Magdalena Lewy-Boulet

While training for my first Olympic Marathon Trials in 2004, I had several workouts that didn’t go exactly as planned, which caused me to freak out. Every split that was off or every interval I couldn’t finish would eat away at me, making me question my ability to be ready on race day. That year, I finished fifth in the trials. While that was certainly a respectable performance, I felt at the time like it was a failure.

When my son was born in 2005, everything changed. Physically and emotionally, training took a back seat. I had taken time away from running before, usually due to injury. Coming back from giving birth was a whole new kind of rehab.

As if the physical nature of what my body had been through wasn’t enough, the time and energy left over to devote to training just wasn’t there. I learned something I’d really known all along—time doesn’t just come to you; you have to make time yourself.

As my son grows, I watch him get stronger, taller, and smarter. Along the way, not everything goes according to plan. Sometimes kids get sick when you’re supposed to race. Sometimes they fall off the monkey bars, and you have to leave work to take them to the hospital. Sometimes they want to play with the neighbor instead of finishing dinner

Whether it’s big things, or little things, the script often changes. Just like you must do as a mother, as an elite runner you have to adjust to new situations. I don’t freak out anymore if a workout or a race doesn’t go perfectly. I know that my best effort is all I can ask of myself, and that I can hold my head high at the end of the day as long as I gave my best to training and racing.

I’ve also come to appreciate every moment I’m able to run and train, regardless of how well the workout goes, because I know I made time to get the work in. This adjustment has served me well, as three years after my son was born, I was on a plane to Beijing to run the Marathon in the Olympics.

But my favorite thing that my son has taught me, and maybe my favorite quality about him, is that there is joy to be found wherever you are. He can spend seven hours in the backseat of a car playing with Legos. He can read for hours on end in a coffee shop. He can hike with me for miles upon miles, jumping on rocks, looking for bugs, and making up stories along the way. Running an ultra marathon is not always joyous, but finding or creating joy for yourself in the little things can make the difference between finish and a drop, or between making the podium or not.

Motherhood has had another effect on my running career.

Far beyond anything that the experience of becoming a mother has taught me, is the fact that I just want to be better because of him. I want to show him what hard work looks like, and just how much you can achieve with hard work alone. I want him to know first hand how strong women are.

I want him to be proud of me, and sometimes in the depths of a 19-hour race, my heart melts knowing that I will see his smiling face at the finish.

Power up: Magda’s content is presented by GU Energy exclusively for Fleet Feet Sports.