RUNNING AND PREGNANCY
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For Team GB ultrarunner Sophie Power, 40, her three pregnancies were all different, meaning her approach shifted between running, weight training and cross-training.
During her first pregnancy, Power kept up her normal running routine, plus strength training twice a week. ‘I listened to my body,’ she says. ‘It told me when I was getting hot or it was getting hard and I got to know the heart rates around it. Then one day, seven and a half months in, I didn’t want to run anymore, so I didn’t.’
But her recovery was much harder than she’d anticipated. ‘I expected to be able to run straight away, but for three months I couldn’t run a step without leaking,’ says Power. ‘It was tough, not knowing why my body wasn’t reacting the “right way”. I saw other women running and I couldn’t, and I didn’t get any help to know what to do.”
Eventually Power found EVB shorts to support her pelvic floor and was able to run again the moment she put them on. Fairly soon after that, she completed a 50-miler.
During her second pregnancy Power was training for the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc and it was this epic event that shot her into the limelight, when she was photographed breastfeeding and pumping milk for her three-month-old baby at an aid station. The picture went viral.
To prepare for UTMB and protect her pelvic floor, she stopped running at five months pregnant and switched to hiking on a treadmill
