Riding Into Motherhood
Riding Into Motherhood
May 18 — 2023 | Santa Cruz, California
Words // Hailey Elise
Images // Hailey Elise and Sven Martin
It’s no secret, on the journey into motherhood and beyond you’re faced with many climbs and descents. Even beforehand, it can be riddled with questions that do not have a perfect answer. And when your sport is interwoven into your very being, the question of how do I continue and what will that look like is added to the list. What does it really look like? Straight from new moms and athletes Anka Martin and Emily Slaco, here’s how they are navigating caring for new babies while finding their balance on and off the bike.
Emily Slaco
How has being an athlete impacted you (positively or negatively) in terms of motherhood?
I think being an athlete has really helped me in those moments when things are really tough. Maybe not the kind of physical toughness that I might normally be used to on the bike but a new and different kind of difficult. As an athlete you get conditioned to work through or persevere and to use these difficult moments to get stronger which I think translates well to all aspects of life including motherhood. The sort of flip side is that having the mentality of someone who wants to 'get out and get after it' all the time and being at the mercy of two small humans has been difficult for me to adjust to.
How does riding your bike look for you in these early postpartum days?
Rides are a lot shorter than they used to be, ha! Limited time means I might just get a quick backyard lap in. I used to be someone who was always looking for variety in my trail selections and now I’ll take whatever time permits! Even doing a couple of laps on a super short trail or sessioning a couple of jumps has been wonderful. Also looking for ways to incorporate the family into riding and indulging in a couple of shuttle laps with the babies or taking turns at the pump track has been a really great way to bring them along for the fun.
What was the best part about returning to your bike?
Being able to get back on my bike really helped give me a bit of a sense of freedom, a moment of me-time where I can work up a sweat, have a couple of thoughts to myself, and even enjoy some time with friends. The other great thing about being able to spend a little bit of time away from my boys on the bike has been that coming back to them feels extra special. Like I’m rejuvenated and excited to see their little faces even if they’re screaming and crying!
What were some of the challenging aspects of returning to riding?
After carrying twins for 9 months and then going through a c-section one of the most challenging parts for me was taking some time to rehab my body and remove any expectations of what I should be able to do or should look like. I am lucky to have a super supportive and knowledgeable community when it comes to postpartum rehab for active women. There have been many women who’ve gone before me and learned the lessons, put in the time to understand and share some of the key things to work on and be aware of when returning to activity, especially more high-impact activity. Forcing myself to start slow, listen to my body, and be happy with slow progressions was difficult mentally. On the physical side, finding time to do my rehab exercises was and continues to be a huge challenge, as is finding time to get out on the bike. I’m a quality-over-quantity gal these days and am pretty psyched to be able to get out even once a week for a pedal.
What would you like to share with other women in terms of navigating pregnancy, birth and postpartum, and mountain biking?
Try not to let the pressure of society get to you! Even in reading this blog and seeing photos of women riding bikes postpartum remember that everyone’s journey is going to look different and maybe you physically aren’t ready to get on the bike or don’t actually have the luxury of having time, just mentally aren’t ready or you’re feeling amazing and ready to rip, try not to let the pressure of someone else doing something or expecting something factor into your decisions. I really had to think twice as to why I was maybe thinking of pushing myself a few times, was it because I felt like my body was ready and needed a push or was I just trying to “keep up” or regain the idea of Emily the “athlete”. Be honest with yourself and if it feels good do it!
Anka Martin
How has being an athlete impacted you (positively or negatively) in terms of motherhood?
Being an athlete has been the best preparation for motherhood ever! It has been the biggest test of endurance that I’ve ever had to do, and all the years of pushing myself mentally and physically has definitely helped me over the past two and a half months of being a mama. My bike has also given me the confidence to deal with everything motherhood throws at you. Injuries over the years taught me to be patient with the healing process and not to rush back to riding too soon only to find myself back at square one. So yes, racing bikes has taught me so much and helped me a lot so far in this new life adventure. I’ve sort of treated pregnancy and now this postpartum period or 4th trimester as if I’ve had an “injury" that is just taking forever to heal which is keeping me off the bike. Racing bikes also toughened me up over the years and taught me to just get on with it. Our sense of “hard” is quite a bit different from the majority of people’s “hard” I think, which helps during some of the tough days and nights.
