The Pregnant Athlete: Lessons from an IRONMAN® World Champion

You enter a race and prepare for months on end. You watch your body change, you eat differently, you obsess over sleep and hydration, buy new kit and ask more experienced people what to expect. You swing wildly between excitement and nerves as the big day approaches.

Then it arrives. It’s harder, messier, more physically demanding and emotionally overwhelming than anything you’ve ever done before. But instead of a medal and a finisher’s T-shirt, you’re handed a tiny human being.

In many ways, pregnancy and childbirth are the ultimate endurance event. The planning. The discomfort. The resilience. The uncertainty. The bodily fluids. The recovery. The experience shapes and changes you. Pregnancy and motherhood are the start of an entirely new chapter and one that can change your relationship with training, nutrition, identity and performance.

For this article, I wanted to focus on the pregnancy side of the journey, and follow up separately with the glorious chaos that is post-partum life...

Pregnancy and performance lessons

Before I go any further though, it’s important to say that not everyone wants children, not everyone can have children and, for many people, the road to parenthood is far more complicated than the glossy narratives we often see online or in sport. That was certainly true for me.

Conception wasn’t straightforward or easy. I’d never want to present motherhood as an expectation, or some defining milestone women are supposed to aspire to. Everyone’s path is different and what matters most is that people feel supported in making the choices that are right for their bodies, health, ambitions and lives.

This is simply one experience (mine) and if any of it helps another woman navigate pregnancy while trying to stay active and sane, then brilliant, but your first port of call for actual medical advice should absolutely be your antenatal team, GP or obstetrician.

We conceived our daughter in March 2015. When she was the size of a grain of sand, I immediately transformed into a full-time researcher of all things pregnancy-and-sport related. The aim was to stay as active and healthy as possible throughout pregnancy, for my physical health, my mental and social wellbeing, for the health of the unborn baby and because movement has always been such a huge part of who I am. Exercise kept me grounded, calm and connected to myself at a time when so much else was changing.

Of course, there’s no shortage of pregnancy advice out there. Midwives, antenatal classes, books and internet forums will happily tell you what size fruit your baby resembles each week, what colour to paint the nursery and approximately 17,000 things you should no longer eat.

But as an athlete, I specifically wanted science backed, evidence-based guidance on exercise and fueling.

Could I still run? Swim? Ride? How hard could I train? When should I back off? Was I allowed to elevate my heart rate? How do I fuel properly? Will my body ever feel the same again? Should I simply lie down in a dark room for nine months avoiding shellfish and smelly cheese?

Athletes such as Emma Pallant-Browne, Sophie Coldwell, Jo Pavey, Paula Radcliffe and Nicola Spirig have all demonstrated that elite performance can sit alongside pregnancy, childbirth and parenting. Their stories challenge the outdated idea that motherhood somehow signals the end of sporting ambition. It was great to see that the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) stated that “no one should ever be penalised for getting pregnant” and launched a maternity leave policy that allows women to take 15 months off from the sport while still retaining an income. Their PTO rankings will also remain fixed during that period. It’s also vital that commercial sponsors provide support to pregnant women and new mums through this transition in their lives.

However, despite there being examples of sporty mums I struggled initially to find advice aimed at women whose version of normal involved Lycra, electrolyte drinks and long rides in the rain.

Thankfully, several experienced athletes, coaches and medically-qualified friends helped steer me through it all. You can also find some guidance and tips here, but below are some of the lessons I learned as I journeyed through my pregnancy:

1. Keep moving

While pregnancy inevitably meant reducing and adapting my training, I still loved being active. I loved being outdoors, moving my body and feeling physically capable even while carrying around a rapidly expanding human.

Most generic guidelines suggested pregnant women should aim for around 30 minutes of moderate exercise three times a week. Which is sensible advice for many people, but for endurance athletes used to training two or three hours a day, it sounds suspiciously like hibernation. I wouldn’t necessarily advise doing the same volume of training you did as a non-pregnant athlete, but nor is it sensible to stop completely (unless you are advised to do so by a health care professional). Being active is good for pregnant woman and its good for the baby.

During the first trimester, I mainly swam and power walked. Swimming, in particular, felt brilliant: low impact, cooling and one of the few times you feel weightless; which is ace as the bump grows and gets heavier.

As I moved into the second trimester, I gradually reintroduced running and cycling. I continued running until about a week before giving birth, although by the end it looked less like elegant athleticism and more like a determined shuffle. I did buy a waist band to support both back and bump, which worked well.

Cycling lasted until around 32 weeks; all on road. I avoided technical trails and anything involving potential face-planting. I liked taking the mountain bike out of the road as the upright position felt more comfortable than the road bike. I also used the indoor trainer, which is obviously safer than being out on the roads.

Towards the end of my pregnancy it was in the pool that I felt most comfortable, and perhaps explains why our daughter is more comfortable under the water than on top or out of it.

Importantly, pregnancy reminded me that movement doesn’t always have to be about performance. Sometimes it’s simply about being outside, being social, feeling the wind in your hair or the water on your skin and preserving a sense of yourself through enormous change.

