Letting Go

I've never been terribly competitive about my running. It is something I do for myself in order to stay healthy. I get my sense of accomplishment from finishing races and runs, not so much from my time.

my old enemy

So I am surprised how hard it is for me to let go and stop caring about my pace now that I'm pregnant.

It's really been more apparently lately because I am doing a consulting job that involves weekly travel, so I am running on the treadmill in the hotel gym instead of outside. My pace is right there in my face the whole run, mocking me. When I was outside, I didn't check my watch until the end of the run so I could at least pretend that I was going fast. I hadn't been on a treadmill during my pregnancy until now and it was a shock to find out that what used to be my recovery pace is now my fast interval pace.

I have this arbitrary idea that in order to make it worth running, I have to be under a 10 min/mile. And now I'm realizing that I can't do that anymore. It's a lot harder to accept than I thought.

Most of my brain knows that I am just running so that the baby and I are both healthy. I am running to relieve stress and maintain a sense of normalcy when so much else is changing. I know that it is normal to be getting slower and slower, and that this is only temporary. But I still can't let go of that little bit of disappointment when I log my run and see it calculate my pace.

Has anyone else ever struggled with this?