Family Impact Factor

I still have not even washed all of the band-aid gunk off from my epidural and IVs which means either a) I gave birth awfully recently or b) I need to step up my personal hygiene habits. Either way, it feels somewhat soon to be thinking about racing and fitness goals, even to me! And yet spring is here, prime road racing season has begun and I cannot help but dream of lacing up my flats and pushing myself to exhaustion. But this all has to be balanced with what I like to call the Family Impact Factor (FIF).

So far the Family Impact Factor of my postpartum training has been an impressive zero (with the exception of two runs). Every run I have done has been on the treadmill in the basement while la cocotte slept in her crib and Squeaker slept beside me in a bassinet. This has meant that my runs typically go as follows (here is a true life example from Friday):

1.5 mile warm-up.
1 mile lactate threshold: 7:03
recovery: go to check that la cocotte was still asleep
1 mile lactate threshold 7:00
recovery: 90 seconds easy jog
1 mile lactate threshold: 6:44
recovery: nurse Squeaker, change Squeaker, make sure la cocotte still asleep
1 mile lactate threshold: 7:22
1 mile cool-down
check la cocotte
answer door
another mile cool-down

But if it means I can run with zero FIF, I will take it. This will continue to be my goal though it will mean no running outside for the next little while.

Racing is harder to accomplish with zero FIF. So instead I am thinking about how I can minimize the FIF of racing. I think I will have to follow these guidelines:

-go to small, local races that run on time and are early as possible in the morning i.e. no more destination racing
-plan on racing over the 5 km and 10 km distances only for the next little while to minimize the amount of time actually spent at the race as well as the amount of training necessary i.e. no marathons for the next many years (i'm ok with that)
-no more racing just for fun...chose a few key, goal races and plan on not racing more than once every two months or so... (this one is hard since I thrive on competition and would ideally like to race every 3-4 weeks)
-with less racing (and therefore fewer entry fees) hire a babysitter if possible to come on race day so that burden does not fall on hubby

So here is my first possible race schedule and a (very) tentative goals:

April 22 - local 5 km goal: sub-19 (this is HUGELY ambitious and not likely to happen), more likely sub 19:15.