96- Motherhood, Athleticism & The Strongest Version of You

Kat challenges the belief that motherhood ends athleticism and shares her own messy, 12-year rebuild after postpartum struggles, bedrest, NICU time, and surgeries. She previews her next 90 days, starting with a trail half-marathon and building to a 10-hour challenge and a 100-mile training race toward a 229-mile Pennsylvania Appalachian Trail fastest-known-time attempt.

00:00 Olympic Moms Spark

00:47 Show Intro and Mission

02:54 Motherhood Ends Athleticism

05:18 Pregnancy One Defiance

06:12 Postpartum Messy Middle

07:39 Second Pregnancy Reset

09:03 Rebuilding Trust Slowly

10:26 No Comparison Just You

12:19 Pennsylvania AT FKT

13:53 Twelve-Year Evolution

17:26 Fear and Deeper Why

20:01 Ninety-Day Build Plan

22:47 Strength Identity Work

23:46 Your Next Small Step

25:37 Closing and Call to Share

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Transcript

0:00

Okay, so on the heels of Olympics, I have not been able to stop thinking about the mothers, not just the medals, not just the records, but the mothers, because the coverage felt different this time. There was awe, there was surprise, and there were headlines that honestly sounded a little shocked. Like, wait, she had a baby and she's here. That a woman could birth a child and then compete at the highest level in the world. And that tells me something. It tells me that we're still carrying around this outdated belief that once a woman becomes a mom, her athletic identity quietly expires. Like it just fades out. Like she handed it in at the door of the delivery room. Today we're burning that belief down.

Kat 0:47

Welcome to MilesFromHerView, the podcast powered by KatFit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner, and an ultra marathon runner and a strength trainer in her forties with nearly two decades of experience. I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood. All while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in.

