Sept. 5, 2024
World Record Setter and Surgeon Ellen Reynolds Raises the Bar, EP 255
What if you could shatter world records while excelling as a top pediatric surgeon? Join us for a compelling conversation with Ellen Reynolds, a master swimmer extraordinaire and recently retired pediatric surgeon, who has done just that. Ellen who hails from Boise, Idaho, opens up about her journey from learning to swim at age three to setting 20 national and/or world records this year alone. We explore her groundbreaking medical career, including her innovative work with pectus excavatum patients, and discuss how she managed to balance her intense professional life with her passion for swimming. And how these two have pursuits have been synergistic.
In this episode, we delve into Ellen's meticulous training regime that evolved after 20 years of consistency in the pool. Discover how she initially focused on fitness routines involving walking, elliptical workouts, and strength training before ramping up her swimming workouts. Ellen shares the strategic importance of balancing hard and easy sessions, and why the myth of endless long-distance training is just that—a myth. Her experience illustrates how adapting workouts to fit an unpredictable career can lead to outstanding athletic achievements.
As we wrap up, Ellen offers invaluable insights into the community aspect of master swimming and the impact of hormone replacement therapy on women's health. We discuss her plans post-retirement, her personal motto, and some fun facts that give a glimpse into the champion's life outside the pool. Listen in for an episode filled with inspiration, practical advice, and the powerful message that it’s never too late to pursue your passions and achieve greatness.
The Menopause Society mentioned in the interview can be found at https://menopause.org/
Ellen's current swimming achievements:
- Meet results for Ellen M Reynolds (389 swims)
- Top Ten achievements (255 individual, 3 relay)
- All-American Honors (14 years pool individual, 6 years long distance individual, 1 years long distance relay)
- All-Star Honors (1 years long distance, 9 years pool)
- USMS Records
(pool individual: 53 currently held, 72 lifetime ,
pool relay: 1 currently held, 1 lifetime,
long distance individual: 4 currently held, 5 lifetime records)
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
Chapters
00:01 - Ellen Reynolds
04:15 - Consistent Training and Adaptive Workouts
09:37 - Swimming Training, Nutrition, and Goals
17:37 - Retirement, Hormone Therapy, and Women's Health
30:42 - Champion's Personal Motto and Fun Facts
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo hosted by two world record-holding athletes.
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Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your hosts, kelly Pallas and Maria Parker.
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Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast and, as usual, I am co-hosting with Maria Parker.
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Hey Maria, hey Kelly, it's great to being with Maria Parker.
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Hey Maria hey.
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Kelly, it's great to be here with you.
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I've missed you.
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Yes, you know what I said, as usual.
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But we've had kind of a break this past summer, and so we're cranking back up for the fall, like everybody going back to school or back to the fall, and so we are so excited for our guest today.
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We're kicking off this fall season with Ellen Reynolds, who is arguably one of the all-time best master swimmers in the world in the last several decades.
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But just alone, we can't go back 30 years and say everything that Ellen's done, or else we'd be here all day.
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But just in 2024, just this year alone, ellen has set 20 national and or world records and she is coming off freshly.
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Last week, the US Masters Long Course National Swimming Championships in Mission Viejo, california, where she went five for five golds and four for five world records.
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So we're super excited to talk with her.
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But not only is Ellen amazing in the pool, she's just coming off a career that is truly amazing on itself.
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Maria, can you tell us a little bit about that?
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Sure?
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Ellen's an accomplished pediatric surgeon for 25 years In fact.
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I think September 1st is going to be her last day.
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She's retiring very soon and she's consulted for the American Board of Surgery.
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She served as the governor of the American Pediatric Surgical Association and the surgeon director of the National Board of Certification and Recertification for Nurse Anesthetist.
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In 2023, she published an article in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery titled Pediatric Surgery from the Roads Less Traveled Challenges Communication and Collaboration from a Community Non-Teaching Hospital.
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She's also invented a device, an elevation hook, that's placed underneath the sternum and raises it before placing in stabilizing bars for patients who have what's called sunken chest or pectus excavatum.
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That's really cool.
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She's obviously had an amazing career outside the pool, so let's meet her.
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Welcome Ellen.
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Welcome to Champions Mojo.
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Welcome Ellen, thank you.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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Before we move off of pectus excavatum, we have to say that is the condition Cody Miller has.
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Correct, correct.
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Yeah, that's just so cool that we've had Cody on the show and that you have been out there helping people with that condition.
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So, ellen, I am familiar with you very much because we're in the same age group, but for our listeners that are not, it looks like you started master swimming in your 40s, which could be considered a little late for how successful you've become.
