Training and Pregnancy An Interview with Emily Machiela-Leestma

Marilyn:

“Before we get into it, Emily, I just want to say how much I appreciate you joining me for this conversation. We’ve got such a long history together—starting from when you were young, through your preparation for deciding to have a family, your pregnancy, and now life post-baby. I really wanted to cover this topic because so many women reach out with questions about it.

There’s definitely more information out there now than there used to be, with more women sharing their journeys, but I think the more we can keep sharing—openly and honestly—the better. It helps others know what to expect, what’s possible, what challenges might come up, and how to stay connected to athletics through all of it. So I’m really excited for you to share your story with us, not just because of our history together, but because I think it’ll really help a lot of women.”

Emily:

“When my husband and I decided we wanted to have a child, I was in my late twenties, early thirties. I felt ready to take that step, but I’ll be honest—I was nervous. I’ve always been an athlete, and while I did get perpetually injured when I was just running, they were usually injuries I could train through. I’d never really been sidelined completely. And the thought of being forced to stop—that scared me.

Pregnancy and having a child is incredible, but it doesn’t come without fear. For me, it was: what does this look like when every single day of my life has been filled with movement, training, and athletic goals? How do you balance that with pregnancy? So I’ll just say it—it came with a healthy dose of fear. But, of course, the end goal is absolutely worth it.

I’ll also admit I was naive at first. I thought, okay, I’ll get pregnant, it’ll be nine months—well, technically ten—and then I’ll have a baby. We’ll wait a little while, and then I’ll just start training again. Seemed pretty linear and easy. But the reality was very different.

We started trying when I was in my late twenties, early thirties, and to make a long story short, we were unsuccessful for several years. I became pregnant multiple times, but each of those pregnancies ended in loss. That takes a huge toll—physically, mentally, emotionally. And it really drove home for me that the journey to having a child is not linear. For us, it took five years before we had a healthy pregnancy.

Those five years were full of ups and downs. There were times I could train, and times I couldn’t. There were stretches where I was emotionally drained, and stretches where I felt like myself again. Through it all, thank goodness I had such a great coach—you really did ride that entire rollercoaster with me.

One of the biggest lessons I learned is that your body goes through a lot with every pregnancy, whether you carry it to term or not. You have to respect that and honor that process. It’s not something you can just push through. There’s also a misconception that if you miscarry, you can simply jump right back into training. That’s just not true. Your body has been through so much, and it needs time to heal before you can safely return to heavier training.

So for me, those years leading up to a healthy pregnancy were really about learning patience, listening to my body, and giving myself grace through the ups and downs.

All of that—the losses, the treatments, the waiting—takes its own toll. You’re putting things into your body that it’s not used to, and it becomes physically and emotionally taxing. And most of it happens behind the scenes. It’s not something you want to talk about every day, but it’s always there, and it wears on you.

So, for anyone listening who’s gone through that, or is going through it now—I just want to say, there is light at the end of the tunnel. What that light looks like is different for everyone. For me, it was eventually a healthy pregnancy. For others, the outcome may look different, but the process still matters. And the most important thing is giving yourself the time and space to fully recover—physically, mentally, and emotionally—before jumping back into training.

Our biggest goal during that whole process was to keep me emotionally, mentally, and physically healthy—while also making sure I didn’t overtrain. I have a tendency to push too hard or under-fuel—not intentionally, but it’s just something that happens with me. I also have hypoglycemia, so that made things even trickier.

So the focus wasn’t really on signing up for races—it was more about using training as a tool to stay balanced and healthy, and making sure my body was in the best place possible for a potential pregnancy.”

Jesse:

“You kind of alluded to taking some downtime, especially after a pregnancy loss. So what were your go-signs that you were physically and mentally ready to return to movement?”

Emily:

“For me, the biggest thing was not forcing it. In sport, we talk a lot about how you don’t need motivation in order to have discipline, and that’s true most of the time. But when you’re going through something as emotionally taxing as this, you really have to listen to your body and trust that if it’s telling you to stop, there’s a reason.

So, if there were days I didn’t want to train, I didn’t. And I let that be okay. There’s a time and a place for pushing through, and there’s a time and a place for honoring what your body and mind are telling you. That was definitely the time for the latter. I really learned to respect those signals instead of trying to override them.

I also had to learn how to tell the difference between two kinds of ‘I don’t want to do this.’ There’s the version where you don’t feel like training in the moment, but you still know you want the end goal—you want to race, or hit a PR, or whatever it might be. In that case, you can lean on discipline to get it done.

But then there’s the other kind: ‘I don’t want to do this, and I don’t even know what my end goal is right now.’ That was the one I had to respect. Until I felt motivated by a clear goal—whether that was running a faster mile, preparing for a race, or just building back fitness—I knew it wasn’t really time for me to train yet.

