Katie Ledecky on Pain, Perseverance, and the Power of the Perfect Song

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Katie Ledecky on Pain, Perseverance, and the Power of the Perfect Song
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was a 15-year-old unknown when she climbed onto the starting block for the 800-meter freestyle final at the 2012 London Olympics. Hometown favorite Rebecca Adlington had been expected to win, but Ledecky shocked the swimming world with a dominant performance, earning the first of her seven lifetime Olympic gold medals. She now holds 21 world-championship golds and a slew of jaw-dropping stats, making her one of history’s most accomplished swimmers., which will be her fourth .

In other words, I was not going to beat you in the pool. But okay, what about Palisades’ actual most competitive sport: ping-pong? You write in the book about how swimming combines buoyancy and resistance—being in the water makes things easier and harder at the same time. Why do you like that combination?

I definitely wasn’t thinking of that. That last 200, all I kept saying to myself was “Don’t mess this up, don’t mess this up.” You know, “You’ve got this.” I was certainly not thinking of any ramifications or what my life was going to become after that. I don’t think I even knew what it would be like. I was pretty focused on the race.

Sometimes you think about music in your head to maintain the right tempo, which kind of reminds me of how people do CPR to “Stayin’ Alive.”Sometimes I have a song stuck in my head and sometimes I don’t. I’m somebody that loves classic rock. I always kind of fall back to Bruce Springsteen, U2, Bon Jovi. Sometimes I don’t even purposely do it—I just have a song stuck in my head and I realize while I’m training that it’s a good song for my rhythm.

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