So how did their return to running work out? Exactly half of them dealt with postpartum injury, encompassing stress fractures, tendon and ligament sprains or ruptures, and other setbacks. None of the training data predicted who did and didn’t get injured. That’s probably because the sample group was too small and diverse to pick up subtle differences, and perhaps also because the athletes were experienced enough to avoid obvious mistakes.

One statistically significant difference that did show up: among those attempting to return to elite performance, those who got injured did worse in the one to three years following the birth of their child. In fact, those who successfully avoided injury actually improved by 3.6 percent, on average, compared to their pre-pregnancy best. That’s as good a reason as any to err on the side of caution when returning to training.

I thought this wan an interesting article, especially this point.