Unfiltered Waters

In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Elizabeth Beisel and Todd Anderson, Katie Hoff's husband, fill in a week before she gives birth, sitting down with Olympic medalist Katie Grimes ahead of the Pan Pacific Championships. She's coming off a national title in the 1500 free, but at Pan Pacs she's skipping that race for the 10K open water, an event she hasn't swum in two years and chose to bring back herself. So why give up your best event for one that takes almost two hours and offers no second chance?

Katie explains the swap: a strong stretch of endurance training made this the year to add the 10K back on, even with a tight turnaround into the 400 IM just 36 hours later. Her taper barely changes, since her UVA coaches know she doesn't need much of one. There's no cool down after a 10K, so she refuels, sleeps, and flushes it out with an easy swim that afternoon. Todd asks how that back to back double gets managed, and Katie walks through the turnaround.

Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews don't: designing her own Jolyn swimsuit line and watching friends raid the sample box in her room, the wildlife she's actually spotted swimming open water, turtles and snakes, no sharks thankfully, and an off day hunting for good shopping in Huntington Beach. She admits her pre race mindset for a two hour open water swim is the opposite of an 800: instead of psyching herself up, she's trying to find her Zen before her mind starts wandering.

Underneath the race talk is a real shift in how Katie relates to her own training. She used to answer every question about her workload with I don't care, and walks through learning to actually ask her coach for more, an extra practice, an extra set, once she trusted what her body needed. She frames it as advice for younger swimmers too: that relationship has to stay open, because what works for you changes once you get to college. It's a lesson that lands differently coming from Elizabeth, who's lived that same transition herself.

Whether you're a swimmer trying to figure out how to actually talk to your coach or someone who's never done a lap but is curious what it takes to swim for two hours straight, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: what's one thing you've had to learn to ask your coach for? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (https://linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.

Note: this conversation was recorded ahead of the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships, so Katie's answers reflect where her head was heading into the meet, not how the racing actually went.

FOLLOW KATIE GRIMES ON:
Instagram: @_katie.grimes_

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In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Elizabeth Beisel and Todd Anderson, Katie Hoff's husband, fill in a week before she gives birth, sitting down with Olympic medalist Alex Walsh ahead of the Pan Pacific Championships. She's coming off a nationals 200 IM she's proud of and has added the 400 IM back into her lineup after years away. It has been a strange stretch: a birthday time trial, and months earlier, the roughest meet of her career. So how does a veteran who has quietly weighed walking away talk herself into wanting one more shot?
Alex traces the reset that followed March's China Open, the worst meet of her career, when she panic texted her coach Todd about pulling her races mid meet. Afterward she overhauled her training: more endurance work, a lift program rebuilt into a circuit style boot camp, and hot yoga and Pilates in Charlottesville. She's chasing a best time in the 400 IM at Pan Pacs after testing the distance in that birthday trial. Elizabeth presses her on what shifted, and Alex traces it to one blunt conversation with her coach.
Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews don't: living with her sister Gretchen Walsh, who has appointed herself thermostat police over their house's finicky mini split system, and a family joke about slowly buying up an entire Charlottesville street. The best story is a night on Nashville's Broadway, where a professional Luke Combs impersonator, complete with fake security guards, convinced her she had met the real thing. She pulled the Olympian card for a photo, posted it everywhere, then learned the actual Luke Combs was on tour in Australia that night.
Underneath the training talk is a real accounting of what almost made her stop. Alex admits the last two years have been her hardest stretch of motivation, watching college friends start new jobs and lives while she felt stuck chasing the same times. She credits one blunt conversation with her coach, telling her to commit fully or step back, with turning a quiet crisis into fresh direction toward another Olympic cycle. It's a reckoning that lands harder coming from Elizabeth, who has sat in that exact seat herself.
Whether you're a swimmer wrestling with your own motivation right now or someone who has never touched a pool but loves a good mental comeback story, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: what's the one conversation that talked you back into believing in yourself? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (https://linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.
Note: this conversation was recorded ahead of the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships, so Alex's answers reflect where her head was heading into the meet, not how the racing actually went.
FOLLOW ALEX WALSH ON: Instagram: @alexwalsh7
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In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Elizabeth Beisel and Todd Anderson host in Katie Hoff's place while she stays home to welcome her baby girl, sitting down with four time Olympic gold medalist Bobby Finke ahead of the Pan Pacific Championships. It is a different year for him: no Olympic Trials, and a rare full month home in July. He first swam this meet eight years ago. So what does it feel like to chase the same nerves that have carried him to gold every time, on purpose?

Bobby explains how this taper differs from years past: he backs off harder than training partner Katie Ledecky, who grinds through heavier mileage in the same buildup, and he stops lifting almost entirely three weeks out. His lineup covers the 400 IM, 800 free, and 1500 free, plus one additional event he is unsure he will swim. He names Sam Short as the rival he most wants to race again after a loss at Westmont. Todd presses him on how differently elite swimmers can prepare for the same meet.

Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews do not: a team cook off scandal involving coach Anthony Nesty demanding a meatball remake over a bag of salad dressing, an eight month Lego build of Rivendell from The Lord of the Rings running six to seven thousand pieces, and his poodle Phil making a daycare best friend before a post meet trip to Italy with girlfriend Ellie. His signature closing kick is so feared it has become an actual verb on the team, and he admits it still "takes years off my life" every time.

