We have two women on our team who are on their countries' respective Olympic teams for swimming. One girl is on the Uzbek Olympic squad, and another is on the Mozambique Olympic team. It is such an honor to train with these two women! They're both students at colleges here and need a team to train with while they're here finishing up the semester (their college seasons are done and NCAA regulations have limitation on post-season training which is why they aren't with their college teams). They'll be with us through May before they go back to Uzbekistan and Mozambique.
I always think it's interesting that the media plays up Olympic athletes are larger than life and that they must do "something special" to get to the level that they are at - and these women are women like us. We eat the same food, use the same equipment, do the same training sets (at different intervals of course). They don't have any "special ability" that makes them better, they're just a little more dedicated. Will I be an Olympic athlete just by training with them? No, but training with them is definitely pushing me just a little bit more!
Re: I'm training with 2 Olympians!
my food blog
Very cool!
used to work on the same team at work as Randy Jones. I think he was the first African-American (US) man to medal in Bobsled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Jones_%28bobsleigh%29
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Yup, that's very cool!
Dh grew up hearing about the successful skiers in his area. The little ski area (can't even call it a resort) that he basically grew up at is minute compared to most NE ski areas, but produced 3 Olympians, the last of which was only about 4 years older than him. None of them live there any more, but one of the families does, so it's neat to hear all the stories of them.
I also think sometimes you can tell the difference between an "athlete" and a "regular" person that's athletic. But it's cool that these ladies are very normal, and that it's pushing you to get better and faster!