I concentrate on preparing to swim my race and let the other swimmers think about me, not me about them.

The swimming community is really conservative. I don't know why, because we're in no clothing whatsoever.

Almost religiously, I step away from everything and close my eyes and breathe deeply for a few moments. It helps solidify my focus and aligns everything in my body to take care of the task at hand - which is winning, of course.

I concentrate on preparing to swim my race and let the other swimmers think about me, not me about them.

Like anyone, I stress and get hard on myself from time to time, but it's minute compared to the pressure I used to put on myself to perform and succeed. To my kids' credit, they've probably helped me the most here: I'm more worried about what they're doing than what I'm doing!

With my sport, I am outside and in the water, which can be really drying and damaging to the skin, so I try to be vigilant about taking good care of it.

People wanted to be friends with me for not the right reasons. They'd introduce me to somebody else as the Olympian or the swimmer. I didn't want to stand out. I wanted to blend in.