Underneath the banter runs a quieter thread about what this life costs. Bobby talks plainly about accepting the nerves never go away, treating them as a sign he is ready rather than something to fix, and just as directly about a schedule that keeps him from his girlfriend and home most of every July. His refusal to swim open water, unless it means a relay leg beside Katie Ledecky, says something about how he weighs the individual grind against being part of a team. It is the kind of easy conversation these hosts are built to have with him.

Whether you are a competitive swimmer feeling those pre meet nerves right now or someone who has never touched a pool but loves how elite athletes think, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: what is your version of choosing to feel the nerves instead of trying to make them disappear? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (https://linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.

Note: this conversation was recorded ahead of the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships, so Bobby's answers reflect where his head was heading into the meet, not how the racing actually went.

FOLLOW BOBBY FINKE ON:
Instagram: @robert_finke

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In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Todd Anderson hosts alongside Elizabeth Beisel, filling in for Katie Hoff, a week out from giving birth. They sit down with world record holder Kate Douglass, recorded the week before Pan Pacs 2026 and airing during the meet. Her freestyle has surged this season to the point that it now crowds her breaststroke on the schedule. The episode turns on a question she still has not answered: which two events to swim, and whether she can pull off both in one session.

Kate's freestyle jumped to a new level this season after she started taking creatine this spring, something she had avoided for years over drug testing concerns. She has also gotten stronger in the weight room, clearing a 65 kilo bench max she was not hitting last fall. Training got complicated too: the AFC pool went out for construction all summer, splitting the group between Colorado and Charlottesville, where Kate trained short course in an 87 degree outdoor pool. Todd also digs into the injury prevention work and Pilates she leans on as recovery gets harder at 24.

Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews do not: Kate's imagined UFC walkout song is a One Direction singalong, and her homemade cappuccino order is serious enough that she once paid seventeen dollars for Uber Eats coffee at an LA hotel rather than skip it. The most candid moment is a crash out story from a brutal breaststroke set with training partner Emma Weber, seven straight hundreds after an all out two hundred, where Todd's response was a flat, shut up, you are doing great. She laughs about it now, but it worked.

Underneath the training talk is a broader identity thread: Kate reflects on being part of a UVA class, alongside Gretchen Walsh and Claire Curzan, built around taking the weight room as seriously as the water. At 24 she is starting to feel the edges of a longer career, noting swimmers her age already get called the oldest ones on the team, the way Katie Ledecky does. It is a conversation her own coach is uniquely positioned to have with her, since Todd already knows which answers she is still working out.

Whether you are a swimmer chasing your own lineup decision or a curious outsider who has never done a flip turn, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: if you were in Kate's shoes, would you go for the double at Pan Pacs or lock in on one race? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (https://linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.

Note: this episode was recorded the week before Pan Pacs 2026, so Kate's goals and lineup talk reflect where things stood heading into the meet, not how it played out once she got there.

FOLLOW KATE DOUGLASS ON:
Instagram: @katedouglass

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In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Olympic medalist Elizabeth Beisel steps in as guest host alongside Todd Anderson while Katie Hoff Anderson is a week out from giving birth. Together they sit down with Katie Ledecky, Olympic champion, world record holder, and the most decorated female swimmer in history, in the days before she races the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships. It's the first international meet of her career held on home soil, something she's still a little stunned by fourteen years in. What follows isn't a career retrospective. It's a look at the machinery underneath the most consistent career in the sport, and at why the least dramatic answer is usually hers.

Katie breaks down what a full August to August season looks like without a trials meet in the middle of it, and what she's actually expecting out of Pan Pacs across a four day lineup that opens with the 1500. She talks about the shift almost nobody notices. For the first half of her career she trained as a 400 freestyler who went up to the 800 and down to the 200, and it wasn't until the 1500 was added to the Olympic program that her training moved up with it. She still has the journals to prove it, going back past 2014, and she reads them. She's candid about never having taken a real break, the longest was after Paris and she stayed in the water anyway, and about crediting the age group coaches who protected her technique and her shoulders two decades before anyone knew what they were protecting. Todd digs into the recovery side: sleep scores, crowns, HRV in the low 40s, and why a bad night has never once been a reason to back off.

Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews don't: her mom's deep water aerobics class at the Palisades Porpoises, which she joins before the pool opens, alongside the moms of swimmers she grew up racing. The 2014 Pan Pacs in Australia where it rained every day and the whole team had one parka between them. A Sunday Pilates habit that leaves a puddle of sweat on the reformer she says she can see her reflection in. The lowest maintenance coffee order on the entire national team. And, because rapid fire happens, the UFC walkout song of an athlete whose defining quality is that she never looks rattled.

Katie also gets at the thing that's kept her coming back since 2012, which is not the medals. It's the cap. She describes the first taste of representing the country as addicting, walks through leading off the 4x200 in Barcelona in 2013, and lands on the Rio 4x100 free: a final she wasn't expecting to swim, an anchor leg next to an Australian team that beat them, and the feeling of pushing off the turn in a 1:03 at that level. She says she has never felt anything like it since. Ten years later, it's still the swim she reaches for first. It's a conversation two former national teamers are uniquely positioned to have with her.
Whether you're a distance swimmer trying to understand what twenty years of not stopping actually looks like, or you just want to know how the most decorated swimmer alive spends a Sunday, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: what should Katie Ledecky's actual walkout song be? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (https://linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.

Note: This conversation was recorded in the week before Pan Pacs and is airing during the meet, so Katie's goals and lineup reflect where things stood going in.

FOLLOW KATIE LEDECKY ON: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katieledecky/

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