By Jay Holder
Bridget Belyeu was set to be the hometown headliner at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Marathon on February 29. The University of Georgia graduate, Atlanta-area dentist and member of Atlanta Track Club Elite owned the 24thfastest qualifying time (2:31) and the competitive advantage of running on Atlanta’s punishing hills every day.
But in the Rock ’n’ Roll Arizona Half Marathon on January 19, Belyeu (neé Lyons) felt pain in her left leg. She placed third, but she could hardly walk after the race. An MRI the next day showed a sacral stress fracture.
The Trials were out. But when the mourning period ended, Belyeu found opportunity. She and her husband, Jess, had planned to start a family after the Trials; now, there was no reason to wait. By the end of March, they learned she was pregnant.
Two of the first people to hear about the pregnancy were Amy and Andrew Begley, Belyeu’s coaches since 2015, because she had made another decision: She wanted to run through her pregnancy and she wanted to make the 2021 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field in the 10,000 meters in July, a mere seven months after giving birth to her son, due on December 15. And she would need the Begleys’ help to get her there.
“My job as a coach is not for me to tell Bridget what she wants, it’s for Bridget to tell me what she wants and Amy and I help her get there,” said Andrew Begley.
Belyeu also wants to make a run at another marathon Trials, in 2024. “For me, I had kind of questioned if I wanted to keep running until 2024,” she said “I’ll be 36. But once I couldn’t run in 2020, it kind of sealed it in my mind that this is still something I want to do.”
Belyeu is documenting her journey in an Atlanta Track Club YouTube series, “Miles to Motherhood.” In the series, which will follow her postpartum as well as through her pregnancy, Belyeu details how she’s gone from running 100 miles a week to 30 and from 7-minute miles to 9:30s. She openly discusses biomechanical changes, how she copes with incontinence, and how running simply feels different now. (“It hurts like all of your organs are being pressed on; then you also have to go to the bathroom the entire time you are running.”)
“People question you. I hear it every day,” said Belyeu ‘Oh, you’re still running?’ They are taken back by it, so it can make you question, ‘Well, can I get my heart rate up? Is that safe?’”
Yes, and yes, said Dr. Kate. Mihevc-Edwards, a Serenbe-based physical therapist and author of the book “Go Ahead, Stop and Pee: Running During Pregnancy and Postpartum.”
“I had a physician tell me I shouldn’t be running while I was pregnant even though the research didn’t support that,” said Mihevc-Edwards. “Women should be exercising 30 minutes a day throughout their pregnancy. The benefits are increased mood, it helps with depression, decreased risk of gestational diabetes, less weight gain, they can bounce back sooner and babies are actually a little smaller when women exercise, so that helps with the pregnancy and delivery experience.”
Both women hope Belyeu’s journey will be helpful to expectant mother runners no matter how fast or far they like to run.
“You can still do this while creating a life,” Belyeu said. “When you remember that, it’s wild.”
Watch the Miles to Motherhood video series below.