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So tell us your swimming history and you can take it all the way back to swim lessons if you want.
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Well, that's the fun part.
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So I grew up in California and my parents put me in some lessons at age three and, true to my stubborn nature, I refused to get in the water.
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And then when I finally did, I apparently just started swimming freestyle and I won my first ribbon when I was four and I swam summer league and all the way through high school.
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I played water polo in high school too, and then when I went to college I couldn't quite figure out how to swim and be sociable and study, so I didn't swim collegiate.
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I didn't really swim much past that, other than if there was a pool or some time to just go swimming for fun I would.
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So by the time I got to be 40, after spending my 20s and 30s focusing on my career and my family, I was not in very good shape and I really think it has taken me these 10 to 20 years to good shape and I really think it has taken me these 10 to 20 years to get to where I am now.
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So that's kind of in a brief nutshell, but it has just taken consistency over the last 20 years of work to get the strength that I have now.
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You know we love to hear about the specifics of training, like before we started recording.
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I told you this morning, you know, I did a set of eight 50s on four minutes, which is, you know, it's not a typical workout somebody might do, but it definitely creates the speed which you need for endurance.
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So when you started back during the 20 years off that you had, did you walk, did you run?
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Were you keeping in decent cardiovascular shape?
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And then, when you got back to the pool, what has been the evolution of your workouts over, you know, the 20 years of your training?
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I'm always active, I like to exercise, I feel like my body needs it, it's a way to get rid of stress from work.
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So that was mostly just walking or even elliptical at the gym, sometimes some bicycling.
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I would never run Okay, running was never included.
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So I really still wasn't in great shape.
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Around 40s.
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I probably started out with about 3,000, 4,000 yards, just getting my strokes back, getting my strength back.
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I did have a personal trainer for a while just to regain some muscle strength, have a personal trainer for a while just to regain some muscle strength.
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And then I'm sure a lot of people know my mom was my coach for till about five years ago and we would just read a lot about what kind of sets people did and ways to regain strength.
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And I worked with my nutrition.
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My sleep has never been great because I'm on call quite a bit, so that was the tough part to recover.
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But some of our favorite sets.
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Then my focus was more on backstroke.
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So we would do things like four 400 IMs where the first one is split after the 50 fly and then in the middle of the back and the breast and the free, and then we would take away each one of those until you did a full 400 IM or we would do five sets of five, 50s of backstroke, keeping each 50 the same with whatever you started out with, and then these last.
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There was kind of a big change about five years ago.
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Of course, at the pandemic time when I turned 55, I was really lucky.
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I got to be 55 for about six months before everything shut down and then I didn't race and we didn't have much access to a pool for a year or so and my father has been very sick for a long time and he passed away and my mother's almost 90 now and doesn't coach me.
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So these last two years I've had a good friend, kristen Hill, who's the former coach at BSU, riding knee workouts, and so it's changed.
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My workouts it's been more based on my legs, on my kick, and we do something fast every workout, whether it's a fast set or a pace work or a very short fast 50.
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And so that's been fun.
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I think that's really added in the last couple of years to where I am now.
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I hadn't had that before.
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Yes, personally, as a coach myself for many years, I feel like most master swimmers just don't do enough speed work that they kind of just get in there and grind.
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And you know, the lore of Ellen Reynolds is just, it's always been oh, ellen swims six days a week, 5,000.
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And when I heard that I'm like, yeah, that's just not cutting it for me, that's, you know, that's actually kind of antithetical.
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I mean, I know that you can do it, but to hear that you're really focusing on speed, focusing on pace, focusing on IMs, focusing on backstroke, it makes a difference.
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Because if maybe I'm just being a distance swimmer, I kind of just imagined you face down grinding out 5,000 with no, you know no pace or no particular goal in mind, which you know that would never translate to the things that you're doing so fantastically on all that stuff.
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What as far as strength training?
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Because you seem you know very strong?
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Are you doing any dry land?
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Or you know weights, or what would you describe there?
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Yeah, I'll describe that.
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I just want to go back to, yeah, this myth of you know 5,000.
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Yes, yeah, first six days, because I've thought about that and really I swim pretty much every day and I think in the past 20 years up until these last two years where I have cut back to part time, the reason I swim every day is because my work schedule is so unpredictable, and so the days I knew I could get a hard workout in, I would get a hard workout in and sometimes even then I would be interrupted.
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But the days either I was on call or I was going to do a big surgery that day, I would just swim easy.
