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!.
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