Slaney Is Eager to Return to Track Competition After Giving Birth to Daughter

Seven weeks after the birth of her daughter, Mary Slaney is happy and comfortable in her role as a mother, and anxious to return to competition.

Her goal is to compete in the Fifth Avenue Mile in New York City on Sept. 13, just 15 weeks after Ashley Lynn Slaney was born May 30 at 7 pounds, 5 ounces.

“Right now, I don’t know if I’ll be fit enough,” Slaney said. “When I say ‘fit enough,’ I have to be fit enough to feel I could win the race. I want to be able to give it full effort.”

Slaney, the world record-holder in the mile (4:16.71) and the American record-holder in everything from the 800 to the 10,000, has been nagged by minor injuries. She says she fractured her tailbone in delivery, and she had a tender left heel last week.

Still, the Eugene-based runner feels good about the progress she’s made.

“I’m definitely anxious to get going again,” she said. “It’s probably why I have a sore heel--I’m trying to get going too quickly.”

Slaney trained normally, although without her customary intensity, through her fifth month of pregnancy, when cramping forced her to cut back to cycling, weightlifting and swimming, along with walking and jogging.

About six days after Ashley was born, Slaney ran a mile. Her longest run has been seven miles, at a 6- to 6 1/2-minute pace. She said she believes the enforced break from world-class competition has been beneficial.

“I’ve missed it, but I think it’s one of the best things I could have done, with next year and the following year in mind,” she said in a recent interview with The Register-Guard.

“Nineteen-eighty-three was really a tough year, pressure-wise, with the World Championships, and 1984 again was a big pressure year because of the Olympics, and last year was a tough year because of what happened at the Olympics (a controversial fall).

“So there’s really been three years without a break psychologically. This year has been a good year for me to rest. I feel I needed the rest psychologically more than physically,” she said.

Not that, as any parent knows, caring for an infant is restful. Ashley is sleeping about six consecutive hours at night now, but that still leaves Mary and Richard Slaney with many bleary-eyed moments.

“I feel more comfortable with her now,” she said. “Now I feel I can do the right things--give her a bath, change her, feed her, all the necessary things.”

Slaney, 27, says her daughter has made her feel “more fulfilled.”

“You never feel like there’s anything missing, but now, when you think about it, it’s like there was something missing when she wasn’t there,” she said.

Richard Slaney, 30, the British discus-thrower who is competing in the Commonwealth Games in Scotland, said he is enjoying fatherhood immensely.

Mary Slaney is thinking of next season and the World Championships in Rome in late summer 1987.

“I’ve been thinking, depending on the schedule, of concentrating on running the 800 and the 1,500 next year and concentrating on the 3,000 in 1988,” she said.

At the world championships, she’s thinking of doubling in either the 800 and the 1,500 or the 1,500 and 3,000. If she doesn’t double, she’d run either the 1,500 or the 3,000.

All that, of course, is many months and miles and diapers away.