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I might still swim four or 5,000, but it wasn't very hard and so it was so unpredictable.
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I just took the day I could, even if I didn't feel well that day, to swim as hard as I could to get the workouts in.
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Fortunately, the last year and a half it's much more consistent, so I can plan like I can work hard these three days.
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And then you know, every Thursday is my operating day, so I'm going to just do an easy swim in the morning to stretch my back and stretch my neck, so I feel good standing all day.
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So I do really swim every day, but it's not, you know, grinding out 5,000.
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It's whatever my body could do that day and, and you know, whatever I needed for my surgery or my work, my work life.
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You know, there's only so much energy in the pie and sometimes the swimming got it and a lot of times work got it.
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Thanks for that clarification.
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Yeah, but with the dry land.
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You know, interestingly enough I don't lift heavy weights, I just don't have that kind of muscle strength.
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And I do do a trainer about average once a week, sometimes twice a week, sometimes once every two weeks, but it takes me about two days to recover after I do sort of a hard 45 minute to hour.
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I would say you know a lot of core work For me, extra leg work, a little bit of like jumping, which I can barely get my toes off the ground because I'm not a sprinter.
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But it's hard for me to do more than that.
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I'd rather swim and I feel like I do better swimming, more than I do the dryland stuff.
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But it definitely helps me.
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It's just it's hard.
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I'm just not a heavy weightlifter.
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And when you say you do a trainer bout, what does that mean?
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Oh, so there is a fitness place here where there's a couple of good people that seem to understand swimming mechanics, and so I have a trainer there who works with me.
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Okay, and nutrition wise, what do you focus on there?
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Okay.
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Well, I try to stay hydrated.
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I must admit I really like French fries and ice cream.
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I do try to get two or three servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
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I've definitely tried to get enough protein.
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That has really helped this last year.
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Working on the protein, sure you don't get dinner or you're working all day, so I just do the best I can.
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I'm really not the best.
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I'm sure that could improve.
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There's always so many things that could improve and nutrition is definitely one of them.
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I do think for me, like a two hour workout, I drink a mixture of Gatorade and a whey protein powder and that really helps.
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Like I can't just go through a two-hour workout without having any calories.
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Yeah, You're retiring this September.
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Right, I am Okay.
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So up to this point you've had a limited schedule, like you just said, and you swim when you can.
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Is there certain days that you do focus on speed, like on Tuesdays or Fridays or something?
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I would say probably once a week, yeah, towards the end of the week, on Fridays.
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It's more of a quote speed day.
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Okay, cool.
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And then mental training.
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Do you do visualization?
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Do you do goal setting?
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I mean, how do you, when you set out to, or do you set out like what?
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What are your goals when you go into a new age group?
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I know a lot of us master swimmers like, yay, we can't wait to age up.
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And then you know, we set goals.
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What are your goals for the 60 to 64?
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How do you set them and how do you put those mentally in place, in place?
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Yeah, I am a very goal-oriented person.
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I think that's just me.
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And yes, I'm very satisfied.
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I mean I've had an amazing year, far better than I expected.
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My main goal this year was to go to the World Championships and be five for five golds and world records, which I didn't do, and I think there's no such thing as perfection, but in my mind that was just so satisfying I could have stopped there.
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I've tried to really work on being just very positive and in the moment I do think a lot of my mental strength comes from my work as being a pediatric surgeon.
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I think there's a lot of just determination and consistency and very detail-oriented from my work.
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That I apply to my swimming.
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No parent wants me to come out from an operation and say, oh I got tired, I can't do it, I'm done, sort of thing.
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And so I just apply that to swimming.
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That I always try to work as hard as I possibly can.
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Sure, there's days I can't when I'm just really tired, and I've learned to give myself a break on those days, because you can't do that at work.
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And as I look back on my career, you know, naturally, of course I probably only had a little bit of that.
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But I think after 25 years of constantly doing that every day at work, it really sticks in your brain and that's what I bring to the pool.
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They've just been so complimentary my surgery and my swimming.
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You know, my swimming gives me a physical strength to stand and be strong while I'm working, and then my working is just giving me a lot of mental strength.
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So I'm very grateful to have both.
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Yes, absolutely.
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Is there something in master swimming that you have not accomplished, that you would like to accomplish?
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No, we got to have our first relay world record this last weekend and that was wonderful to be part of that group.
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No, if I had to stop swimming tomorrow, other than not swimming, I think I would be good.
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And you know, the pandemic taught me that too, because we couldn't race for a while.
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And at first, when I back to the pool, I thought, well, should I swim if I can't race, if I can't see what I can do?