On the negative side, you definitely lose your freedom for now anyways, and freedom was always something my bike gave me. I miss that at the moment, but this is just a short season in my life and we will be riding bikes together before I know it. You also do lose your identity that you’ve known for so long and you need to reinvent this new identity, and let go of the whole ego aspect and be ok with just being a mom for now. You have to remember that what you do or did doesn’t define who you are. Everything is temporary and works in cycles, so this too shall pass when we learn how to juggle this new life and find our new identity.
How does riding your bike look for you in these early postpartum days?
Pretty much nonexistent in any consistent kind of way at the moment. I’ve gone out on a friend’s e-bike a few times just to get back on the bike. I had a C-section birth and also ended up having diastasis recti which takes quite a while and lots of slow rehabilitation, healing, and patience to teach your core and pelvis how to re-engage and fire up again, so lots of patience is needed with this to slowly build up my core strength again. I also ended up with a frozen shoulder from sitting and sleeping in very strange positions for extended periods of time holding Ziggy Girl, so I've been having to rehab that, which is still ongoing trying to get my full range of motion and mobility back. This has also been super frustrating as I didn’t have a crash on the bike and get injured like usual!
What was the best part about returning to your bike?
Feeling like your old self again, feeling that sense of freedom your bike brings to you and the adrenaline rush of biking, even if it was just descending a fire road. Doing something that you feel confident in felt great because for the past 2.5 months, I’ve been winging everything and not sure of anything, so lovely to do something you know you can do with confidence - sort of - ha ha!
What were some of the challenging aspects of returning to riding?
I haven’t spent enough time on the bike just yet, but I know that it’s going to be my fitness and then to rebuild my bike confidence again. I haven’t ridden proper trails for a long time now and I think it will take a little while to just get back up to speed and feel like I’m shredding again, which is fine and just another process that I must go through. Breastfeeding also takes some planning, as it’s a pretty nonstop, relentless affair, so you have to make sure you do quick little loops to be back for feeding, but maybe that will force me to do more efficient rides with less faffing, so it’s not all bad.
What would you like to share with other women in terms of navigating pregnancy, birth and postpartum, and mountain biking?
Don’t be scared like I was for many years to have a baby. I was afraid of losing my freedom, my identity, my sponsors, my fitness, etc, so we waited a long time before we actually started trying, just assuming it would be easy to fall pregnant. We convinced ourselves that it was never the right time, we were too busy YOLO-ing, and we were always surrounded by younger people, so we forgot how old we actually were! It took us about 5 years of trying naturally with a few miscarriages in between and then two rounds of IVF last year to finally get pregnant. It’s been a long rollercoaster ride, with lots of butt injections administered by many of my friends at different times in weird and random places, but we never gave up. I was always against IVF, but at my age, we decided to give it one last try and it worked, so I’ve definitely changed my tune to how I feel about that. Advice to younger athletes would be to freeze your eggs! If you’re unsure about having kids or too busy YOLO-ing like I was, just freeze them. That way you don’t have to stress about running out of time and you can choose to either use them or not. It’s amazing how much you change, even from 38 to 40 my views about having kids changed, so you might be anti-baby now, but one changes a lot as you get older. We also lost both of Sven’s parents within a year of each other and those events really made us realize that we did want a baby and that we better crack on with it.
The other words of advice would be to get as fit and in shape as possible before getting pregnant as it will just make everything easier during and after. I rode my road bike the most as I didn’t want to risk anything on the mountain bike because I knew I probably wouldn’t get another shot at this at my age and I wasn’t willing to risk anything. I walked and walked and walked some more and did heaps of pregnancy yoga which was amazing. As for postpartum, make sure you also look after yourself. During pregnancy you do everything right and healthy because of the baby and then postpartum is such a mental blur of a time that you often don’t even eat! The biggest help has been people offering up meals and food. As for jumping back on the mountain bike, just take your time to heal - physically and mentally - and soak up this newborn phase, it literally flies by. As I said before, it is just one season of your entire life, so soak it up, your bike will always be there waiting for you.
