The Olympics are a unique beast. One shot every four years to make the dream come true. The dream that you've held close and nurtured since you were a kid. The dream that got you up for at 4:30am before the kookaburras were even cackling. The dream that moved you from city to city, chasing it across the country.
And once every four years, I have a race that lasts less than a minute. And everything I've worked for in the previous four years, must be executed with precision in that one minute. There are over two million minutes in four years, but only one that
counts.
Or at least that's the mindset/pressure trap of the Olympics: that only the current moment counts. It's true that the Olympics measure who is the best in the world at a particular point in time, but it's untrue to think that only that one moment in time matters. All the other minutes leading up to it matter more. Every minute spent on training, on sleeping, on recovery, on mindset, on flexibility; all of these count.
This is how I approach Olympics: what can I do with my two million minutes to get the best output in the Olympic Minute? My resources when I'm an athlete are time and energy. So where can I spend those two finite commodities to get the best output when I stand behind the blocks in an Olympic Final?
After the Tokyo Olympics I took 18 months away from the pool. Between my injuries and the mental load of training, I didn't have any energy leff for training. A better use of my time was to take a step away and let the energy re-charge. If I hadn't done that, there is no way I'd have competed in Paris. I had an 18 month break and then an intense 18 month lead into Paris.
The motivation in a four year cycle comes from the fact that there is always something new to learn, something new to try. I will never be a perfect athlete, but I can keep trying different things to see what makes me better. And the next two million minutes are an experiment.
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