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And then after a few months, I was just grateful to actually swim and be in the water.
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That I realized, even if I couldn't race, just swimming is just lovely.
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Oh, of course, of course.
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So, in looking at your records, you literally hold the world record in the 50 back, which obviously is the shortest sprint that we can do in Masters, and I don't know if you've set it yet, but I know you've set the national record in the 1500, which is the longest race we can do in Masters swimming.
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Is there any event that you do not swim?
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Well, because you swim, you get all the freestyle records, the backstroke records, the breaststroke records, the IM records.
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I know you swim the 100 fly and I guess the roundabout is do you not swim the 200 fly or are you going to do that?
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I don't think I'll do the 200 fly.
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I'm maybe short course, but fly has kind of been my last thing to really work on.
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Last year I really worked on that breaststroke to improve that.
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I highly doubt I would ever set a record in the 50 breaststroke book, because I think that's where true technique comes in.
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That I don't have.
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I pretend to be a breaststroker for the longer distance.
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I think the only reason for the 200 breaststroke is I can hold the same split every 50, but I can't go any faster.
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So yes, probably not ever that 200 fly.
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Yeah, I'm right there with you.
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I've never swum one in my life, so the first 100 of the 400 I am is scary enough for me.
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So in speaking of this new world record on a relay I noticed you moved from you used to be with was it Snake River?
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Snake River, lmsc, but Sawtooth.
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Masters here in Boise.
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Okay, and what prompted the move to the Southern Pacific, lmsc and Redbird?
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Well, so for us here in Boise for Sawtooth Masters, it's been on and off over the years in terms of having a team or having a workout to go, and even being part of a team, I usually train by myself, usually with a training partner, John Rubaki.
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He's awesome.
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He just shows up whenever I want and will work as hard as he possibly can.
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So last year, when I started racing again, jelena Kinovac and Arlette God just reached out to me and said hey, would you like to be part of our team?
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And that was just the really best thing to be invited to be part of a team of several women almost 60 or in their 60s.
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And then, of course, they invited my fiance, who's the only male non-swimmer, but he's doing a great job.
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We don't train together.
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They're all sprinters and do a lot of dry land training, so I don't think we could actually probably swim together in terms of workouts, but for a swim meet and the mental and social support we give each other, I'm very grateful to be a part of that.
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Yes, I mean, it happens everywhere, all over the country.
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We're on a team in Florida and we have people from all over the nation that you know.
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I see them alone at a meet and they're swimming by themselves.
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I'm like, hey, you want to join our team, and they do, you know.
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So I think it is nice.
00:17:37.604 --> 00:17:47.738
It's one of the beauties of master swimming that you can, you know, swim with other people, that you just kind of have something in common with, or click, or something that adds to your master's experience.
00:17:47.738 --> 00:17:54.750
Because that's what we always say masters is about the community, and if you're swimming alone, then find a group to swim with.
00:17:54.750 --> 00:17:55.490
That's what I say.
00:17:55.490 --> 00:18:04.126
So if, um, you are now retiring, I'm terrified, ellen, of what.
00:18:04.126 --> 00:18:13.653
What the future swimming Ellen looks like if you've been doing this level of swimming with a incredibly demanding job.
00:18:13.653 --> 00:18:21.616
What is the future of Ellen Reynolds and your training program and your goals look like after you retire?
00:18:21.616 --> 00:18:23.481
What is your retired life going to look like?
00:18:24.049 --> 00:18:28.794
I thought you were going to say you're more terrified of what I'm going to do in retirement in general, because that's where I'm at.
00:18:28.814 --> 00:18:32.883
Well, then go there, go wherever you want, but I know I know a lot of people.
00:18:32.883 --> 00:18:47.638
When we, when we retire or slow down, then you kind of focus on swimming and you'll see that you'll see some woman who's 63, who you've never seen, and she pops up in our age group and then she's like doing incredible and you're like where have you been for the last 20 years?
00:18:47.638 --> 00:18:53.131
So you know, you've been in the sport, you know, so share with us just whatever, wherever your terrified mind goes.
00:18:53.131 --> 00:18:54.013
I'm just terrified.
00:18:54.013 --> 00:18:55.760
To end, you know those records.
00:18:55.760 --> 00:18:58.750
You did break my 1500 meter short course record.
00:18:58.750 --> 00:19:00.334
So more power to you.
00:19:00.334 --> 00:19:07.714
I'm inspired by people who are just doing amazing things and it's okay, if you know people break their records.
