It has often been suggested that women can run faster times after having a child and now that Paula Radcliffe – who is the World Champion and World Record holder for the marathon – has returned to action it has reopened the debate.
Ingrid Kristiansen, the Norwegian long-distance athlete of the 1980s and a former world champion over 10,000 metres, set world records for 5,000 metres, 10,000 metres and the marathon within two years of her son’s birth in 1983. Liz McColgan, the Olympic silver medalist, also trained until just before going into labour in 1990, winning bronze at the world cross country championships four months later and becoming 10,000-metre world champion nine months later.
Belief in the performance-enhancing powers of pregnancy was apparently so extreme in former East Germany that athletes were encouraged to become pregnant to reap the benefits of increased blood volume and hormones. Female runners report increased performances after pregnancy, when the capacity of the lungs and the heart increase by 50 per cent, to cope with a 40 per cent increase in blood volume.
However, Radcliffe’s personal physiologist for the past 15 years, Prof Andrew Jones, of the University of Exeter, is skeptical, saying that, “there is very little research into the effect of pregnancy on the performance of elite athletes, with only a 1991 study into recreational runners suggesting that oxygen uptake increases by seven per cent in the eight months following childbirth.”
McColgan, now a 42-year-old mother of five, has said the athletic benefits of pregnancy were possibly mental rather than physical, “taking time away from the relentless rollercoaster of hotels and training gives you time to relax, and it really rekindles your love for the sport so you come back with more passion and zeal.”
So the evidence may not be clear cut for elite runners, but what about everyone else? Here are some real life stories.
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