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| Megan Jendrick, then Megan Quann, takes a practice run at the 2004 Olympic trials in Long Beach, Calif. Photo courtesy of Megan Jendrick |
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| Megan Jendrick contemplates an Olympic victory. Photo courtesy of Megan Jendrick |
In 1996, swimmer Megan Jendrick, then Megan Quann, informed her parents that she was going to be on the next Olympic swim team. She was 12 years old.
To their credit, Tom and Erin Quann recovered quickly, and after exchanging bemused glances there may have even been some laughter responded in an appropriately parental fashion. Competing in the Olympics was a good goal, they told Megan. But to achieve it, she would have to work hard very hard, they thought. For they knew that although their daughter loved swimming, she was by no means a standout athlete in her local club.
At the end of the summer, however, Megan had won her first blue ribbons in the 50-meter breaststroke and 50-meter freestyle. Something inside clicked and she immediately decided, "Yeah, I want to win a lot more of those!"
Four years later, she would hang two Olympic gold medals next to those blue ribbons. Four years after that, a silver. And if all goes as planned in the next couple of years, Megan would like to add to her collection during the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
So how exactly does an average swimmer go about achieving Olympic gold?
If you're Megan Jendrick, you set goals lots of them. At the age of 12, she wrote down a list of 100 goals for herself, and reviewed them every day. "I came up with a four-year plan for making the next Olympic team," Megan recalls, "and I followed that plan exactly to a tee." Year One: Compete in the Junior National Time Standards. Check. Year Two: Make the Junior National Time Standards. Check. Year Three: Win the Senior National Time Standards. Check. Year Four: Win at Olympic trials. Check.
At the ripe old age of 16, Megan found herself in Sydney, Australia, a member of the U.S. Olympic Swimming Team. A selfdescribed "come-from-behind" swimmer, Megan says that prior to Sydney, her usual racing strategy was to "be in fi rst at the halfway mark, then hang on for dear life in the second half!" However, the 100-meter breaststroke event in Australia would change the way Megan raced.
"In that race, I was in fourth place at the half, not first," she recalls. "I kept thinking, 'I need to go faster, faster!' and I was so focused on that. I actually remember every single stroke I took in that race. I pulled from fourth to fi rst and won by a body length." After winning gold in an individual event, Megan also helped her team win gold in the 400-meter women's medley relay.
Back home in Puyallup, Wash., Megan, by then a high school junior, adjusted to post-Olympics life. There were the hundreds of requests to travel and make appearances around the country. She made the cover of Sports Illustrated and was recognized everywhere. Despite missing almost 90 days of school her junior year of high school, Megan graduated with honors and went on to earn a degree from Pacifi c Lutheran University. Then more changes ensued: She bought a house and was living on her own. Her coach suddenly and without warning took a job on the East Coast.
"I was sort of coasting and didn't really know what I wanted. I realized I had forgotten what had made me successful before," Megan says. So out came the notepad and soon she had compiled a whole new list of goals. At King Aquatic Club in Seattle, she began training again in earnest, with a new coach and an old goal: Make the Olympic team this time in 2004.
But it was not to be. At the Olympic trials, Megan missed qualifying for the Olympic team by 11-hundredths of a second outtouched by Tara Kirk by a distance of just two inches. It was a stunning and heartbreaking wakeup call, and Megan, the "comefrom- behind" swimmer who somehow always came through in the clutch, found herself watching the 2004 Olympic Games from her living room.
Dispirited, she decided to retire from swimming at the age of 20, but stayed active by coaching young children just learning to swim. Seeing how much fun the four- and five-year-olds were having in the water made Megan realize how much she missed swimming, and how far she had come herself in her own journey. By this time, married to writer Nathan Jendrick, whom Megan describes as "my biggest supporter and motivator," she came out of retirement in 2005, drew up her list of goals once more and started training with a vengeance.
Two years later, Megan secured a berth on the U.S. team in Beijing. As fate would have it, she qualifi ed for the team by outtouching her old rival Tara Kirk by an even narrower margin: one-one- hundredth of a second less time than it takes to blink an eye. This was a victory Megan did not take lightly. There would be no personal medals this time around, but in Beijing in 2008, she helped her team bring home silver in the 400-meter medley relay.
Today, Megan Jendrick is coaching teenagers and running swim camps around the country. Oh, and there's that little business about training full-time for the 2012 Olympics.
Megan's coach, Tommy Hannan, calls Megan "a master of preparation" and credits her goal-setting abilities as a major factor in her winning nature. "Megan is focused, intense and very organized," says Hannan, himself a gold medalist from the 2000 games in Sydney. "She sets her own goals. I'll ask her to do things in practice that I think, as her coach, are part of the practice plan, and she'll say, 'Um, yeah that's not part of my plan right now.'"It's that independent streak that sets Megan apart from other swimmers and hones her competitive edge.
