The task of waking up early can be difficult for anyone not familiar with dark skies at the crack of dawn. For many elite level athletes, most are expected to already be up and training to prepare their bodies for an event like the Olympic Games. Achieving those kinds of results can be hard enough for any full-time athlete, but for Tayah O’Dell, who manages an honours degree in psychology and a full-time job at the same time, it’s just an even bigger challenge.

Balancing a 40 hour work week, studying a post-graduate degree at university, and training in an elite level environment, the exhaustion would become so overpowering you’d have to give one up. Right? Here’s a typical day for O’Dell.

4am: Wake up, pack bags for the day and head to the pool

4:30am: Dryland activation in the gym to warm up and prep the body to prevent injury

5am-7am: Swim

7am-8am: Gym

9am: Arrive at work

3pm: Finish at work and drive to afternoon training

4pm: Dryland training again

4:30pm-6:30pm: Swim again

7pm: Get home and have dinner, prep meals for the next day, and get a small bit of study in

9pm: Lights out

Two days comprise of substituting work for uni on campus. Sunday is fully dedicated to her studies.

Her Olympic aspirations are a hindrance on her social life, so O’Dell cherishes every moment of “relaxation” but feels privileged to be so close with her teammates.

“My teammates are my family, I spend more time with them at the end of the day than I do with my own family,” she tells upstart. “We do everything together.”

O’Dell competes in 100 metre and 200 metre breaststroke and is ranked 11th and 12th in Australia, her highest ranking after 10 years in the sport. The current Olympic qualifying time for 100 metre breaststroke for females is 1:06.31 and 2:23.91 for 200 metres. O’Dell’s personal best times are 1:11.25 and 2:33.73.

While she doesn’t have the same amount of time to keep her body in competition shape as full-time athletes do, the aim of earning selection into the Olympics squad is what keeps her going. Managing her study load is another challenge.

“If I was to hypothetically make it into the Olympics this year, I’m not quite sure how it would work really, because I would be in the middle of my research process,” she says.

O’Dell has hit a point in her life where she needs to decide on whether to pursue her studies, or go all into her swimming career in the hopes of making it to the Olympics.

“I’m at a bit of a crucial point, which I think is difficult for a lot of athletes where you have to start weighing up your sport and your career,” she says.

I’m at that point now that if that was a prospect for this year more seriously, then I would definitely have to make a decision pretty quickly.”

After training them for Olympic in over 20 years as the Head of Strength & Conditioning at the AIS, Julian Jones has seen his fair share of athletes. He has seen success across several sports, such as swimming, as it takes full-time commitment to achieve peak performance.

“If you’re not spending 30 to 35 hours a week going through the technical acuity you’re just not going to match it with the top performance,” Jones tells upstart. “So it is pretty much full-time.”

According to Jones, most athletes will take their break of the four year cycle immediately after the Games for one to three months depending on their level and sport. With her honours degree, swimming commitments, and job related to her psychology studies. that’s not an option for O’Dell.

In fact, her workload is only expected to increase from undergrad into honours in Psychology. But at least she’s familiar with pushing for a coveted spot that’s difficult to obtain.

“It’s even more difficult to get into your masters when there are only a few universities who are offering courses and there’s about 20 spaces in each,” she says.

“It seems silly given it’s such a high demand industry, but there’s a lot of pressure to do very well this year. I have to just make that as soon as I’m into masters, I just have to pass masters and get through it.”

Even though O’Dell is a part time athlete, she trains on a full-time schedule for up to six hours per day. The relationship between her and her coaches is what she says keeps her body fit and ready to compete and constantly push herself.

The former national level strength and conditioning coach Julian Jones says the pure determination keeps the athletes ticking into wanting their name on the squad list.

“It’s more around how much they can push, and how you know where is that envelope that is the balance between staying healthy and then going over the top and that’s a bit you’ve got to monitor and get right with your athlete,” he said.

Even though her lifestyle can be stressful at times, O’Dell wouldn’t change it for the world.

“I’ve always found it easier when I’ve got everything on my plate.”

In fact, she says that when the rest of life is chewing up her time and she  only has a certain amount of time for her study, it forces her to do it in that time.

“Swimming is also a little bit of a break for me as well mentally, when I’m at work or when I’m studying, there’s a lot of mental load, but as soon as I step in the pool, it has nothing to do with work or uni. It’s just moving.”