Professional triathlete Beth Gerdes returned to Ironman racing just four months after giving birth; photo courtesy of Beth Gerdes
You don’t often here about professional women athletes getting back to their jobs quickly after having a baby. Of course, sometimes they do come back quickly, but when they do, it’s always big news.
Why is it big news? If you’ve ever had a baby you’d know why. Being pregnant and giving birth takes an enormous toll on your body. To steal a Tolkien reference, your stomach muscles, the literal foundation that keeps you moving forward and upright, are stretched thin like butter over too much toast. Then, after nine months of stretching, you suddenly release all that pressure, and your body is expected to recover from this while it’s getting no sleep and producing constant milk for your baby. In fact, many women say they don’t feel normal until one or two years after giving birth.
The already difficult postpartum recovery process makes what professional triathlete Beth Gerdes accomplished recently all the more amazing. Four months after giving birth to her adorable daughter, Wynne, Gerdes placed fifth at Ironman Malaysia. Yes, you read that right, four months after giving birth, Gerdes swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles, and ran a marathon all at once and all in the blazing Malaysian heat. And she did it in an amazingly fast time considering she had, you know, just had a baby: 10 hours and 15 minutes (with a 3:30 marathon thrown in for good measure.)
GrindTV caught up with Gerdes to get the scoop on how she bounced back so quickly after baby.
Gerdes and her daughter, Wynne, at a local event; photo courtesy of Gerdes
How were you even physically able to complete an Ironman four months postpartum? To me, that’s the one of the most incredible things I’ve ever heard. I can still barely run 8-minute pace for a few miles and my baby is seven months old.
I completely understand. At first I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it. But the reason I even had it as a goal is because to qualify for the Ironman World Championships as a professional, it’s a point-based system where you have to amass points throughout the year. If I hope to qualify for 2015, I needed to start getting points early in the qualifying year, which started in September.
The goal was to race an Ironman four months after giving birth, but I made sure not to cement the goal until I had already had the baby and was trying to fully get back into it and get my doctor’s approval. So I did wait about six weeks until after having the baby to say, “OK, yeah, I am going to try to do this.” But at first I wasn’t sure it could be done, either, because even just running a mile was pretty intense.
A welcome home party from Gerdes’ family, Wynne and partner Luke Mckenzie, after returning from completing Ironman Malaysia; photo courtesy of Gerdes
How were you able to avoid injury so you could get in some consistent training over that four-month period?
I think that’s one of the biggest things you need to be aware of after you’ve had a baby is to make sure you’re not putting yourself in a position to get injured. To be completely honest, you know, I coach about 10 triathletes for their own races, and I would never actually recommend doing what I did. You are at risk for injuries if you start back too soon. But I did a bunch of things throughout my pregnancy to sort of mitigate that. While I was pregnant I stayed really active. I wasn’t actively training, but I was staying fit the whole time, so I usually exercised about one to two hours a day, and I’d do swimming, biking, and running all throughout my pregnancy. I did all three, but I ended up biking indoors for the last half of my pregnancy, but I also did a lot of functional strength training throughout my pregnancy and directly after just to keep my muscles strong and to hopefully prevent injury in coming back. I work with a trainer at a gym called Rehab United, which is a sports performance center, but they’re also geared toward rehab as well. He had some certifications in prenatal and postnatal care, and we did a lot of exercises that target your pelvic girdle and all sorts of exciting things just to keep my muscles stable and strong.
What has been the reception you’ve received been like? Have a lot of people been like, “What you did is incredible!”
There’s been a lot of people, especially other moms, who have been like, “Wow! That’s so amazing. That’s great that you did that.” And it’s really hard for me to take the compliments because they are really nice, but I do recognize that it is sort of, you know, I sped up a process that probably shouldn’t be sped up that much in general, so I would sort of respond with, “Well, I wouldn’t recommend it.” And it’s probably not stupid, but I definitely took risks in doing it. But, so far, so good. But everybody has been really really supportive and, yes, definitely somewhat, I guess, amazed that I was able to do that after such a short period of time.
Well, it is amazing; you should know that.
Thanks! [Laughs]. You know, I feel like I missed out a little bit on some of, you know … I’m lucky in that the job I’m trying to go back to work to, which is triathlon, I don’t have to be away from my daughter for nine consecutive hours a day, but definitely there are stretches of three or four hours where I’m not there. So I miss a little bit of stuff, or I feel tired when I come home, but I try to always make sure that she [my baby] is the No. 1 priority.
There are not many elite female professional athletes, especially endurance athletes, who come back from pregnancy so quickly. So what did you do in terms of your research to sort of give you the guideline to do what you wanted to do?
There’s actually … there are a few elite triathletes who have recently had babies and then come back from it. Gina Crawford is an amazing world-class triathlete. She is consistently top 10 in the Ironman World Championships, and she and I wrote emails back and forth and she gave me a lot of advice that helped her throughout her pregnancy and when her son was really young. And then I also sort of did my own Google research and found all the information I could. Sarah Haskins, who is a really amazing triathlete, she’s a short-course, non-drafting athlete, she had a baby and came back about seven or eight months after she had her baby. But back to the world-class level. I was just back to barely in the professional ranks level, but she was back to really winning races, and it was pretty amazing.