1:35

Welcome back to MilesFromHerView. I am Kat, your host, and I'm so glad you are here today. Whether you are on a run right now, folding laundry on your commute to work, sitting in the school pickup line or drop off line, or sneaking in five minutes of quiet in your car, whatever it looks like, this is your space. In this space, we talk a lot about strength, nutrition, running identity, and what it actually looks like to build a strong, full life as a woman and as a mother. No fluff, no pretending. It's easy, just a real conversation. And today it's a personal one. We're going to be talking about motherhood and athleticism, about the fear of losing yourself, about Rebel Re, about rebuilding yourself from the ground up about what happens when you decide, like really decide that you are not done yet. And I wanna take you behind the scenes, not the highlight reel, not the finish line photo. The real middle, the messy, quiet, unglamorous, middle, where. Everything actually happens. And then I wanna tell you what I'm building toward right now. What the next 90 days of my life are gonna look like and why. So let's dive in. So the heart of this. Podcast is there is that belief out there that is deeply embedded and a quietly destructive belief that cannot disappear fast enough. That once a woman has a child, that's it for her body. Her identity becomes solely a mom, that her body is broken, used up, less powerful, less capable, that the athletic chapter is just closed. And here's the truth I want to sit with you to in today. Athleticism doesn't end with motherhood. And before I go any further, I wanna be really clear about what I mean when I say athleticism because in the intro we, I highlighted mothers competing at the Olympics and athleticism. Doesn't always mean talking about race medals or training plans or any specific finish line. I'm talking about the relationship you have with your body. The belief that it is capable, the willingness to ask something of it and trust that it can answer that is athleticism and it belongs to every single one of us. Whether you run endurance events or you are getting back to walking around the block without it feeling hard, both are real. Both count and both matter. So your body has demands that was placed on it before kids and after kids. And honestly, the demands after kids are some of the most physically and mentally rigorous things a human being can do. You are your own person before having children and. After children, that identity does not vanish because you gave life. If anything, it truly deepens and I believed the lie for a long time. The idea that my body would never be athletic again after having a child. And it was pressed into me by both men and women. Comments, little jokes, subtle warnings wrapped in seemingly like carrying words, like, just wait. Your body will never be the same. Enjoy it now. And I was terrified. I generally did not wanna give up. I generally did not wanna give up being an athlete. That felt like losing a core piece of who I was. So when I was pregnant with my first, I went all in. I trained through the entire pregnancy. I lifted, I ran, I showed up consistently and within safe limits and I was proud of that. But underneath all of that consistency, there was something else driving it, defiance. I was determined not to lose my body. And I wanna pause for a second because that language matters. Lose my body like. That is communicating that my body was something that I, that could be taken from me if I wasn't vigilant enough. And in that I was operating from fear. Fear that if I slowed down, if I softened, if I changed, I would confirm what everyone said, that I would become proof of the warning and then postpartum hit. And the reality was. Different than what I expected. I pushed through exhaustion, I pushed through pain. I worked to strengthen what felt unstable. There were days I genuinely felt strong, and there were days that I felt completely defeated, like I was white knuckling it through my workouts that I had no business doing. My body had changed, and in the quiet moment, usually the worst ones, the ones where you can't outrun your own thoughts, that voice would whisper. Yeah, maybe they were right and then came the guilt, the horrible, twisted guilt of wondering, did I do this to myself? Did I push too hard? Did I not push hard enough? Is this my fault? And here's the moment that broke me open a little. It was 3:00 AM I was up with my baby. One of those feeds that exist outside of time where the rest of the world has just stopped. And out of nowhere, this fear just landed on me like a weight I wasn't prepared for. Am I ever going to feel like myself again? Not will I ever PR again, not will I get my body back. Just myself, that simple, that gutting. I sat there in the dark holding my baby, and I genuinely didn't know the answer. That messy middle does not get talked about enough, and I think it needs to. Then my second pregnancy changed everything. High risk, 33 weeks on bedrest, four weeks in the nicu, a complex C-section. Subsequent surgeries, almost a full year of not trusting my own body, not knowing what it could or couldn't do, and being afraid to find. I went from training through one pregnancy out of sheer willpower and defiance to being completely still in pregnancy. Number two, forced stillness. No choice, just ceiling tiles to stare at and fear and waiting. I was in a body I no longer recognized, and when I was finally cleared to exercise, like finally all I wanted to do was run. Not because it was the smartest next step, not because it was going to look impressive, but because it felt like me. So I ran slow, clunky, humbling miles, miles that had no business being called a workout by external standards, but they were mine that season. The bedrest, the nicu, the long recovery, it forced me to learn something. I now coach every single day. Change your story, change your life. I had to rebuild trust with my body. Not muscle first, not pace first, not performance first, trust first. And I wanna be honest about what rebuilding actually looked like because it wasn't linear and it wasn't pretty. There was a training block about six months or seven months into my recovery where I had genuinely started building momentum. I had a plan, I was feeling hopeful, and then sleep deprivation. And then sleep deprivation just took me out completely. I'm talking weeks. I was running on three or four broken hours a night, and my body just refused workouts. That should have felt moderate, felt impossible. I'd start and