As athletes, we’re trained to ignore physical signs. We get so used to being uncomfortable that discomfort almost feels normal. So it’s tricky to discern the difference between the ‘healthy uncomfortable’ and the ‘unhealthy uncomfortable.’ Mentally, though, I realized the signal for me was having that spark of motivation toward a goal. Without that, I knew I wasn’t truly ready to jump back into training.”

Marilyn:

“Yeah, and I love that, Emily, because one of the biggest roles of a coach is to really listen to and understand the whole athlete—not just physically, but mentally and holistically. Our job isn’t just to hand out sessions and make sure they’re completed. It’s to guide, protect, and support the athlete in ways they might not always see themselves.

We have that broader lens, that outside perspective. Sometimes that means saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to hold you back a little here to protect you.’ Other times it means trusting the athlete enough to let the reins go and allow them to follow what they know is best for their body in that moment. It’s a balance—guardrails and guidance on one hand, trust and freedom on the other.

I think we did a good job of that together, and I want coaches listening to hear this: your job is more than prescribing workouts. Yes, there’s a time and place for strict sessions and structure. But in situations like this—when life is happening in a big way—it’s about building that trust and creating a two-way conversation. It’s about giving your athletes the tools to make good decisions for themselves, while also being the outside lens that steps in if you see something that could cause trouble. That’s what it means to truly coach the whole athlete.”

Emily:

“By this point, I was considered a geriatric pregnancy—which sounds so silly, because I was only 35. But in OB terms, that’s the cutoff. So, I was automatically put into the high-risk category just because of my age. And honestly, when you’re healthy and 35, I don’t think you should be considered high-risk—but that’s a different conversation.

What it did mean, though, is that I got a lot of extra monitoring throughout the pregnancy.

The first trimester was really rough. I was very sick. But we did what we could, and I stayed active. I was still running, and I did a lot of biking during that time. I also got in the pool maybe two or three times a week, but I found that flip turns made me incredibly nauseous. So instead of pushing, I just slowed everything down. I wasn’t really ‘training’—I was just moving through the water. It wasn’t about pace or performance, it was just about feeling good to be in the water and keeping some connection to movement.

By the second trimester, once I got through that rough first patch, I actually felt pretty good. I kind of just rolled with whatever came my way. I was able to do some longer workouts, and honestly, I felt more like myself again.

For context, I’m not a big data person, and training has always been my outlet—especially since I’m so type A in my job. So during pregnancy, I didn’t overanalyze every session, but I did look back at my training so I could accurately share what I was doing. And in the second trimester, I was definitely able to handle more volume and it felt good.

The hardest part wasn’t the training itself—it was the mental side. Trusting that it was okay. There’s still so much conflicting information out there about what you can and can’t do during pregnancy. My biggest advice to anyone who’s pregnant is to remember: there’s no one linear way to go through pregnancy. If someone tells you, ‘You can’t do this,’ or ‘You should never do that,’ take it with a grain of salt. It’s so person-specific.

I just tuned out social media noise and focused on conversations with Marilyn and with my doctor. And even with doctors, you have to be clear. A lot of them aren’t familiar with working with athletes, so it’s important to explain what your baseline really is. If you’ve been training at a high level and you’re feeling good, the question is simply: is it safe for me to continue at the level I was at before? That’s where the trust and the balance came in.

When you’re a high-level athlete, the question becomes: if you’re feeling good, is it okay to continue what you were doing before? For me, training made me feel better—I had more energy, felt healthier, and it was just good for my body and mind. The only real challenge in the second trimester was typical fatigue, but it wasn’t a big deal.

Overall, the second trimester was great. I ran all the way through, up until about 25 weeks. I know some people run all the way to 40 weeks, and that’s amazing, but for me, I was carrying a very large baby—he was 23 inches long and over nine pounds at birth. By around 25 weeks, he had moved up into my ribs, and running—or really doing much of anything—became uncomfortable and hard to breathe through.

When it came to strength work, I really focused on form and technique during my third trimester. Not that I wasn’t doing strength work before, but this time I was intentional—making sure everything was correct for pregnancy. I knew that maintaining strength would be important both for carrying the pregnancy and for the postpartum period. I had a strong hunch that if I kept up with strength work while pregnant, my post-pregnancy recovery would be easier, especially with core strength.

Aside from that, I stayed active on the bike and in the pool throughout the third trimester. I was also coaching in the fall, so I was running around and staying busy right up until the day before I went into labor. I did stop running at around 25 weeks because my baby was so large and it became uncomfortable. The third trimester was mostly about modifying movement—spending a lot of time in the pool, floating, and just keeping my body moving in ways that felt good.

