Katie Ledecky: I started keeping a journal in early 2012. Yuri got frustrated that I wasn’t communicating with him as well as he would have liked in terms of how I was feeling in the water, just my day-to-day feeling of how training was going, things like that. I would kind of give him one-word answers sometimes. So, he gave me the journal, wanted me to start journaling my practices and how I was feeling, and I would have to give the notebook back to him at the end of each week, and he would write a page of notes back to me. So, that was a way of improving communication.
And then after that first year, I really enjoyed doing it and felt like it was beneficial to my swimming, to my training, to my improvement. And so, I’ve continued it all these years. I don’t share those journals with my coaches anymore. I only did that the first year. Now, it’s something for myself. It’s something to help me keep track of my progress, help me build confidence going into big meets, and ultimately, it became such a great resource for me for writing the book. I got to look back at all these journals and take bits and pieces from them, from over the years, and bring back some memories and write about them.
Before my big competitions, I look back at my training from the year and I, you know, I kind of try to star or mark which practices were really great and I can look back at those and it helps me build my confidence going into the big races knowing and you know, reminding myself that I’ve put in all this hard work, I’ve made this progress. I’ve done these great things in training, and I’m ready. I’m ready to perform. I’m ready to do what I’ve worked hard to, to be able to do.