Molly Huddle ran a marathon six months postpartum to challenge herself and inspire other mothers
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Now, she is writing a book offering advice for mothers training through pregnancy and postpartum
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Huddle emphasizes the importance of individualized recovery timelines and balancing motherhood with personal goals
Six months after having her second child, two-time OlympianMolly Huddlecrossed the finish line atEvery Woman's Marathon.
For Huddle, 41, completing the race was something she felt she needed to do for herself and, by extension, for other women.
Now, Huddle is working on a book specifically for mothers, where she talks to experts such as pelvic health physical therapists, nutritionists, mental health counselors and researchers studying female athletes who train through pregnancy and postpartum, to offer advice on training.
"They all say it's difficult to advise because it's complex what happens to you in pregnancy and postpartum, and it's very individualized too, like how quickly you can come back or what issues you might face, given what kind of birth you had, what kind of athlete you are, so many things," Huddle tells PEOPLE. "I feel like that has been the excuse for why there isn't much [research] out there, and I feel like that's not a great excuse."
One of the reasons she wanted to write a book of helpful tips was because, oftentimes, "pregnancy and postpartum is one of those phases where women walk away from sport."
"Athletes who maybe were running every day or racing or having it in their life in such a positive way, often that's when it drops," the long-distance runner shares. "I hope to provide a resource to help you get through this time more easily because I see how running and sport in general are an enriching part of a woman's life."
Huddle notes that, with all the changes motherhood brings, it's crucial for women to find time for themselves to move their bodies.
"Especially in motherhood, for that to drop, that's the last thing that needs to fall out of your life. I feel like it's a multipurpose, beneficial thing in your life. Working out, exercising and running are such easy ways to do it," she shares.
Her goal, she says, is "to make it simpler for pregnant and postpartum women to keep running."
However, she acknowledges that it can be hard to find time for exercise, as moms are often told to "sleep when the baby sleeps."
"I'm probably running when the baby sleeps. She's in the stroller, and I'm running. Otherwise, when would I do it?" she asks.
While Huddle, who competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, was able to get back into running a few months after birth, she emphasizes that it can feel like there's not much "nuance" around timelines.
"I ran this marathon six months postpartum, which I wouldn't say is aspirational," she says. "It may take someone a long time to return to marathon running postpartum. That's a relatively quick timeline."
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She notes that "postpartum recovery is too often rushed."
"I wouldn't want anyone to take that into their running recovery, too," she says. "If you're not running a marathon six months postpartum, that is completely normal. It might take a year, it might take a year and a half, but I'm intense, and I'm a professional runner, so for me, it was, like, just something I needed to do."
Mothers, she says, "get a lot of rush signals, bounce back signals," and for Huddle, running the Every Woman's Marathon, presented by Team Milk, was more of a "personal challenge" rather than feeling like she was "trying to bounce back to my old self."
"It was more just, I feel alive when I'm trying to chase something, like a challenge. I like to push myself. That's what this is more about," Huddle affirms.
"I coach some women who are postpartum and training for road races and stuff, and every once in a while, someone will be like, 'I'm frustrated, this isn't going well, or that's not going well.' It'll only have been a couple of months."
Ultimately, she shares that goals are "individual" and "it takes generally longer than that to come back."
Balancing competing and motherhood is always shifting, but the way Huddle looks at it is to pick certain priorities at a time and stick to them. She admits that "a lot of other things are a lot less focused on" when she is training for a marathon — and that is okay. For her most recent race, she wanted her training to be built around her life, rather than the other way around.
"I'm postpartum and trying to take care of myself, and I might have one other work-related thing, like coaching or writing a book, then cleaning and cooking, and maybe things I normally would do for someone fall to the wayside during that season," the mother of two says.
"I'm really letting some things drop so that I can focus on some other things. That's what I did with this," she continues. "Weekends are for my long run, for four or five weeks. So maybe we put aside something else we were gonna do that day, we definitely have a messy house, definitely have a lot of laundry [and] definitely eat chicken nuggets that day. But that's what we did."
"It's the compromises that come in and out, and it's not forever, but that was my approach," Huddle adds.
A race to her is "great to kind of encourage you to make space for that every day."
"Ideally, you do say, 'My health is important, and I have 30 to 60 minutes a day to dedicate to it,' but sometimes, everything stacks up, and it gets squeezed out," she tells PEOPLE. "I'm competitive, so I like to train for racing. So putting a race like Every Woman's Marathon on the schedule made me think, now I have to make a certain amount of time every week to do this. It takes care of so many others, it ticks so many boxes for me anyway."
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