WHY BEING A MUM MAKES YOU RUN HARDER
THEY have five kids between them with an average age of 39.
Meet Australia’s Mum’s Army marathoners.
These three remarkable runners — Sinead Diver, Eloise Wellings and Jess Stenson — are thumbing their nose at the convention that the older you get the slower you get.
Instead they’re embracing being super mums and will race for gold on Saturday in the toughest event on the athletics program in Birmingham. All three have remarkable stories with Diver, the Irish woman who didn’t take up running until mid-30s, is now one of the world’s best at 45 with two children.
Wellings, 39, will be competing at her fifth Commonwealth Games, previously a middle-distance star the mother-of-two is stepping up to the marathon for the first time.
And then there is the youngest member of the Army, Stenson (née Trengove), 34, who has been off the scene for four years after giving birth to son Billy in 2019.
Earlier this month the trio came together at a training camp at St
Moritz in Switzerland with kids and husbands in tow.
“It was pretty special in Switzerland,” Stenson says. “We were all pinching ourselves really and Eloise’s youngest is only a week different to my Billy in age so they were having a great time at the playground together.” Stenson vividly recalls at her first Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014 watching Wellings interact with her daughter Indi and wishing that was her one day.
“I just remember watching Elsy interacting with her (Indi) after training and I remember thinking that would be the dream, sharing this experience with your family and your young ones,” she says. “So it is pretty cool that we will be lining up together here in Birmingham when I remember that moment so clearly.” Stenson made a stunning return to the marathon in Perth last year, her first since becoming a mum, where she produced a career-best 2hr25min13sec which was the fastest by an Australian on Australian soil and the fourth fastest all-time.
“I just went into the race so open-minded and just curious to see what I could do,” she said. “It was a good head space to be in, I kind of didn’t place expectations on myself. It had been a bit of a disrupted build-up so again that just shows me there is no perfect prep, you just have to work with what you have got at the time and anything is possible.” Stenson can’t put a finger on why coming back as a mother makes you a better marathoner but she has plenty of theories.
“For me I think my development as a person through motherhood has influenced my running as obviously your perspective opens up.
“You also have to be adaptable as a mum and to just trust the process and to make sure we are getting the nutrition and everything we need to make our bodies operate at their best for our children but then also for training.”
Carrying around a toddler has also had its setbacks but Stenson believes she has never been physically stronger.
“Some of my injury challenges in the last 12 months have been due to carrying Billy and also not just being able to kick the legs up at times,” she says. “You finish a session and then you sort of are back out chasing after little ones but you do build physical strength from carrying them around. There are a lot of pros for endurance athletes who experience motherhood, it’s hard to know how many of them are physical and mental and which play the biggest role but I think being able to get out there knowing that your little ones are watching and that you will get to hug them at the finish. That does take some of the pressure
off.” Stenson has won bronze medals at the past two Commonwealth Games, both races completely different but with the same result. On Saturday Stenson is looking forward to seeing Billy and her husband Dylan when she crosses the finish line although she’s expecting her son not to be happy with her. “His final words to me when I headed to the village yesterday were: “Mum, don’t get sweaty and don’t run fast”,” she said.
“He hates me getting sweaty and whenever Dylan and I head out for training he is like, `No Billy don’t like sweat’.”