2. Love your pelvic floor

Before pregnancy, I think my pelvic floor ranked far below ‘sorting out the Tupperware drawer’ on my list of priorities. Then suddenly everyone starts talking about it, and for good reason. Your pelvic floor is essentially a hammock of muscles supporting your bladder, bowel and uterus.

Pregnancy places a huge amount of pressure on it and weak muscles can lead to stress incontinence (otherwise known as peeing when you sneeze, cough or laugh too enthusiastically). I started doing pelvic floor exercises religiously and also began Pilates with a women’s health physio.

Slow, controlled movements requiring patience and coordination rather than charging around like an overexcited Labrador. But honestly, it was one of the best things I did during pregnancy and hugely helped both physically (including after birth) and mentally.

3. Avoid extreme activities

Pregnancy is generally not the moment to launch a brand-new extreme hobby. Running, cycling and swimming were all familiar territory for me, which is why I continued with those. My doctor also advised Pilates. There are some activities, such as contact or collision sports, which you might want to stop altogether, or modify your training to take out the contact element.

Activities involving blunt-force trauma, oxygen deprivation or unnecessary drama are generally best avoided. So probably skip kickboxing, scuba diving and launching yourself down black ski runs.

4. Don’t be so intense

This was probably the hardest adjustment mentally as I like training hard. But during pregnancy I made a conscious decision to keep the intensity low and avoid elevating my heart rate too much. If I was gasping for breath or turning the colour of a beetroot, I backed off. Other athletes make different choices and many continue doing higher-intensity sessions safely, but personally I preferred to err firmly on the side of caution. I went on ‘feel’, but it might be wise to wear a heart rate tacking device to help guide you.

Before pregnancy I was exercising for roughly two to two-and-a-half hours most days. During pregnancy I reduced that significantly, usually capping sessions at around 90 minutes. Did I occasionally ignore this and sneak in longer rides? Yes. Would my midwife necessarily endorse this decision? Potentially not; but the effort stayed steady and controlled, and most importantly I listened constantly to how my body was responding. That became the recurring theme throughout pregnancy: adapt rather than stop and listen to your body.

5. Listen to your body

Athletes can be very good but also, paradoxically, spectacularly bad at listening to their bodies. We hear warning signs and sometimes ignore them. Pregnancy is not the time for that approach. If something hurts: stop. If something feels wrong: stop. If you’re worried: stop. This is not the season of life for bravado, or to push through pain or discomfort in the hope that it will go away.

6. Fuel is your friend

Pregnancy nutrition is one of those topics where everyone suddenly becomes an expert. Friends, relatives, partners, internet forums and even random strangers in supermarket queues. The moment you become visibly pregnant, people develop a quite astonishing interest in what you’re eating and drinking. “You can’t eat that. You must eat this. Don’t have coffee. Definitely have coffee. Eat for two. Don’t eat for two”.

The reality is that the advice around pregnancy nutrition can feel completely overwhelming, especially for athletes who are already used to thinking carefully about fueling. Suddenly you’re trying to balance sports nutrition with pregnancy guidelines while simultaneously battling nausea, exhaustion and/or hunger.

As an athlete, one of the biggest mental shifts was accepting that pregnancy is not the time to obsess over body composition and it forced me to address some disordered eating patterns I’d lapsed into since retiring from professional sport.

I tried to focus less on control and more on nourishment: eating enough, getting plenty of protein, fresh fruit and veg, whole grain carbs, iron and calcium, staying hydrated and not spiralling into guilt if I suddenly needed a pastry the size of my own head. I was mindful of supplements, and always read the label to ensure they were suitable for pregnant women. It’s also advisable to avoid exercises that could cause overheating, energy deficiency or dehydration.

7. Accept the change

Pregnancy is miraculous, but let’s not pretend it’s always glamorous or that you always feel good. You may vomit constantly, you may cry because somebody ate the last biscuit, you may need the toilet every six minutes, your hips may ache and sleep can become a distant memory.

For athletes, the change in our bodies can feel psychologically challenging. We spend so much of our lives in tune with how we feel and function that suddenly feeling unfamiliar in your own skin can be unsettling.

Personally, though, I loved watching my body change. I didn’t see pregnancy as an affliction or something to simply get through. I saw it as my body doing something extraordinary; although perhaps that perspective was shaped by the challenges we experienced in getting pregnant in the first place.

Of course, becoming a different shape is strange. Your body feels different and you feel different. That’s OK: it’s normal and natural. And just as your body changes during pregnancy, it will change again after birth and continue to evolve in the months and years ahead. If you can lean into that change (even while surviving the nausea, exhaustion and emotional ups and downs) it can help place you in a far more positive psychological space.

After 40 weeks of pregnancy, in December 2015, we welcomed the effervescent, cheeky, adventurous and endlessly kind Esme Grace Wellington Lowe into the world. And she changed ours forever.

Further reading

• How many hours should athletes train during pregnancy?
• How pro athletes changed their training volume during pregnancy
• Running on empty: A World Champion's battle with REDs