel pub is a favourite when Mario and I walk/cycle this route and want some refreshment) or keep to a shorter 5 km route by going once round the lake at Southwark Park, then home.

I know a lot of people choose to leave the city before they have children because they think children will have a better quality of life somewhere greener. I grew up in London too, so I have no problem with my daughter having a city childhood, but I know it's important that we make the effort to find quieter, greener, less polluted spaces in the city for Angel to explore.

The buggy: running with the Maclaren

As you can see, there will be brand names in this post, both in the interest of being specific but also because I'm hoping the good folks at Maclaren might think about sponsoring me for the run, since so many of my training miles will be accompanied by my trusty Techno XLR. However, far from "you must buy a Maclaren" the message of this blog is intended to be "you DON'T need a super expensive special running buggy with massive tyres". It's an anticonsumerist message rather than a brand promotion. Let me explain...

We dithered for weeks over which pushchair to buy before Angel arrived. I knew I might not use it very much at first (I have several devoted babywearing friends who'd told me "I didn't use the pram for the first 6 weeks/3 months/6 months," and I was lucky enough to be lent a Moby stretchy wrap (and shown how to tie it...very important skill) which was invaluable for the first months). However, I was convinced we should have a pushchair/pram available to us for a range of reasons - for outings where it was necessary to have somewhere we could safely put the baby down, and because I'd been told pushing the baby along is a great way to help the baby sleep, among others. Once I started my research, though, I very quickly got confused - there's so many to choose from, there were so many different requirements to consider, and a lot of the prices are just through the roof (especially if you do your research in John Lewis).

We live in a 2nd floor flat with no lift, so it was essential that we have something light(ish) that I could carry up to the flat on my own. (We started negotiating to buy this flat when I was about 6 weeks pregnant, so you could say we should have known better, but we were buying through Shared Ownership which means choice was relatively limited, and everything else about our flat is perfect...if anyone is interested in shared ownership we highly recommend it and you can look at flats here https://www.sharetobuy.com/). We don't have a car so we DIDN'T need a "travel system" with car seat fitting etc. We take a lot of public transport, so we needed something manouvre-ble and easy to fold. We wanted something suitable from birth that would also last a long time (into toddler years). And then, I would really like something I could run with. That was the confounding factor as special running buggies tend to have big air-filled tyres, take up a lot of space and not fold up small, thus conflicting with our other requirements.

Oh, and yet another thing - as a tall woman I was keen to find a buggy with extendable handles so I don't have to hunch over. Not that I was being fussy or anything...

So what with all of these conflicting requirements, we ended up delaying choosing a buggy until I was about 38 weeks pregnant and it started to feel more urgent (although admittedly, we did and still do use the slings so much that actually we didn't need a pram until a good few weeks in). When I started looking with more intent, I was quite quickly directed to the Maclaren Techno XLR due to my extendable-handles requirement. Additionally, I was predisposed to want a Maclaren because friends with toddlers had told me it was a good pushchair for older babies...plus it was LIGHT: 7.5 kilos, when we already knew that it was difficult to find anything under 10. It was also substantially cheaper than a lot of other prams. We got the carrycot add-on to ensure it was comfortable for a new born baby, although technically you can take a newborn in it without one...but they'd be outward, "world" facing which I think we'd have felt edgy about. We used the carrycot until about 4.5 months, and she loves being outward facing and sitting up a bit more now.

So that was how we CHOSE the Maclaren, but how did we start RUNNING with it? The discovery came about, like most great discoveries, through exigency...I was hotfooting it to a buggy fitness class sometime in March, when I realised I was going to be really late. I broke into a run and swiftly realised that it really wasn't as uncomfortable as I'd have assumed. From there it was a small step to venturing out for an official run with the buggy...and a feeling of freedom! It's hard enough to motivate yourself to get out running at the best of times, and when you have to co-ordinate with your partner to get home to take the baby and ensure that she's not going to get hungry while you're out...it raises additional barriers. Instead, if you can just take off with the buggy, a run becomes a lovely way to break up a maternity leave day.