00:19:07.714 --> 00:19:09.157
But I'm teasing, yeah.
00:19:09.818 --> 00:19:10.800
Well, it's a good question.
00:19:10.800 --> 00:19:12.103
I don't know so much about the swimming.
00:19:12.103 --> 00:19:13.432
I do have a few more things.
00:19:13.432 --> 00:19:21.505
I like to swim short course meters, short course yards because my birthday's in the summer, so I don't really get the yards in there until you age up.
00:19:21.505 --> 00:19:36.505
I was just really fortunate that worlds were in February, even though I was technically quote 59, but for that even though I was technically quote 59, but for that I was in the 60 to 64 age group I'm just really excited about life, to live life outside of the hospital.
00:19:36.545 --> 00:19:37.385
I have a fiance.
00:19:37.385 --> 00:19:46.037
I want to go see my kids Like I said, my mom's going to be 90 in a couple of weeks, so to spend time with her.
00:19:46.037 --> 00:19:48.682
To travel, so I'll keep swimming, I think it will come and go.
00:19:48.682 --> 00:19:52.894
Travel, so I'll keep swimming, I think it will come and go.
00:19:52.894 --> 00:19:54.660
The intense focus I just don't think I want to do that all the time.
00:19:54.660 --> 00:20:01.698
You get tired of being two hours in the pool every day and resting and trying to do dry land, so I don't really know.
00:20:01.698 --> 00:20:10.280
I have worked so much that I don't think I've really been able to sit and think about what else will interest me after work.
00:20:10.280 --> 00:20:12.030
I get kind of in the routine.
00:20:12.030 --> 00:20:18.873
Now, in the sense, I think it's almost easier when you have this very set schedule, like I've had over the years.
00:20:18.873 --> 00:20:25.614
So I'm just going to have to take a deep breath and keep an open mind and I will always swim in.
00:20:25.614 --> 00:20:30.143
Whether I compete always a crazy level just remains to be seen.
00:20:30.143 --> 00:20:33.221
Just, you know, life can change and we'll just wait and see.
00:20:33.830 --> 00:20:35.894
Yeah, absolutely so.
00:20:35.894 --> 00:20:53.241
Maria and I have had several requests from women that are, you know, in the 50 plus masters category, because we've interviewed elite cyclists and elite runners, elite triathletes, and you would be the ideal person with your medical background.
00:20:53.241 --> 00:21:07.529
So we women that are going either into menopause, through menopause, we have the option, as women, to take hormone replacement therapy, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.
00:21:07.529 --> 00:21:20.920
I started taking bioidentical hormone replacement therapy at 54 and I took it actually 53, because that's about when I went through menopause and I took it.
00:21:20.920 --> 00:21:23.239
It was progesterone, estrogen, testosterone.
00:21:23.239 --> 00:21:37.980
I took it for two straight years and I really felt like I slept better, I felt like I wasn't gaining, I didn't have the little menopause belly, I was swimming really strong, I felt great.
00:21:38.442 --> 00:21:41.663
And then I got breast cancer seven years ago.
00:21:41.663 --> 00:21:45.527
So I did it for two years and then, of course, when found out that I had breast cancer, I went.
00:21:45.527 --> 00:21:47.568
I went off of it and I haven't been taking it.
00:21:47.568 --> 00:21:57.503
But I know I talked to tons of women in sports that are like do you think that this enhances us?
00:21:57.503 --> 00:22:09.675
And then I've heard, you know, rumors of all kinds of different performers that are ahead of us, maybe five or 10 years ahead of us, I'm not going to name any names because it's totally legal and you know this is master swimming.
00:22:09.675 --> 00:22:10.558
It's not a huge deal.
00:22:10.558 --> 00:22:23.577
But, as a doctor, do you feel like that this is an enhancement and is it something that, if we want to get better, that we could consider, or what are your thoughts around this topic?
00:22:23.577 --> 00:22:25.676
Well, I'm so glad you asked.
00:22:26.751 --> 00:22:35.558
I always thought that if I were a celebrity and you know how a celebrity would pick a cause mine would be menopause, because no one talks about it.
00:22:35.558 --> 00:22:41.234
I don't think it still seems like a hush hush just even mentioning you have a period or lack of periods.
00:22:41.234 --> 00:22:46.342
So it is something that I think should be explored.
00:22:46.342 --> 00:22:48.484
I am not an expert on it.
00:22:48.484 --> 00:23:00.631
I don't want to take it as radical advice, especially since I take care of kids, but from reading and looking at the studies that have been done, I don't think it's well studied medically in terms of good.
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