I'd have to stop. I'd skip days, then skip more days, and then the gap was so wide it felt shameful to go back. And for a minute, that felt like confirmation of every fear that I'd ever had. But here's what I know now that I didn't know then. That wasn't failure. That was data. My body was telling me something true and the choice to listen, even when listening felt like quitting was actually the first real act of trusting myself again. Slowly that rebuilding expanded into longer miles, into milestone distances, into ultras, into something I wanna tell you about right now. But first, I'm gonna stop here for a second because I can feel a little bit where this is going and I want to get ahead, ahead of something. If you're listening to this and the idea of running an ultra marathon or any endurance race or even a race season feels like it belongs to someone else's life entirely. I hear you. And I want you to know that nothing I'm about to say is comparison. It is not a benchmark. It is not a quiet suggestion that this is what growth looks like or what you should want you. Bold is not my bold. Maybe your version of reclaiming yourself as getting outside three times a week. Maybe it's signing up for that 5K you've been thinking about for two years. Maybe it's picking up something heavy in the gym and realizing you are stronger than what you thought. Maybe it's moving your body in a way that feels yours again, with no audience and no finish line. All of that is work. All of that is identity. All of that is what this space is about. So I'm gonna share a little bit of my story, a little bit more of like I alluded to in the beginning, what the next 90 days are gonna look like for me and in particular, the story of me going after an FKT 229 miles of the Pennsylvania Rocks story because it's a one I have. But I'm sharing it again as a window, not a measuring stick. The point is never the distance. The point is the decision to keep coming back to yourself. Whatever that looks like for you, it belongs here. Now, let me tell you about the FKT. So in about 90 days, I'm going after the Pennsylvania Appalachian Trail, FKT. FKT is fastest known time. Let me explain what that all actually means, because I don't wanna just throw out an an acronym and keep moving on. So the Appalachian Trail runs over 2000 miles from Georgia to Maine and the Pennsylvania section. Through 229 miles of some of the most technical, rocky, relentless trail in the entire country. Pennsylvanians will laugh knowingly at it. If you've ever run PA trail, you know it's not forgiving and there are a lot of rocks and roots. A fastest known time is exactly what it sounds like. You attempt to cover a designated route faster than anyone on record, no aid station set up for you, no race organization, just you, the trail, your crew, and the clock. It's one of the purest forms of endurance sports that is there, deeply personal. It's completely exposed and there's nowhere to hide, and I'm going after it. Now I wanna be very intentional because bigger goals are better, not because this is what evolution looks like or what it should look like. I'm sharing it because this is my evolution in the point of sharing it is the 12 years behind it, not the 229 miles ahead. I'm nearly 12 years postpartum from my second and last child. 12 years, and I wanna sit in that for a second because I think we skip it over it too fast. In these conversations, and especially in this world where there's highlight reels everywhere, look at social media, it's a quick snapshot into someone's reality. And when we talk about the early postpartum season, the 3:00 AM feeds the recovery, the first miles back. And then we jumped to that highlight rail. But there is 12 years of story between the those two things, and it was never a clean build, not even close. There were so many blown training cycles. Full ones weeks of work that just. Evaporated when life got loud, there were interrupted workouts and workouts that never happened at all. There were seasons where I was consistent and seasons where I completely fell off and I had to find my way back from zero. Again, there were races I did not finish. There were goals I set and quietly abandoned versions of a plan that looked great on paper and lasted about 11 days in reality. It was the stops and the starts across all of it across the 12 years and somewhere in that 12 years, I stopped chasing my 20-year-old college athlete self that took longer than I would have to admit. She was good. She was fast, she was fearless, and she had this confidence in her body that felt effortless because she'd never had a season to question it. And for a long time, I thought the goal, the real goal, was to find my way back to her to prove that everything that happened hadn't cost me anything. But here's what 12 years actually taught me. I'm not going back to my 20 something self. And I don't want to, she was the beginning of the story. She didn't know yet what this body was capable of. When things got hard, when it had to be rebuilt, when it failed. And was asked to show up anyway when it carried children and recovered from surgery and ran on no sleep and kept going through all the ordinary, relentless demands of a full life. She didn't know that yet. I do. So I'm not chasing her. I'm showing her something. I'm showing her that. Every stop, every start, every blown cycle, every workout interrupted by a sick kid or an impossible week, or just a body that said, not today. None of that was wasted. All of it was the build, even when it didn't feel like it. The FKT is a culmination of 12 years of that. Not a comeback, not a redemption arc, an evolution. And that's why I want to tell you about it, because wherever you are in your own arc, whether you are in year one or year seven or year 12, whether it's been stops or starts the whole way through, you are not behind. You are not starting over. You are exactly where the story needs to be. Now why the FKT specifically? I'm scared. I wanna say that out loud. 229 miles of Pennsylvania rock. The logistics, the physical demand, the mental weight of what it takes to keep moving, when every reason to stop feels completely reasonable. I'm not pretending I have it all figured out because I don't. But I'm doing it anyway. The decision's made, and I'm saying it here to you because making it out loud is real. And if you've been following me on social media, I have announced it a couple months ago, but now we're within that 90 days and it is so real. But the deeper why is this, I'm doing it for her. And when I say her, I