Holly Lawrence is back in training following the birth of her first child and hoping to make her Ironman debut this summer.

The American-based Brit, the IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion in 2016, hasn’t been in race action since a superb third place at T100 Miami last March when she knew she was in the early stages of pregnancy.

And she’s been navigating her way back towards race fitness since the birth of daughter Poppy last October, balancing parenthood with training.

So little information out there

That journey hasn’t been without its challenges and in a lovely first YouTube video since the birth, alongside her husband and coach Sean Jefferson, she says it’s been a steep learning curve, especially with so little guidance for elite athletes both during pregnancy and then postpartum.

Just one example of that is highlighted by Sean in the video when he says: “It’s frustrating that maybe it’s not more publicly discussed or there’s information out there around how should a woman who is breastfeeding return to training, especially at a high-performance level.”

Swimming and then cycling resumed first of all for Lawrence but five weeks into her running return she revealed things were halted by a sacral stress reaction.

And she adds: “If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have… say taken a calcium supplement during pregnancy when you could have been bolstering your calcium stores. Because I think the losses in the third trimester are almost the same as breastfeeding as you are physically making their bones inside of you.

“And then I’m supplying enough for twins so it’s like big losses. But then, do I know 100% that if I’d taken a calcium supplement that it would have changed it? I don’t know.

“But though I was upset that it happened, I was glad that it happened so early because I didn’t even see it as an injury. I’d only been back running for five weeks. So for me it was a bit of a blip – not ideal but it’s not derailed the season.”

Countdown on to race return

The absolute joy that Poppy brings them every day shines through the video and the obvious next question is when does Lawrence expect to pin on a race number?

“Originally I was eying up IRONMAN Hamburg but now I think I’ll be doing IRONMAN Lake Placid on July 20th to try and qualify for Kona,” she says.

“There are still other opportunities after that if I got something like a mechanical but I’ll be super excited to toe the line then.”

As a 17-time 70.3 winner, it will be fascinating to see how Lawrence transfers those talents to full distance.