After nearly 18 years in triathlon, three Olympic Games, one Olympic medal, a World title and a full set of Commonwealth Games medals, my husband and I decided we wanted to have a baby.
I wasn’t sure if that meant I would retire from the sport or not, but something inside me told me to never ‘officially’ make that decision and to just keep my options open.
In late January 2023 we welcomed our daughter, Emmie, and eight months later I hit a start line for the first time in nearly two years. Sounds simple, right?!
Triathlon Training Routines Would Change
Well as it turns out, returning to triathlon training after having a baby was anything but straight forward. But I can honestly say it was a labour of love getting back to a start line. This final phase of my career will always be something I look back upon with great pride.
I was 36 when I fell pregnant and 37 when Emmie was born so while I knew that I really wanted a child, I also knew that this could mean the end of my career.
I had to be comfortable knowing that I would likely not be able to commit to 30hr training weeks anymore, that my performance level might never be the same again, that my sleep schedule may never recover and I would have to always consider another humans needs before my desires to shoot off to races in every corner of the globe.
It was a risk I was willing to take and sure enough I dropped from the top 15 in the world to around 250 in the world during my time out.
Starting back racing just 9 months before the Paris Olympic Games meant that I was always very much up against it in terms of making a fourth Olympic team, so I was realistic about my expectations there.
We have such a wealth of talent within the UK that making any team is incredibly hard, let alone when you have been out of the sport for nearly 2 years, had a baby, have no points/ranking and couldn’t get into the races necessary to have a shot at qualifying. While I went about travelling to far corners of the world to give myself a chance, I was always very aware that for the first time in my career, my ‘why’ was not solely the Olympic Games. Instead I was racing for the challenge of seeing how fit and fast I could get after a baby, to prove to myself and others that I (and therefore anyone else) could get back to the level I was at before pregnancy, and to just really enjoy triathlon again.
Perhaps most importantly, hopefully one day, my little girl will be inspired to know she can have a family and the professional life she desires - after all, her mum did it. Women should not have to choose.
Inspiring Women To Get Back to Sport After Pregnancy
I will officially retire in a few weeks time having been back racing for just over a year and while many might think that strange having just got back to a high level, it is perfect as far as I’m concerned.
I was never planning on another 5years in the sport, but I had this itch I needed to scratch and a real desire to leave professional triathlon in a place where I am happy, where I still love this sport, and where I’ve been able to deliver a couple of really good performances.
This year I have won a World Cup medal and more recently, become European Champion in one of my best ever all round performances - it feels great knowing that I am going out on such a high.
I’ll always swim, bike and run, but with a little less of the intensity and frequency that I currently do! Hopefully I will have more time on my hands now and I’d love to spend some of that time helping other women plot their returns to sport post partum.
The human body is an incredible thing, and the female body is surely the most extraordinary - the fact that we are capable of growing whole humans inside of us still blows my mind. But let’s not play this down, it’s a huge ordeal and is absolutely not something to just ‘bounce back’ from.
I learned to remove all expectation of what I should or could be doing both while pregnant and post partum and to have a lot of patience with myself.
My pregnancy wasn’t especially active and I had a lot of pain especially from the mid point onwards and by around 6months I was reduced to dog walking as my only activity. Certainly not the healthy, active pregnancy I had imagined for myself but I had to learn to be comfortable with what my body could do and simply accept it was doing a more important job at that time. Finding peace with that is really important - as athletes we always want to be