I truly believe a big reason for that was the strength work I did before pregnancy and during it, especially learning how to engage my core. That made a huge difference postpartum. Once my doctor cleared me, I was able to pick up my training and movement in a safe way, and I think that preparation really helped me bounce back more efficiently than I expected. Of course, every recovery is different, and you should always clear things with your doctor—especially after major surgery—but for me, the foundation I built beforehand was invaluable.

I first started running again a few weeks postpartum, but even before that, I was walking and biking. I actually started walking just a couple of days after my C-section, and I truly believe that movement helped me recover. Even something as simple as walking made a difference. I got on the bike a couple of weeks later, and that’s when it really hit me—this is where the evidence became clear that the movement I did during pregnancy paid off. My recovery was so much smoother than many people I’ve talked to.

Postpartum, I was very intentional about every single day—engaging my core and doing the right exercises. Not crunches, but exercises that targeted the lower core muscles to ensure they were activated. I also focused on hip strength, which is critical because your hips change so much during pregnancy. For me, I carried very low with a large baby, so those muscles were really tested. Maintaining strength and engagement in those areas made a huge difference in how I felt and how quickly I recovered.

The mental health piece of this process is huge. It would be so easy to let fear take over or to give up, especially when things feel overwhelming. Postpartum hormones are a wild ride—I didn’t fully appreciate that beforehand. They’re intense, and they affect everything—mood, motivation, energy. Anyone listening: don’t be scared of them, but be prepared. There will be highs and lows, and everything in between, and that’s normal.

For me, there were days that were incredibly hard. I was finally holding the baby I had waited so long for, but I was also sleep-deprived, hormonal, and sometimes frustrated that I couldn’t move the way I wanted to. It was tough, and those struggles are real. Acknowledging them, accepting them, and giving yourself grace is just as important as any physical recovery.

At first, I worried a lot—like, am I ever going to be an athlete again? Your brain starts running through all the scenarios: now I’m a mom, I have all this responsibility, I can’t plan for the future the way I used to. But the more I let go of that, and focused instead on, ‘What does this look like for today? What can I do today? How can I give 100% today?’—the easier it became.

Sometimes that 100% was just five minutes of core work, and that was enough for the day. Learning to accept that and trust that I could get back to where I wanted to be—whatever that looked like—was a process.

Once I embraced it, it actually became kind of fun. Being out of shape after pregnancy allowed me to see huge gains as I returned to sport. When you’re highly trained and have been doing something for a long time, improvements are often incremental. But starting from scratch, I got to experience those big, noticeable improvements in cycling, running, swimming—whatever it was. That was really rewarding.

While it’s important to have a plan, you can’t control everything. For people like me—ultra-endurance athletes—we often plan races years in advance and think a lot about long-term goals. Those goals are important, but life shifts—especially with pregnancy, having a child, or just unexpected events—and that’s okay. Goals will change, and learning to accept that is crucial.

Pregnancy and having a child take a lot of energy. It’s so important to respect that and honor it, rather than completely draining yourself. Listen to your body, prioritize nutrition, get sleep, and make time for your family. Missing a session to get extra rest, whether you’re pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or recovering postpartum, is not going to affect you long term. Missing a week—or even a month—doesn’t undo your progress.

The key is balance and perspective. Your long-term athletic journey isn’t derailed by taking care of yourself and your family in the moment. In fact, that care is what allows you to thrive both as an athlete and as a parent.

I ran a 5K post-pregnancy at a faster time than I had in a very long time. My son is now a year and ten months old, so I’ve had a little time to get back into it—but honestly, even just one year post-pregnancy will fly by.

For me, it took about nine to ten months before I felt like I was training at a high level again. I know that can feel daunting, because you want to get back to where you were immediately. But the key is patience. You can train at a high level again, as long as you’re prepared to approach it gradually, be in it for the long haul, and not overdo it in the beginning.

It’s about building back thoughtfully, respecting your body, and trusting that the progress will come—sometimes faster than you expect.

For partners of people going through this, it’s important to recognize that pregnancy and becoming a mother is wonderful—but it’s also a rollercoaster. And at the same time, the individual is still an individual with their own goals and needs. Learning to support your partner both as a mother and as an individual—and honoring both of those aspects—is really important.

That balance—recognizing yourself as both a mother and an individual—is something I think is really important for anyone going through this journey.”

Thank you for a great interview Emily! We hope this helps women through their own journeys.

If you are looking for support and good coaching through these phases of life please reach out to us anytime.

To watch the YouTube interview see it here: Training and Pregnancy

Cheers,

Marilyn