A MOTHER will pound the pavements with her baby son in a buggy as she tries to break a Guinness World Record.

Jessica Bruce is taking part in the Abingdon Marathon in a bid to become the fastest woman to complete one pushing her baby in a pram.

The run on Sunday, October 18, will be the 32-year-old’s first marathon since her son Daniel was born in March.

Dr Bruce, who has been running since she was a child, said she continued to train until the 30th week of her pregnancy, when she turned to swimming.

However, after Daniel’s birth she was itching to get her training shoes back on, and waited just four weeks before trying to run again.

The mum-of-one from Risinghurst, Oxford, said: “It was horrendous, it was so painful. I actually thought it would never get easy again.”

However, after a couple of months Mrs Bruce began taking Daniel out with her once he was three months old.

Now, Dr Bruce and husband David – who met when they were both studying at Oxford University at the cross country society – go running with Daniel every Sunday at Blenheim Palace.

Dr Bruce, who completed her PhD in biomechanics at Balliol College in 2012, said she got the idea of running the 26.2-mile race with her son from Abingdon Marathon staff. She added: “I thought I’m not going to run as fast as I have in the past, so I’d set myself a new challenge.”

She and her 30-year-old husband, who is an orthopaedic registrar and has won the Oxford Half Marathon and Town and Gown 10km, will run the race together, pushing Daniel in a running-specific Bugaboo buggy.

Although the buggy has suspension and is designed to be pushed while running, Dr Bruce said she will be pushing almost an extra 20kg on top of her own body weight.

The founder and director of running analysis firm Run3D, added: “Running with a pram is hard work – any incline feels like you’re running up a mountain. It’s also significantly harder because your body is restricted by holding on to the pram.”

Although there is not currently a world record for fastest woman to complete a marathon pushing a baby, Dr Bruce wants to set a good time having achieved a personal best of two hours 58 minutes.

She said: “In theory we have only got to finish it, but we want to do it in a decent time.

“I would like to do it in under four hours, but it all depends on how well-behaved Daniel is. He should just fall asleep.”

Dr Bruce and Daniel have already completed more than 50 laps of the 4km route around Blenheim Palace in training.

She added: “It’s quite a quick, fast course, so it’s a good one to do world records at.”

After the race Dr Bruce will have to send off her results to Guinness World Records for the result to be ratified before she becomes the record holder.