Marathon mums: How having children made Australia’s Olympic runners stronger

Eddie and Dara will both have to miss a bit of school, but they could never miss this. Archer will be in his Dad’s arms. Billy and Ellie will be somewhere along the Champs-Elysees with their family.

The kids will all be there to watch their mums running for Australia in the marathon at the Paris Olympics. All three of Australia’s women’s marathon team, Sinead Diver, Gen Gregson and Jess Stenson, are mothers. In fact, of the six women Australia had to choose from for the final team of three, five were mothers.

Which begs the question: Why is the marathon a sport for mums?

Jess Stenson (left), with Ellie, eight months, and Gen Gregson with Archer, one.Credit: Joe Armao

Dr Alice McNamara, a sport and exercise physician at the Victorian Institute of Sport, said the reasons were psychological as much as physiological. And even mothers who could not comprehend having two-and-a-half hours to themselves, let alone running 42 kilometres, can relate to a couple of the qualities required for marathon running: “patience and an ability to suffer”.

“When you think about a marathon and the distance, 42km and two hours 26 is the qualifying time, that is an endurance sport you need to have athletes with physical capabilities for that – good cardiovascular, good VO2 max, ability to have muscle endurance for 42km, but also have the psychological components to that,” Dr McNamara said.

Stenson, who will have Billy, four, and Ellie, eight months, in her support crew in Paris, said it had counterintuitively been easier for her to return to running after having her second child. She raced the Daegu marathon less than seven months later.

Jess Stenson celebrates with Billy after winning gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.Credit: Getty Images

“It’s almost like my body knew how to recover. I had a C-section with both of them, Billy was in a breach position. So there was obviously that surgical process to recover from physically, but logistically it has been more challenging because I have a four-year-old to co-ordinate as well,” she said.

“Mums talk about the advantage they have and I think a lot of it is mental – the perspective you gain. The ability to focus on what matters in life, but there’s got to be a physical benefit as well,” she added. “Just jiggling them around and picking them up all the time makes you stronger. Bouncing a nine-kilo baby all day has got to be good for my quads and upper body strength.”

Stenson, 36, said her capacity to train increased after having Ellie.

In fact, McNamara said the evidence pointed to marathoners being no worse off as an athlete after having a baby, and suggested there were some benefits for endurance athletes.

How can pregnancy and childbirth help an athlete?

McNamara explained that pregnancy brings “a whole lot of positive cardiovascular changes”.

“Immediately (when) you start to grow a fetus you need more blood supply to the uterus so you increase your blood volume and your plasma volume, you also increase the blood volume that is going to the muscles. You will need increased cardiac output, so the amount that your heart can beat and pump blood out each time, your stroke volume increases, then your respiratory volume or tidal volume increases,” she said.

“They are the positive things.”

There are some downsides for an athlete, too, including fluid retention, a changing centre of gravity as the baby grows, and stresses and strains on the pelvis.

“The cardio changes do go back to normal post-birth,” McNamara said. “Breastfeeding maintains some different hormonal changes but everything else starts to return to normal. Athletes that are training will retain their blood volume more so than a sedentary person.”

Australian marathon runner Sinead Diver with her sons Dara (left) and Eddie.Credit: Jason South

McNamara said for athletes who work with a physio on pelvic floor strength and a staged return, “there is a net [physical] benefit in those endurance events”, but there are also less tangible advantages of motherhood for marathon runners.

“There is no doubt that becoming a mum teaches you all those skills like patience, endurance and ability to suffer the sleepless nights; can I survive this day? Those traits only make you stronger as an athlete,” she said.

“It’s that mentality of, it’s two hours and 23 minutes of running when I have done 18 hours of labour in childbirth!”

McNamara said one of the most significant changes for female athletes after childbirth was societal.

“A huge component of it has always been the sense of guilt in training – this is time I should be with the family, I am doing this for me not the family. It’s always been socially expected that once you have a baby the woman’s time and care goes fully into that child, and it’s becoming more talked about, the genuine struggles of being a mum. It’s hard work, and particularly if you have been an athlete, which is quite a selfish pursuit.

“It’s been talked about a lot more in female athlete circles that actually, I am a better mum if I give myself my training time out where I go and get all of those endorphins, adrenalin, all of those neuro-chemicals that I know make my mental state good, and then I come back home and I am a better mum ... it’s become more socially acceptable for new mums to try and return to sport because they are not seen to be neglecting their family.”

How marathon mums manage the juggle

Ireland-born Melbourne runner Diver, who is going to her second Olympics, only took up running after having sons Eddie, 14, and Dara, 10. She said it was partly a matter of timing that led women to excel at the marathon after children.

“Once you get to that stage in your life when you want to have kids you’re a little bit older. You’re still good endurance-wise but not as fast as you were when you were younger. You don’t lose endurance like you lose speed as you get older. The marathon is suited to mums, and suited to people I guess who are done on the track and want to do more of an endurance event,” said Diver, who is 47.

Sinead Diver (left), Gen Gregson and Jess Stenson – all mums – will represent Australia in the marathon in Paris.Credit: Joe Armao

Others, like Gregson, have graduated from track running. Paris will be her fourth Olympics but first as a marathoner. She switched to the event from the steeplechase after busting both Achilles tendons in a fall at the Tokyo Games. As soon as she suffered the injury she and husband Ryan, a former national 1500m record holder and two time Olympian, wanted to have a baby and were lucky to quickly fall pregnant with Archer, who has just turned two.

Gen Gregson with fellow athlete husband Ryan Gregson and their son Archer.

“I do feel pregnancy changed me, but I am assuming [that]. I talked to Paul Blackman, the doctor with AA [Athletics Australia], and I think the hormones that your body produces when you are pregnant, especially I think with having a boy, change you,” she said in December, pointing to the enforced rest after years of competing.

“As soon as I fell pregnant and had a baby, I would just wake up less stiff. Every run was enjoyable, I just hadn’t experienced that in so long, and I think my body just reset, and I think that is what childbirth does for a lot of women that have this comeback story. It resets your body. It changes you mentally, but also physically there is definitely some benefit.”

Diver said it made sense for track athletes to move to marathons later in life.

“A lot of marathon runners are doing 150-200 kilometres a week in training. If you do that off a background of minimal impact loading and strength work in your earlier years you are likely to … get injured,” she said.

“Athletes transitioning from shorter distances have already built that muscular strength and increased bone density. They … adapt to the longer distances and bigger training loads far better.”

All three women believe parenthood made them far more efficient in managing their training. When it was time to train they trained, no faffing about. Of course, having strong support from partners and others to juggle children, work and family was critical.

Three of the top five contenders in the women’s US Olympic marathon trials marathon this year were mothers. US marathoner Keira D’Amato said, “I do believe that being a mother has made me a better runner and being a runner has made me a better mother.”

The starting line in Paris

The marathon course in Paris starts at the Hotel de Ville, where the Women’s March on Versailles began during the French Revolution.

McNamara believes the mothers in the field have a unique perspective.

“One of the things about the psych component is that your perspective changes on why you do your sport, the fact you choose to do your sport,” she said. “And once you have a family it’s, ‘I have a life outside of my sport, I have my own successes, I have my own story’.”

They are all about to write another chapter of their stories. With their kids there to witness it.

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