While putting together my training plan for the Half Ironman, I had flashbacks to my Ironman training. I was in great shape and my runs, in particular, weren’t that hard.

As I geared up to go for my first run of the year, I had flashbacks to my first postpartum run, which was hard and defeating.

When I got on the treadmill, (it was 8 degrees, icy, and pitch black out), I set the speed to 5.0 and I ran for 30 minutes. I did walk 2 times in there, with a 2 minute walk to cool down. You know what? I did it, and it wasn’t awesome (or fast) but I did it. It wasn’t like either of the runs I was imagining but it was a run and that rocked.