Holly Lawrence’s comeback

Just eight months after giving birth to her first child, Holly Lawrence returned to pro triathlon racing this past weekend with a fifth place finish at the T100 Triathlon World Tour race in San Francisco. 

To so quickly return near the top of the heap of middle distance racing is a remarkable accomplishment in itself. But the race was just Step 1 of an ambitious comeback that she hopes will peak with a strong performance at Ironman World Championships in Kona this coming October.

But though Lawrence has a goal in mind, she’s not letting it spoil the journey. As she began training to return to racing, she found that her relationship to triathlon had changed. She enjoyed the process more. She found that she had regained an appreciation for the work itself, and the fact that she was one of the select few people on Earth who could call themselves a pro athlete. And when she suffered setbacks, the stress never stuck with her for long.

“Having a child has almost been the best refresh of my mindset,” Lawrence said after the race. “It has brought me back to how I felt at the beginning of my career. I remember myself in 2016, when I had no expectations, and I was just happy to be there. Every race, you’re just like, ‘Oh, if I can pick off one person, if I can pick off the next person,’ instead of when you have had all these great successes, you feel like you need to be at a certain level. It’s more of a negative force that I feel like I have shed.”

Lawrence was strong in all three legs of Saturday’s race, and posted the fifth-fastest run to pull past Jessica Learmonth for a Top 5 finish. The fact that she was so strong in the final leg was eye opening given how difficult run training had been. Breastfeeding mothers are at risk for calcium deficits, which can be especially dangerous for distance runners, who absorb a lot of small, repetitive impacts to their skeletons. Just five weeks into her return-to-run program, Lawrence was sidelined due to a stress fracture in her sacrum, delaying her comeback.

But Lawrence’s recovery plan was diligent — sometimes excruciatingly so for the former Ironman 70.3 World Champion. She worked with personal doctors and a sports osteopath to monitor her progress, examine her gait, and make sure that she was safely gaining strength and improving her running form. She also did copious research into the nutrition needs of breastfeeding athletes. She had to do some deep digging to find the dearth of information that exists. 

“I was pumping a bunch, stocking our freezer full, and I just wasn’t meeting my needs. And so it was no surprise that I fractured my sacrum,” Lawrence said. “I’ve since had so many women reach out to me personally, and I’m sending them all the information that I ended up learning, and the return to run plan that I followed. I worked with a doctor, and basically we just kept re-scanning the sacrum, which typically they never do. And we didn’t progress anything until it was 100 percent healed.

“I was on such a conservative plan to the point I was getting a little bit frustrated, because I was like, ‘There’s no one else doing this.'”

Lawrence only decided to take on T100 San Francisco after determining with her doctors that she was fully safe to do so. She had low competitive expectations for the event. The race is part of her warm up for Ironman Lake Placid on July 20, when she plans to make her qualifying bid for Kona. She did San Francisco partly as a way to repay the T100 for how the organization supported her during her pregnancy by honoring her contract.  

Her performance exceeded even her expectations. Not only could she claim a strong result, but she felt free as a racer in a way she hasn’t in a long time. Her husband Sean was posted at the turnaround of the running lap in San Francisco, holding their daughter Poppy. Every lap, Lawrence shook Poppy’s leg for an energy boost and reminder that her life contains so much more than racing now.

“Your identity is not so much tied up in being a triathlete, first and foremost. Now I feel like I’m Poppy’s mom,” Lawrence said. “Before I’d be so obsessed if I’m going out for a bike workout about the numbers to hit. And you’re almost nervous about it, if it’s going to be a good day or a bad day. And then you come home and you bring it home with you. 

“Now I race a bit more free and train a bit more free, and that’s actually how I get the most out of myself, instead of setting serious, stressful targets. That is never how I’ve got the best out of myself.”

That renewed sense of freedom is reflected in her decision to pursue Kona. She has always wanted to take on the race, but had been worried in the past about being unable to give it her best. It’s double the already lengthy distances she’s used to as a primarily middle-distance triathlete, and the conditions and competitive pressure make it daunting for even the most hardened Ironman athletes.

But Lawrence is done waiting to check off one of the biggest items left on her bucket list.  

“At the beginning of my career, I had that, ‘Well, what the hell,’ attitude. I had nothing to lose, but then you feel like you’ve got everything to lose,” Lawrence said. “You have to be perfect, you have to be super smart, you’ve got to be calculated. But I’ve always wanted to do Kona. Now I don’t want to put it off anymore. I want to do it.”

Lawrence is not starting a new chapter as a mother: She’s revisiting an earlier one. Having a child has helped her find an older joy in triathlon that had been subsumed by the pressures of professional sport. In San Francisco she showcased a rekindled spirit, and proved that there’s no better way to compete than for the love of it.