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After Elle Purrier St. Pierre gave birth to her son, Ivan, in March 2023—during the prime of her distance-running career, a year and change before the Paris Olympics—she felt, she says, “like garbage.” Her first training run back, which came three weeks after Ivan was born, “was not fun at all,” she says. “I just knew that I needed to take it slow.”
Six months after delivering Ivan, she returned to racing at the 5th Avenue Mile in New York City, in September 2023. Purrier St. Pierre ran a time of 4 min., 23.30 sec., placing seventh. The result was slower than she expected.
“That was kind of daunting,” says Purrier St. Pierre, now 29. “I had moments of second-guessing if I would get back to where I was. What have I done wrong?”
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Nothing at all, it turns out. Purrier St. Pierre, who made the 1,500-m team for the Tokyo Olympics, finishing 10th in Japan, has flourished in her first full running season as a mom. She broke her own U.S. record for the indoor mile, at the Millrose Games in New York City, in February before winning 3,000-m gold at the indoor world championships in Glasgow in early March, setting another U.S. record in the process. “Beating the names that I did, that should give me all the confidence in the world heading into outdoor,” Purrier told TIME a few weeks after that world-championship win.
Building off her indoor season, Purrier St. Pierre—who in her spare time still pitches in on her family’s Vermont dairy farm—is returning to the Olympics, in Paris. She won the 5,000 m at the Olympics trials in Eugene, Ore., in June, and finished third in the 1,500 m. (Because of the tight Olympic track-and-field schedule, she’ll only run the 1,500 in Paris.)
Track and field has a checkered history supporting women athletes who want to start a family. Former…
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