If she makes the 2012 Olympic team, Megan will be 28 when she travels to London. According to her coach, Megan is still in her prime and takes very good care of herself. But more than that, says Hannan, "She's a gamer. She wants the race all the time, every day. As Megan gets closer to a big meet, everything she does gets tighter. There is no wasted motion, just absolute precision."
At a Master's Swimming Circuit meet outside of Seattle this past July, Megan competed in four races in 90 minutes. Of the four races, and with barely enough time between races to catch her breath, she broke world records in three events: the 50-meter, 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke. Not a bad way to kill an hour and a half. Now she just has to kill two years until Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb.
In between her personal training schedule (which includes swimming some 8,000 meters a day), Megan indulges her passion for working with children and running swim clinics. "Doing the swim camps and getting to know each swimmer I feel like I'm giving back to the sport that I fell in love with at 12 years old," she says. To help her students reach their potential, Megan encourages them to set goals to literally write them down and then go back and re-evaluate them often.
Megan and her husband started a company, AcquaBody.com, which produces sustainable, organic fi tness and life products such as lip balms, body lotion and a stainless steel water bottle. In addition to promoting her own products, Megan, like most professional athletes, is an accomplished promoter of swimming-related brands and products. Her current sponsors are TYR, a manufacturer of swimming caps, goggles and apparel, and Mutual of Omaha, which sponsors the week-long swim clinic Megan teaches. She also endorses two products from Health Enterprises that she has been using herself for years. One product, AfterSwim™, absorbs water from the ear post-swim. "It was really a perfect fi t for me," Megan says. "I used to get ear infections all the time when I was young. Being in the pool, your ears get clogged a lot, which causes ear infections. And for me, using cotton swabs just aggravated the problem and I'd need drops. AfterSwim is like a little sponge that absorbs all the water in your ear in about 10 seconds. I just keep some in my gym bag and pop them in after every workout."
Megan also endorses Swim-Fit Plugs™, which keep water out of the ears. "I wear these more when I'm not feeling well or when I'm feeling run-down," she says. "They're great for preventing ear problems."
It is very apparent that Megan Jendrick is a positive, motivated individual someone who is as enthusiastic about ear health for swimmers as she is about upcoming meets.
"Megan's a little different than most swimmers," says coach Tommy Hannan. "She's a little older, a little more mature. Swimming is what she does for a living, and it's easy to get caught up in the monotony of a sport that can get very boring. Megan's always finding something new in it. That's part of the reason she's had the success she's had."
Water-logged?
Swimmer's ear is a painful condition of infl ammation, irritation, or infection of the outer ear. Commonly affecting children and teen swimmers, it's caused by bacteria growing and spreading in water trapped in the ear. It can also be caused by water from showering, bathing, hot tubs and high humidity, as well as polluted water, excessive cleaning with cotton swabs, certain chemicals (hair spray or hair dye), a cut in the ear canal or other abnormal skin conditions in the ear canal. Any of these factors can enable bacteria that is normally present in the ear to run amok.
The most common symptoms of swimmer's ear, according to ENTnet.org, are "an itchy ear and mild to moderate pain that gets worse when you tug on the outer ear. Other signs and symptoms may include any of the following:
sensation that the ear is blocked or full
drainage
fever
decreased hearing
intense pain that may radiate to the neck, face or side of the head
the auricle (ear lobe) may appear to be pushed
forward or away from the skull
swollen lymph nodes (located in your neck)
redness and swelling of the skin around the ear.
The pain drives a person to get help, but if left untreated, complications could include hearing loss, recurring ear infection and even damage to the bone or cartilage. Treat early symptoms in an otherwise healthy ear by using eardrops of a mixture of half alcohol and half vinegar. However, ENTnet.org cautions, "before using any drops in the ear, it is important to verify that you do not have a perforated eardrum. Check with your otolaryngologist if you have ever had a perforated, punctured or injured eardrum, or if you have had ear surgery." More severe infections may require topical or oral antibiotics, or both, and appropriate follow-up.
Dry ears are healthy ears, so prevent swimmer's ear by using ear plugs while swimming and drying ears thoroughly after swimming. A quick way to dry ears is with a hair dryer set on low. If the ear is wet it will feel cold initially, but once the water evaporates, it starts to feel hot, meaning the job is done. Additionally, it is important to avoid cotton swabs and visit an ENT to treat extensive earwax build-up or itchy/fl aky ear canals.
