I'm so impressed that Hardy was able to develop and harness an elite-level freestyle and breaststroke and freestyle simultaneously; I don't think we've someone do it at her level since. She was a world championship medalist in breaststroke and freestyle relays... at the same meet. According to Hardy, as long as it was short, she would do it. She also claims to have never been beaten in practice by her USC breaststroke contemporaries and training partners: Rebecca Soni and Yulia Efimova. To be fair, she admits Soni mostly trained in the distance group, and when they would go head-to-head it was mostly 50's with MAYBE a 100 or two thrown in.

• Click here to listen and subscribe on Spotify

Music: Otis McDonald 

A round table of my dreams, I spoke with 2 of my most esteemed colleagues: Cal Men’s head coach Dave Durden, and PhD in and out of the pool, Wyatt Hodges (my older brother). I got to hear their thoughts on how they are managing swimming right now, the cancellation of NCAA’s, and the postponement of the 2020 Olympics and Olympic Trials.

• Click here to listen and subscribe on Spotify

Originally published March 25, 2020.

We sat down with Justin Wright, the 200 butterfly national champion who just moved his training base from Arizona to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Justin talked with us about his reasons for the move, and what brought it about. He was also very candid with us about his struggles through quarantine, and how he'd found inspiration from watching anime shows. Particularly, he'd found a common thread in a few of them which he was able to apply to his own journey: the path of the warrior.

• Click here to listen and subscribe on Spotify

Music: Otis McDonald 

Ashley Twichell is a swimming veteran, and one who is put into a place that most other athletes weren't by the Olympic postponement. Twichell had already made the Olympic team in open water, and was also gunning for a spot in the pool as well. When I spoke with her, Ashley talked about the importance of recognizing how the postponement affected you, and the feelings that were brought up. As she says, we are all affected by it differently, and that's ok.

• Click here to listen and subscribe on Spotify

Originally published March 31, 2020.

I sat down with Jason Pullano, a high school swim coach in the Dallas area who has been utilizing his time creatively during quarantine to try to keep his swimmers as engaged as possible. Pullano is also a teacher, and what he's noticed from his peers during the COVID-19 shutdown is that if they aren't using alternative methods to keep kids' attention in online classes, the participation rate plummets. So Pullano has started creating ways to gamify daily life, from learning to swimming. 

In this podcast, that comes in the form of Jason turning a swim workout into a game of Super Mario Kart. He has an entire spreadsheet for how it works; it might be worth it to watch the video on our YouTube page.

• Click here to listen and subscribe on Spotify

Music: Otis McDonald 

Elliot Ptasnik, the head coach at the University of Hawaii, gave us an update from Honolulu about the effects the Covid-19 outbreak has had on the rainbow warriors. Elliot put a HEAVY emphasis on taking this time to build relationships and communicate with your social circles. Ptasnik spoke on finding the positives in our situation, putting positivity out there, and making sure we are staying connected and having communication while we can.

• Click here to listen and subscribe on Spotify

Originally published March 29, 2020.