15 
From the time I was a little girl, I always wanted to train with the North Baltimore Aquatic Club (NBAC) at the Meadowbrook Aquatic Center. The team’s coach, Bob Bowman, has trained many Olympic swimmers, including Michael Phelps and Allison Schmitt. The commute had been a bit too long for my parents while they were juggling the activities of their other kids, so I competed with teams closer to home, pushing NBAC to the back of my mind. After the London Games, while I was still at the Olympic Training Center, I started to wonder if I could go back and swim with what had always been my dream team.
I was scheduled to speak at Boston College in April, and it turned out that Bob Bowman was the other speaker. I could tell how passionate he was about coaching. While sharing a ride to the airport with him, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to ask what he thought about me training with him for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials. He gave me his card and said that the next time he was at the OTC, we could have a chat about the possibilities. A month later he and his team came to train at the OTC and I was invited to Baltimore to swim with Bob’s team at NBAC.
I knew the first six weeks at NBAC would be the hardest—at least, that’s what I kept telling myself. I have never trained so much and so hard in my life. It’s a whole new ball game training with Olympians as opposed to Paralympians, but I had to do it. I had to prove to myself that I could keep up with able-bodied Olympic swimmers. London was over, I was avoiding thinking about my newly found family in Russia, and I needed a new goal.
Overlooking my home: Baltimore. I love getting coffee and then climbing this hill to take in the view.
At every practice with NBAC, I had to give 110 percent. If I gave anything less, I would not make it through the grueling sets. My life was literally eat, sleep, swim. But I loved being able to throw myself back into training.
5:45 a.m.: Alarm goes off. Roll out of bed, grab swim bag, and drive the four minutes to the pool.
6:00 a.m.: Arrive at the pool, begin stretches.
6:45 a.m.: Meet with Bob and the team to go over our workout, goals, or info on upcoming meets.
7:00 a.m.: Swim first practice of the day-a good seven thousand to eight thousand meters, long course.
9:00 a.m.: Weight training with the girls.
10:00 a.m.: Nap.
12:00 p.m.: Get up, have coffee and a snack.
2:00–4:00 p.m.: Swim second practice, covering six thousand to seven thousand meters. (Once, we swam eighteen thousand meters in one day!)
8:00 p.m.: Climb into bed
I formed some incredible friendships with my teammates. In fact, I met my two best friends at NBAC. You get to know what people are made of when you endure one grueling practice after another. I remember the day after Thanksgiving in 2014, when we had a practice called the Turkey Burner. There are only a few practices I can point to that made me cry. This was one of them. I was the last person out of the pool when it was over. I walked over to my legs, and Michael Phelps took one look at me, knelt down to my level, opened his arms, and gave me a big hug. It was nice to be surrounded by people who knew exactly what you were going through. NBAC was the most tight-knit swim team I have ever been part of. Even on our day off, after seeing one another nonstop all week for fourteen-plus workouts, we chose to spend even more time together as friends.
It’s funny how those moments of struggle turned out to be some of the best memories—those times when I could have given up but kept going and pushing myself. I trained so hard that I barely had time to think about anything beyond surviving each practice. The hardest decision each day was whether I should gather up the strength to eat something or immediately drop into bed for a nap. When I look back on those intense workouts, I see that I didn’t know if I would make it through. But I kept going back, and I felt I was where I needed to be.
The prettiest place in the world.