One year after becoming a professional triathlete, Beth Gerdes She knew she was pregnant, it was happy news, but it didn't come at the best time. Immediately her doctor reduced her training hours from the 30 per week she normally performed to 10. Perhaps for a professional it is a drastic reduction in training, but of course for a pregnant woman, even for many of the mortals here we are, they are enough hours to know that he was not expecting a quiet pregnancy.
But Beth was very clear that her pregnancy was not the end of her career as an athlete and Four months after giving birth to his daughter he managed to finish an ironman.
The difficult path of self improvement
Being a professional athlete is hard, it requires continuous effort and dedication, but having to stop when you are at the top also requires an inner strength and mental strength that not everyone possesses.
In the middle of pregnancy I came down and told my partner, "I can never come back"
When Beth confessed to his partner, also a professional triathlete, who thought he was going to have to leave the life he knew until then, he, far from accepting the simplest path that life put before them, proposed that he set a challenge by the time he had given birth to his son. It was a "ok, you have to stop but this is not goodbye". So Beth set a goal to run the 2015 ironman world championship to be held in Kona, Hawaii. But this challenge was not simple, the championship would take place a year and a half after giving birth to your baby and qualifying would not be easy. One does not get to run a championship so simply by signing up for a list, to run at the top you would have to earn points and for that you had to win races.
Six weeks later, giving birth to her daughter, she returned to training together with an expert in this type of training that would help her get back on top.
It wasn't easy, every day I was like an ironman, I felt exhausted and out of breath, but having a goal made me go out the door every day.
Her first post-pregnancy ironman, four months after giving birth, was the toughest race she had to face until then, but with the encouragement of her boyfriend and her little girl, she was able to focus her mind on the goal and reach 17 minutes from the winner, which assured him a place for his precious appointment in Kona.
You realize that you no longer run alone for yourself. Some days you want to leave, but then you think about the lessons you want to convey to your children, such as preservation and that keeps you going.
We can all set our post-pregnancy goal and fight for it
Not everyone is able to run an ironman, not even a marathon, but it is clear that setting ourselves a goal and fighting for it can be a way to recover part of our previous life, the figure and thus have a way of escape from the depression or just those gray days of motherhood. Being constant and seeing how little by little we are moving towards the marked goal will give us the necessary strength to face day to day.
It does not have to be a bottom race, just serve to fight to reach our goal.
Photo | MICHAEL RAUSCHENDORFER Via | Women's Health
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