Life on the Road

Continuing to live out of my suitcase, I spent a three week training block between WTCS races at the US Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. It’s a nice amount of time for an altitude stint. The center where I lived and swam is at about 6000ft (1830m). There’s a cafeteria for all your meals, aka no dishes or grocery shopping, and everything is a quick walk away. Living there, I was surrounded by athletes, old race photos, inspirational quotes, and funny signs like “drink up – you might need 90ml” above the water fountains. Sheila Taormina and Hunter Kemper photos stared at me while I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My personal favorite quote from the walls was “I am building a fire, and every day I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.”

One bonus of being here is that the campus has its own physical therapy/massage clinic. Making same day appointments, for free, is the best. I was there straight away after returning from Cagliari WTCS. That long shallow sand beach start and exit in the race killed my feet. I practiced it a lot, which ended up being useless. Myself and the couple girls on either side of me all face planted on our first steps into the long run-in and then got to play catch-up the rest of the swim. My feet were super sore for a couple days after and I continued to have lingering pain in one specific spot. One day while in the clinic, the staff decided to take an x-ray to rule out the idea that I could have an accessory bone rubbing on my tendon. From deciding to get the scan, taking it, and looking at the images, the entire process was about ten minutes long and I left with no bills. Amazing!

I’d often go straight from the therapy clinic into the recovery center. Picture couches with normatec boots and coloring books, heat baths, ice baths, a sauna, and a steam room. I spent most of my time in the sauna with para-triathletes prepping for the Grand Final in Abu Dhabi. Even though I’m at altitude, which preps your body in a similar way to training in heat, I’m still trying to spend time in heat so that I’m mentally used to that feeling of being hot as well.

Speaking of heat prep, the neatest facility is the High Altitude Training Center (pictured). The room can be set to any altitude, humidity, and temperature that you like. Inside are treadmills and trainers to use. Keeping with my theme of trying to not lose any heat adaptation I gained over summer, I went in there for a couple rides at sea level and 90F. It wasn’t so hot to cause unnecessary stress, but I had a couple moments in there of forgetting where I was and thinking I should get off to crack a window.

Each morning, I’d walk from breakfast down the hallway lined with swimming photos and quotes into the pool. It’s a beautiful 50m pool. I was super lucky to get in a couple sessions there with a swim coach I’ve used previously. After watching the girls at national select swim camps flying in the lanes next to me, I was keen to talk technique. I’ve put a huge emphasis on learning swim technique the last couple years. It seems to be paying off. When I first started the process, how I swam was so ingrained into my brain that I couldn’t feel myself doing the things I was trying to change and I could only get myself to make the most minor of adjustments. Fast forward a couple years and I know and can feel so many different parts of my stroke that I had never thought about before. Working on technique is such a fun process when you fully trust the person you are taking advice from. It breaks up the laps-on-laps grind that swimming can be and almost turns it into an art.

I have to laugh when tours come through and stand at the pool windows watching. At times it can be like training in a fishbowl here. People peering through while you swim, do gym work, and ride in the altitude room. I have my own memories of standing at the pool windows on a tour with my mom back in high school. We were visiting colleges in Colorado and came to see the Olympic Training Center. I was so enthralled watching the swimmers when my mom pointed out that whatever kids’ team was in the pool at that moment wasn’t even good at flipturns. I hadn’t noticed, just expecting that I was watching Olympians. It’s something of a full-circle moment to now be the person on the other side of the glass exercising.

There are also parts of life here that the tours don’t see. I’ve been in the US Anti-Doping Agency testing pool since 2017. For the first time ever I got a call that someone was at my door to test me while in the middle of a long ride. The tester drove out to meet me at my car since there is a time limit on how long you have to meet after contacting the athlete. After downing the rest of mine and my boyfriend's water bottles to prepare, I peed in the cup right there in the parking lot. Unfortunately, I also needed to give a blood sample that day which has to be at least two hours post exercise. So, the tester had to follow me back to the training center again and sit with me for two hours. Then I gave a blood sample in the cafeteria in the middle of dinner. The poor lady said she had woken up at 3am that morning to start testing athletes and I’m sure she wasn’t hoping for a multi-hour event when she knocked on my door for her last test of the day.

Last but not least, actually probably the best part about being at the center, was seeing my psychologist in person. I might have to leave this as a teaser for future articles because there’s so much I could say about what she has taught me. For now, I’ll just say that the psychology building is an ugly building in a back parking lot, but it should really be front and center. Those people are one of the main forces keeping us athletes fired up to push limits and find what we love about sport day in and day out.

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