Welcome to another Ask Coach Parry episode. Today we have a question submitted by Phindile. She says in 2009 and 2010 she ran the Comrades Marathon and got Vic Clapham medals in both years.in July 2011 she gave birth to a baby boy.

In 2012 she attempted the Comrades Marathon again but could not finish, she was cut off at half way.

In 2013 she gave birth to a baby girl. She has entered the Comrades Marathon again in 2015. She is scared that she may not make it like in 2012.

She wants to know what advice you can give her with regards to how to train and maybe training programmes to follow to help her improve on her running?

Before giving birth she ran a 10km in an hour but now it takes an hour 10 minutes for her to finish a 10km race. Her best 21km time this year is 2.35.

She is really worried and doesn’t want to give up easily.

Brad Brown: Welcome to another Ask Coach Parry episode. Today we have a question submitted by Phindile. She says in 2009 and 2010 she ran the Comrades Marathon and got Vic Clapham medals in both years.in July 2011 she gave birth to a baby boy.

In 2012 she attempted the Comrades Marathon again but could not finish, she was cut off at half way.

In 2013 she gave birth to a baby girl. She has entered the Comrades Marathon again in 2015. She is scared that she may not make it like in 2012.

She wants to know what advice you can give her with regards to how to train and maybe training programmes to follow to help her improve on her running?

Before giving birth she ran a 10km in an hour but now it takes an hour 10 minutes for her to finish a 10km race. Her best 21km time this year is 2.35.

She is really worried and doesn’t want to give up easily.

Lindsey Parry: This is a slightly complicated situation. It is not only about the birthing process and the time that you missed during pregnancy.

What is the best plan to run the Comrades Marathon after having a baby?

But it is also about the amount of energy that you give off every day looking after your children, it does mean that there is going to be a compromise in your running abilities. I would train for the Comrades Marathon almost as if you’re a novice.

I would get one of the novice Comrades Marathon programmes that should be going up on the runners world website in the next 6 weeks or so – between 4 and 6 weeks. Because they will give you slightly less approach in terms of the amount of running.

But it will give you enough running so that it helps you to start improving, but that you aren’t necessarily quite as tired all the time.

What you will find going forward now is that as your kids now become slightly more self sufficient over the going years, and it requires less and less of your energy to look after them full time, that your running will slowly start to improve again.

What we do need to do is try and get you back to round about that 60 minutes for 10km’s. Which will then have a knock on effect into the half marathon and into the marathon which will then allow you to finish the Comrades Marathon.

Really from here on in, what you need to try and focus on is being as consistent as you can in your running without also over doing it.

For you I would advise going for the novice programme and building up from there.

If you have a question you would like us to answer about training for the Comrades Marathon post pregnancy, please feel free to pop us an email by using the form on the right hand side of this page.