Olympic triathlon champion Gwen Jorgensen vowed to continue training when she announced her pregnancy in January. Boy, is she living up to that.
The first U.S. Olympic gold medalist in triathlon said she “ran 100 miles the other week” in an NBC interview that took place when she was 28 weeks pregnant.
“I did three weeks where I did 100 miles a week, which is more than double what I was doing when I was training,” Jorgensen said, according to People magazine. “The first trimester I actually wasn’t doing much because I was so tired and exhausted, so I would work out once a day instead of [my usual] three times a day. After I started feeling better and having a little more energy, I’m back to two workouts a day. I’m doing a lot of running right now because that’s when I feel best.”
Jorgensen said in January that her baby is due Aug. 3. She plans to return to competition in 2018 and, in 2020, try to become the first woman to win multiple Olympic triathlon titles.
“[Doctors] say you can train and exercise as much as I want, as long as everything feels good,” she said. “They gave me a few warning signs to look out for, if I might get a blood clot or something like that, but overall they said do what you feel is good and continue to do it as long as you want.
“I know people that have run all the way up to the day they gave birth. … After I give birth, ideally, I’d like to work out that day, but every doctor I’ve talked to has said, even if your pregnancy goes perfectly and everything’s good, normally you have to wait 10 days for everything to heal up.”
Jorgensen said she has gained 15 to 20 pounds and a full shoe size.
“As I get heavier I slow down, and I have to take a lot of bathroom breaks which turns into a little bit of walking, so I’m out there for a long time, an hour and a half to two hours every day running,” Jorgensen said, according to People. “I’m not training for anything right now, so I’m just trying to stay relatively fit. I don’t have a plan, I just take everything as it comes. Some days I’m running nine minute per mile, and some days I can run a 5:15 mile. It’s varying a lot, and that just depends on how I feel.”
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