mean something specific. I mean the, her in the miles from her view. I mean the, her who is so many things at once, the mother. The athlete, the partner, the professional, the caregiver, the dreamer, the woman who has been handed a hundred different titles, sometimes struggles to find herself underneath all of'em. I mean, the her who was told her body was done, the her who sat in the dark at 3:00 AM wondering if she'd ever feel like herself again. The her who stopped raising her hand for hard things because it started to feel selfish or unrealistic or like too much to ask. The her who wants more, the, the her who, who, who wants more, who feels that pulled towards something and quietly then talks to, and then quietly talks herself out of it before she even begins this. FKT is for her, for you, for the version of that story, whether you are more. Looks whether your more looks like 220 mile, whether your more looks like 229 miles, or it looks like getting back to something that once made you feel alive. Every mile is proof of the concept that women, that the women who issued those quiet warnings were wrong. That a layered, resilient, 12 years postpartum version of a woman who has failed and rebuilt and failed again and kept going, can stand on a trail and do something extraordinary, not despite everything she's been through, but because of it. So here's what the next 90 days are actually gonna look like, because it doesn't start at the FKT, it builds to it. And I want you to know the whole arc because I want you on this journey with me. And the 90 day journey starts on Sunday. I'm towing the line of a trail half marathon, first race of the season. Race nerves don't go away. No matter how many start lines you've stood on, they just change shape, but. Mm. This is the opening move. Then at the end of the march, I'm doing a 10 hour endurance challenge. 10 hours, not miles, hours. You just keep moving. It's a kind of different mental game. It's a different relationship with time and effort. In your own internal voice. It is focusing on nutrition and tuning into myself. It is really working on. Trying to understand the challenges that I might overcome out there and what it's gonna look like. And then at the end of April, I'll be running my fourth hundred mile race, and it is going to be a training race. And that sounds to me, even though yes, I have run a hundred mile race before baffling. Thinking back to all those times where getting outside to go run even five steps seemed impossible. That now over the span of 12 years, I have worked my way up to say, a hundred mile training race. And then after that comes the attempt on the Pennsylvania Appalachian Trail. The trail, half the 10 hour challenge, the a hundred mile training race in the FKT four events, 90 days each one of them, it's its own thing. It's its own challenge, it's own lesson, but they're also a deliberate build towards something that has never been about a title or a time. It's about what it represents. It's about standing at the end of 229 miles tired and wrecked and real, and knowing that the story we were handed about women's body can do. It's about knowing it's, and knowing that the story we were handed about what a woman's bodies, what women's bodies can do after motherhood was never ours to keep. It is about showing my kids what it looks like when their mother decides she's not done. It's about showing you what's possible in whatever form possible takes in your life, and this is the heart of everything I do in my business. I train women to take up space. To own their strength to embrace the athlete within. Whether she's someone you knew before pregnancy or someone you're meeting for the very first time, whether she shows up at the trail race or at the end of a walk, that felt impossible six weeks ago. She's there, I promise you she's there. And training your body to be strong and resilient is not about vanity metrics. It's not about aesthetics or what you look like in the mirror. It's about identity. It's about knowing you can push, pull, press, carry weight you once thought was impossible. It's about the confidence that doesn't stay in the gym. It spills into your voice. Your relationships, your work, your boundaries, the way you show up in a room, the way you speak about yourself in quiet moments, strength looks different on every woman, and all of it counts. So here's what I want you to sit with. Where have you quietly decided it's over? Where have you accepted the narrative that. You are less now, less capable, less deserving, less worthy of time and space it takes to pursue something that lights you up. And what would it look like to take one tangible step toward rebuilding trust with your body? Not a full overhaul, not a massive commitment that already feels overwhelming. One step maybe lacing up your shoes this week. No watch, no goal, no pace. Just moving your body and remembering what it feels like. Five minutes, 10 minutes, that counts. That is the work. Maybe it's a little bit bigger, maybe signing up for something a 5K, a trail race, a challenge that puts a stake in the ground and says, I'm still in this. Feel that moment when you hit register, that's your athlete waking up, or maybe you're ready to go all in and. What you need is someone in your corner, a coach, a plan, a community that gets it. If that's where you are, come find me. Book a call. Let's talk about what building strength actually looks like in your real, full, complicated life right now. Small step, medium step, big step. All of them are brave. All of them belong here. You do not have to choose between being a mother and being an athlete. You do not have to want what I want. You do not have to chase my finish line. You just have to be willing to find yours. And the woman you used to be the one who loved moving her body, who felt capable, who knew herself as someone strong. She's not disappointed in you. She's watching you find your way back, and she's so, so proud. Thanks for being here today. If this episode landed with you, share it with a woman in your life who needs to hear it. Whoever she is, wherever she is in this. Leave a review if you feel moved. It generally helps more women find this space.

Kat 27:06

Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromHerView, powered by KatFit Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes, and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into Next. You can connect with me on Instagram at KatFit or share this episode. Road with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.