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American woman runs 5:17 mile at 9 months pregnant

Just weeks before her due date, Makenna Myler ran a blazing-fast pregnancy PB

makenna myler Photo by: Makenna Myler

In February, Makenna Myler, a pro runner from California, ran a 5:17 mile just weeks before she was due to give birth. This is not the first time Myler has thrown down a jaw-dropping mile result while nine months pregnant, as she ran a 5:25 mile time trial back in 2020 when she was carrying her first child. With her most recent result, she has lowered her pregnancy PB once more, again running a time that most non-pregnant runners can only dream of hitting. 

Pregnancy PB

Back in 2020 when Myler was pregnant for the first time, she told her husband, Mike, she believed she would be able to run a seven-minute-mile in the later stages of her pregnancy. To make things interesting, Mike offered her $100 if she could break eight minutes (a full minute slower than she’d forecast) in the ninth month of her pregnancy. Myler took him up on the challenge and ultimately broke the eight-minute, seven-minute and six-minute barriers with her 5:25 performance. 

Since then, Myler has run at the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 10,000m, signed a pro contract with Asics and, of course, worked with Mike in raising their daughter Kenny-Lou. Around the time she found out she was pregnant for the second time, Myler teamed up with American half-marathon record holder Ryan Hall, who has coached her over the past nine months or so. 

As Myler wrote on Instagram, she originally wanted her third-trimester mile run to be another solo time trial, which she only planned to do “for the sole purpose of seeing whether [she was] in better shape at the end of this pregnancy.” However, after discussing it with Hall, they were both “too curious” to see how she would fare in an actual race, so she signed up for an official event. It turned out that Myler was, in fact, in better shape than she was last time, and she smashed her pregnancy PB by eight seconds. 

Mile runs 

Myler has run a lot of unique miles in her running career. She previously told Canadian Running that she has a tradition of running the mile at or around big moments in her life, such as the morning of her wedding (she ran a 4:45 hours before saying “I do”) and of course during her first pregnant TT. She has also run a blazing unofficial mile PB in jeans last year while participating in the Asics Blue Jean Mile, a fundraising event for mental health charities. In that run, she posted a blistering result of 4:37, which beat her previous mile best of 4:40. With that result and her two pregnancy miles, it’s pretty undeniable that Myler is the queen of running miles in potentially uncomfortable situations. 

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