Gerdes on her bike
During my experience after having my daughter, it was certainly hard enough just having a baby and recovering from that, and in those first few months there were definitely many tears and emotions. Because you were adding Ironman training on top of that emotional time, was there ever a time where you thought, “I don’t know if I can do this.”? And if so, how did you get through it?
Yeah, during the training there’s always that time, where I’m like, “Why am I doing this?” When I’m trying to plan out a brick workout, which is a bike workout and a run workout, and normally I would just do those consecutively to mimic a race situation, but I’d have to come home and then either feed Wynne or pump while I was home in between the two sessions, and sometimes I’d be sitting there like, “Why am I doing this again?” I think the hardest time was actually when I was doing the Ironman that I did in Malaysia. I had to travel there for five days without my family, so I wasn’t able to bring my daughter with me, and while I was in the deep, dark moments of the marathon I was thinking, “Why am I doing this exactly?” But you know, when it was all done, and I realized that I’d be able to [tending to baby.] Ha! I just lost my train of thought. But when it was over I was able to, you know, it did seem like it was worth it, and I realized I was on the right path to where I wanted to be eventually.
What about sleep? Training for an Ironman requires a lot of recovery, but you don’t really have that luxury anymore, you know?
For me that was the hardest part. The training, at first it was really slow, but it wasn’t a matter of getting in the training because we did have a lot help from our families and stuff. I always had the time to do some training if I wanted to. The hardest part for me was fitting in the sleep and the recovery. Because, as you know, having a newborn, the baby is waking up every two to three hours, and that really impacts your sleep and your recovery as an athlete, so I really struggled in the beginning just having the energy to complete some of my workouts. But I did find that if I napped when the baby napped that would help. But, you know, often I’d want to go do my training sessions when the baby was sleeping, so that would get tricky. But luckily I got really lucky in that my daughter is a really good sleeper, so that’s helped immensely. I don’t have to worry about that as much anymore, because she sleeps a lot.
How has the whole training and pumping situation been? How did you keep up with her when you were on your trip to Malaysia?
From the very beginning the breastfeeding was definitely a challenge with training, because I needed to make sure I was home every two or three hours to feed Wynne, and if she got hungry while I was out that she had to have some food to eat, so from the very beginning I was breastfeeding but also pumping any chance I could get to store up extra milk for when I went on my trip to Malaysia and any of those longer training sessions and that kind of thing. To be honest, that is, as I’m sure you know, just as exhausting as anything else with the baby because you’re constantly feeding them. And if you’re not feeding them you’re pumping, so that really took a lot out of me. But I was able to build up a pretty good milk supply, so that was good, but as we go on it’s getting more and more challenging, and I’m just trying to make it to six months of breastfeeding and then we’ll see after that initial goal, and then I’ll see what we can do after that. But, yeah, when I went on my trip to Malaysia, I had to bring my pump, and I still pumped every three or four hours to make sure that my supply was kept up. But I had to throw out that breast milk. It was really sad!
Oh yeah? Why’d you have to throw it out?
Well, I just didn’t really have a good system there to freeze it and take it back here with me. It was sad.
There’s nothing in the Ironman World Championships qualifying points system that allows for or provides insurance against injury, and pregnancy, I guess, would be a “long injury” of sorts. Because you finished this first Ironman after having your baby, did any of your fellow pros start talking about how there maybe should be some stipulations in the qualifying rules that allow for pregnancy, because I’m sure a lot of the women would like to someday have a baby.
No, but I’ve seen more and more elite triathletes having babies and coming back to racing and also just being really interested in it and how to do it. The current Ironman world champion, Mirinda Carfrae, is already asking me a bunch of questions because she wants to have a baby within the next couple years and then return to racing. So, no, there’s no stipulations. You just have to play by the rules and then just hope you can get back to shape and then back to where you were.
Could you just give me a little update on your goals for the future and what you do on a day-to-day basis?
My goals for next year are, in 2015, I’d love to win an Ironman and to qualify for the Ironman World Championships. Those are both my two biggest goals. I definitely want to qualify for the Ironman World Championships for next year, and I hope to win an Ironman within the next one to two years, so I will keep training and racing. My boyfriend [Luke Mckenzie] is also a professional triathlete, so that makes it just part of our lifestyle and something we really enjoy doing together. Instead of going out on dates together like a lot of new parents will do, we’ll just hire a babysitter so we can do some training sessions together. It’s just kind of an important part of our family. A typical week right now includes about 20 to 25 hours of training and a lot of taking care of my baby and family time. We travel a lot for racing. Luke races all over the world, and right now I’m just sort of racing with him and following him around. My next race is going to be Ironman Western Australia, which is December 7.
You have your own coaching company as well?
Yes, I coach triathletes and runners from short to long distance, and it’s a lot of fun. I do that pretty much daily, too, and I have some really great athletes really all around the world, which is nice, so I’ve gotten to see my athletes when I go to Australia and on the East Coast, so it’s fun.
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