How the New-Mom Mindset Shift Pushed Her to a 2:42 Marathon—And a Spot at Trials – runnersworld.com
How the New-Mom Mindset Shift Pushed Her to a 2:42 Marathon—And a Spot at Trials runnersworld.com
Gina Rouse of Knoxville, Tennessee, balanced mom duties and hard training in order to run 2:42:40 at the 2017 California International Marathon.
When Gina Rouse graduated as a nurse from the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga in 2003, she intended to keep training like she did as a college runner.
“I got the night shift in my first job as a nurse,” Rouse, who now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, told Runner’s World. “I was working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and still trying to run twice a day before and after the shift. I definitely cut corners on sleep.”
Rouse soon realized that her new schedule made it impossible to keep training the way she did in college. So throughout most of her 20s, she stuck to a simple daily routine: work, run for 30 minutes, hang out with friends, sleep, repeat.
“Running was the last thing on my mind,” Rouse, now 39, said. “It wasn’t until I met my husband, who’s a runner, and we started going on runs as dates, that I got serious about it again. And it wasn’t until we had kids that I trained for marathons.”
Since Rouse had her first of three children at age 31—and became a full-time mom—she’s steadily improved in the marathon distance. In 2011, seven months after she had her oldest daughter, she finished the Atlanta Marathon in 3:15:20. Five years later, she ran a 2:45:25 at the 2016 Houston Marathon, just barely missing the cutoff time for the 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials. Rouse got her vengeance, though, the following year, when she qualified for the 2020 Trials by running 2:42:40 at the 2017 California International Marathon.
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To get to the elite level Rouse is at now wasn’t easy: It took working out after waking up at 4 a.m. to nurse a baby, running 10 miles before taking the kids to school, and balancing time with her family with time chasing her running dreams.
“I’ve felt out of place on a lot of marathon start lines, because all of the elite runners have their fancy race kits and I’m just in a sports bra and shorts,” said Rouse. “I’m sure most of them haven’t been up all night with a sick kid or are nursing babies. That motivates me. I’m still here.”
How Having Kids Fueled Her Fire
After running her marathon in Atlanta in 2011, Rouse realized that she might not have lost as much fitness as she thought after college. As an undergrad, she clocked 17:24 for 5K and broke 38 minutes in the 10K, but was so often sidelined with injuries that she never really hit her stride.
“I had bad IT band syndrome my senior year of high school, and I had to have surgery to fix it,” she said. “After that, I had a lot of injuries, because I didn’t understand easy days and I kept ramping up mileage too quickly.”
Slashing her mileage significantly in the eight years following graduation was exactly what Rouse needed to start fresh again. Unlike in college, where she prioritized winning and getting faster, in her 30s, she was focused on caring for her children and being a good role model. That mindset shift allowed her to treat running as a fun, healthy activity she was doing for herself. Instead of dreading workouts and long runs, she embraced them, and her interval and race times improved in turn: Within three years, she was able to shave 25 minutes off her marathon time.
In between her kids’ births in 2011, 2013, and 2015, Rouse trained, raced, recovered, and trained again, gradually whittling down her marathon time. Before the 2011 Atlanta Marathon, she increased her daily runs to six miles, plus a 10-mile long run on the weekend. Luckily, she had a solid group of women—many of them also new moms—as well as her husband to train with. In late 2012, she hired a coach to guide her training plans.
“After I had my daughter in 2013, my coach sat me down and said I had a shot at qualifying for the Olympic Trials,” she said. “Ever since seventh grade, I’ve had this dream of making it to the Trials, so I was all in.”
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try Again
Rouse picked the 2014 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, as her goal race for qualifying for the 2016 Trials. To prepare for it, she bumped up her mileage to between 50 and 60 miles per week, including an interval workout on Tuesdays, hill repeats on Thursdays, and a Sunday morning long run.
Before and after her training sessions, she was caring for her toddler and newborn, often waking up at 4 a.m. to nurse her baby, run, and then get back home in time to feed her older daughter breakfast. “My husband and I would trade off who gets up early, so we both got our runs in,” she said.
Unfortunately, Grandma’s didn’t go exactly as planned. In her last mile of the race, Rouse saw the 2:45:00 Trials qualifying standard tick by on the clock, but she still had a ways to go; she ended up finishing in 2:50:20. While disappointed, Rouse didn’t let the result deflate her. But then she got the news that she was pregnant again in 2015.
“I trained through half of my pregnancy, but once running got uncomfortable, I was on the elliptical,” said Rouse. “I had my third daughter in July 2015. The minute I got back from the hospital, I asked my coach, ‘Is there still time to qualify?’”
Luckily, Rouse recovered quickly from her third pregnancy, and was back training just two weeks after delivery. (While this worked for her, she said that new moms should always consult with their doctors before beginning running after pregnancy—her doctor approved her early return.) She signed up for the Houston Marathon in January of 2016. After months of pressure-cooked training, Rouse gave her best effort on race day, but ended up 25 seconds short of qualifying for Trials.
“I would never trade my third kid for a race, but that was a tough blow,” she said. “Still, I just told myself, 2020 is coming, so it’s time to get back at it.”
The next year, Rouse signed up for the 2017 CIM. To prepare for her OTQ attempt, she increased the volume of her workouts (running 8 x one-mile repeats instead of 5 x one-mile), weekly mileage (90 miles per week), and long runs (22 miles). She ran the bulk of her mileage easy, while her workouts were much faster than marathon pace, or around 6:12 per mile.
“There were some days when it was really tough. I would have mom guilt, thinking I was spending too much time with this,” she said. “But then my kids would tell me, ‘Mom, this is your dream. If you quit, we’re going to quit.’”
In December 2017, Rouse’s hard work paid off: She ran 2:42:40 at CIM, becoming one of the 341 women who have qualified for the 2020 Trials in Atlanta. This fall, she’s aiming to lower her PR at the Chicago Marathon, then will start building up again for the big event in February.
When asked who she looks up to in the sport, she mentioned Roberta Groner, a 41-year-old mother of three who ran 2:29:06 in Rotterdam earlier this year.
“What I love about marathons is that even though I’m turning 40, and I’m a mom, I can still be competitive,” she said. “It’s a super stage to be in.”
Digital Editor Hailey first got hooked on running news as an intern with Running Times, and now she reports on elite runners and cyclists, feel-good stories, and training pieces for Runner’s World and Bicycling magazines.