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Watch This Viral TikTok Of A Woman Winning A Race Less Than 6 Months After Having A Baby

Photo credit: Makenna Myler
Photo credit: Makenna Myler
  • A viral TikTok video shows a Utah woman running a 5:25 mile at nine months pregnant.

  • Makenna Myler, 28, made a bet with her husband that she would be able to run the mile in eight minutes.

  • Now, Myler is at it again. She broke her personal 5K record less than six months post-partum.


Last October, Makenna Myler went viral on TikTok after her husband posted a video of her running a 5-minute mile while pregnant.

Now, Myler is at it again. And this time, she broke her personal 5K record less than six months post-partum.

“I wanted to run and continue the fitness I gained during pregnancy, post-pregnancy, so I tried to be really smart and build up slow and build a good base before racing,” Myler tells Women’s Health of her training after giving birth.

To start working her core again, she did a ton of bodyweight exercises, like extending her arms and legs while laying on her back. “We took a lot of walks to keep my body moving, keep the blood flowing. We did some strides at the park,” she says. “I built from there. I did 30 minutes every day and then built up to an hour and then long runs, which are 90 minutes to two hours. I did a lot of hip and glute strength, which carried over into post-partum.” Overall, Myler describes her training as “simple and basic.” All of it was approved by her doctor.

“I wrote my own program until I started needing more specific workouts,” she says, at which point she called Jorge Jabaz, her coach at the Valor Track Club, who outlined some specific routines. “I left it open-ended, to not have high expectations by any means,” she says, emphasizing that she listened to her body.

However, she doesn’t want new moms to stress out about their running times. “A lot of people think there’s some standard they need to meet when they see someone like me run really fast post-partum when I had a lot of help,” she says. “I’ve had a great support system and I think women are incredible doing what they’re doing already, taking care of a child, no one needs to run fast to be impressive. Moms are impressive already.”

Myler has been running competitively since high school, and early on in her pregnancy, she and her husband Mike told Today they made a bet over whether or not she would be able to run an eight-minute mile at nine months. Let's just say she won in a BIG way.

In the video, Myler's husband Mike films her running four laps around a track, while he cheers her on from the sidelines.

“Neither of us had any idea what to expect during a pregnancy. We’ve always heard I’d just kind of shut down as I got further in,” she told Today, but she didn't want to let that stop her from continuing to train.

That's when the bet happened. "In month two, Mike was convinced running an eight-minute mile in my ninth month was a pipe dream, so when I bet him I'd run a seven-min mile, he put $100 dollars down, and gave me an extra minute."

(She noted that her doctors were on board with her decision to stay active since she was already in such good condition.)

You can watch the results here:

Though her family was impressed by her 5:25 mile, Makenna said they were more impressed by her TikTok views. "However, I think the mile put the entirety of my training into perspective for people close to me. I hope it inspires women, just as I was inspired by other pregnant athletes, to pursue goals in spite of what the status quo says we ought to pursue."

Makenna said she did notice that her form suffered compared to her pre-pregnancy runs. "The weight really does a number on my cadence," she said. "The first 2.5 laps were pretty comfy from training, but from there my form turned into more of an emperor penguin style—side to side as well as forward motion."

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