Given that my pace is fairly slow (7-8 km/hour as measured by the Runkeeper app) and that the paths are fairly smooth (this is urban running, but then South London councils are not always known for their excellent road maintenance) running with the Maclaren works absolutely fine. Additionally, it has a couple of the features that my sister-in-law (who knows a huge amount about everything to do with babies) told me are required in a running buggy: not the big, air-filled tyres, but it has a wrist strap for safety (so pram and baby can't entirely escape from me on a downhill) and you can lock the front wheels so they don't steer all over the place. The main problem so far is that one's arms get rather cramped due to having to keep them in one position on the handle...so we tend to do quite a lot of one-armed pushing to give the other one a bit of a break.

I'm now very comfortable running with my buggy, and Angel is very comfortable dozing in it while I do so. The main challenge is getting it, along with a 7+ kilo baby, up and down the stairs before and after.

The challenge!

I'm starting this blog to write about my training for the Royal Parks Half Marathon (https://royalparkshalf.com/) which I'm running to raise money for Sense UK (https://www.sense.org.uk/) on 9th October. I will be doing this training with/around my baby who is 5 months old today and who, for the purposes of discretion and privacy on the internet, on this blog will be known as Angel. (To be fair, I call her Angel probably more often than I do by her real name, especially when we're alone together during the day).



My fundraising page is here https://www.justgiving.com/Mary-King4


This will also give me the chance to blog about things I want to write about related to my maternity leave, which is nice as I've been struggling recently with my lack of a blog on which to express myself, comment on topical issues or simply vent. Since I was 21 I've rarely been more than a few months without a blog, though some have been more thoroughly exploited than others...I've had blogs for my round the world travels, my life in Italy, my experiences as a student teacher and as a qualified teacher, and I now have blogs for different classes that I try to get my students to use for their writing (I'm a secondary English teacher and periodically find myself really inspired by the ways new media can promote teenagers' reading, writing and general cultural experience, usually following training courses at inspiring places like the IoE or BFI. However, blogging as a teacher is REALLY difficult, I have found, due to concerns about privacy and professionalism. This blog is openly linked to my real name and identity which means I will not be commenting on any specifics related to my job).


Nevertheless, I've been a bit confused about how to fit myself into what feels like quite a saturated corner of the internet (not sure about this metaphor, but I'm sticking with it; we're imagining the internet as a tea towel, bloggers as water), namely that of the parent bloggers. I feel like most of what I might want to say about parenting a small baby is already being said by Abi at http://www.likereallifeblog.com/. A lot of my thoughts on breastfeeding have probably already been explored by http://canibreastfeedinit.uk/. And then, parenting is so emotive and inspires such strong opinions (although I fully believe that the so-called "mommy wars" are invented by commercial interests to divide us and thus create a more impressionable market, and we should resist this) so I've been considering with trepidation the possibility of entering into the fray myself (argh! new metaphor! now the internet is a battleground) and inadvertently offending people and having to spend ages discussing in the comments whether or not my post was too judgemental on parenting styles...so this running/training thing seems helpful in giving my blogging a specific focus and direction.



Anyway, I suppose the main thing to explain here is what inspired the race idea and why I am so confident that I'll be capable of running a half marathon 10 months post partum! I've been running on and off since I was about 16, inspired in great part by my amazing parents who, despite being in their 60s now, both run far more consistently than I do. While I was pregnant I was determined to stay fit and found I was able to keep training right up to the end of my pregnancy, due to my considerable good luck in escaping the joint or pelvic pain that renders a lot of pregnant women less mobile. I still managed a few (slow) runs after I'd gone on maternity leave at 36 weeks (which I was pretty smug about until about 36 hours into my 48 hour labour when I realised my fitness level did not seem to be helping me to get the baby out in any way...). I started running again very slowly when Angel was 6 weeks old (slightly covertly prior to consulting the doctor but I felt up to it which seems to be the main thing) and then had a revelation a few weeks ago when I realised I could run WITH the pushchair! No more needing to wait for my husband to get home from work and tank the baby up on milk before I could get out...suddenly regular runs could be incorporated so much more easily into my routine! Better still, the three of us could go running together as a family.


So having re-started my running, I wanted a goal and asked my friend Vic (who runs a lot more than me) about ideas for a race we could do towards the end of my maternity leave as a challenge...and here we are. More on my buggy, the race, the cause, Vic and many other things in future posts!.