A Utah mom has just broken a record as the world’s fastest woman running a marathon while pushing a stroller.
Alyssa Puttkammer made the run while pushing her 19-month-old daughter, Blair. The duo ran the Pacific Northwest Marathon in Oregon in 3:02:54, beating the previous record of 3:10:26.
As a single mom, Puttkammer said training was challenging at times, but she was motivated by a quote from John Wooden: “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
“As soon as I was looking at jogging strollers over a year and a half ago, I saw that this record existed. And I saw the time and was like, ‘I’m gonna beat that,'” she said.
Still, she noted that at first, it seemed as though the record would be out of reach.
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“Blair started crying and continued to cry inconsolably for seven miles which was torture for me. She finally drifted off to sleep for three miles, and was happy and calm the rest of the race, thank goodness,” Puttkammer told Fox 13.
“When we finally rounded the last turn and sprinted to the finish, everyone was cheering. It didn’t really sink in that I had broken the record.”
She told Fox 13 that running has become a bonding activity between her and Blair, allowing her to continue doing what she loves while bringing her daughter along for the ride. “It’s something we share,” she explained.
“Being a single parent provides a lot of barriers to training for a marathon,” she told Park Record. “I constantly had to reframe and ask myself, ‘OK, well, what can I do?’ This is a mindset I hope to carry forward.”
She also said that though she’s proud of the record, she hopes her story inspires other moms to run with their children and she wouldn’t mind seeing someone else top her in the future.
“I’d love for other parents to see Blair and me running, or hear about it, and decide to try running for the first time with their kids,” she said. “I’d be thrilled to see my record broken soon.”
