Sunday, May 14, 2023
New Experiences Shift Ashley Twichell's Swimming Focus
Ashley Twichell can be called many names: Olympian, world champion, 12-time open water national team member – the list goes on.
In May 2022, she added perhaps her favorite name of all to the list: mom.
“Being a first-time mom, you really don’t know what to expect,” Twichell said. “When they placed him on my chest, it was just the most amazing feeling.”
While Twichell and her husband, Derek, were over the moon with excitement to welcome Lochlan William Wall to the world, Twichell’s pregnancy journey was one that featured the Olympic Games, COVID, a shoulder injury, a jellyfish sting that resulted in an ER visit and a rejuvenated passion for competitive swimming.
Lochlan’s story starts back in 2019. Ashley had punched her ticket to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 by finishing sixth in the 10K at the 2019 FINA (now World Aquatics) Open Water World Championships. This was the first domino to fall in Derek and Ashley’s ideal timeline for starting a family after the Tokyo Olympics.
Obviously, COVID then threw a wrench into things and delayed the Olympics by a year. Twichell, who was 30 years old at the time of punching her ticket to Tokyo, would now have to wait until she was 32 to swim at the Olympics and 33 to start trying to have a family.
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On top of the stress factors that come with the delayed competition and family timelines, a recurring shoulder injury (that she battled for years) reentered the picture leading into the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Swimming in June 2021.
“I had a lot of anxiety that year,” Twichell said. “I would get to practice and not know whether I’d be able to do the main set because of my shoulder. I love training and the grueling side of aerobic training but I felt like I was inhibited from doing that because the issue with my shoulder was so hard for me to mentally get over.”
The discomfort of the injury and uncertainty of COVID got to a point where Ashley texted her husband shortly before Trials and said she couldn’t wait to be done with swimming.
Ultimately, the shoulder injury healed in time for Ashley to swim at Olympic Trials, U.S. Olympic training camp in Hawaii and, eventually, the Olympic Games. At age 32, she was the oldest member of the U.S. Olympic Swimming Team.
“It was different (than I expected),” Twichell said of the environment at the Olympics. “With no friends and family there, it caused us (Twichell and her open water teammates Haley Anderson and Jordan Wilimovsky) to be a lot closer.”
On August 4, 2021, it was time for Twichell’s Olympic debut. She was about to become just the third American woman to ever compete in open water swimming at the Olympics.
“One of my most vivid memories was, the morning of the race, walking to the ready room with Haley,” Twichell said. “It was weird because there weren’t any spectators but it was cool to have her by my side and know we were in it together. We’ve raced together and trained together for over 10 years, so it was really cool to share what I thought would be the last race of my career with her.”
Twichell took the race out fast – climbing into the lead pack and even jumping into first throughout points of the first two (of five) laps. She continued to fight in the lead and middle groups throughout the two-hour race and would eventually finish in seventh place among the 25-person field.
The plan was to be done with competitive swimming – she even said so after the race; it was time to start a family and hang up the cap and goggles. Those two dominoes went partially according to plan, as Derek and Ashley publicly announced their pregnancy in November 2021, however Ashley’s plan to be done with swimming quickly reversed.
“My first trimester I didn’t feel great, and I found out that swimming was one of the only things that made me feel better,” Twichell said. “I wasn’t going as much as I typically would – I was just doing about 45 minutes to an hour with a Masters team with my husband in the middle of the day. Just being in the water was so nice.
“Then I just kind of continued doing it. I swam throughout my entire pregnancy, and I swam on the day I was induced at 41 weeks pregnant.”
While swimming provided Twichell with a healthy habit for both herself and her baby, it did create a scary situation in Miami during the weekend of the 2021 Golden Goggle Awards.
The award show, which celebrated the summer’s U.S. Olympic Swimming Team while raising money for the USA Swimming Foundation, was expected to be a joyous occasion for a good cause. Derek and Ashley, who was 17 weeks pregnant at the time, got to Miami a few days before the show and decided to go for a swim in the South Beach waters. They walked about a mile down the shore and were just going to swim that distance back to their starting point, however a jellyfish sting to Ashley quickly halted things.
“It really hurt – like, more than I’ve ever had any jellyfish sting hurt before,” Twichell said.
Her decade-plus experience in open water has made her no stranger to jellyfish stings but this was the first time that one led to a tingling feeling in her legs, a feverish sweat and vomiting.
Derek and Ashley went to a nearby emergency room and, after about five hours of tests and fluids to make sure Ashley and the baby were okay, they left the hospital and later would still go on to attend the Golden Goggle Awards.
“I was so out of it that, when they did an ultrasound of the baby, I didn’t even look at it,” Twichell said. “I kick myself now for that because you have to take every opportunity you can to look at your baby.”
Six months later, Ashley and Derek welcomed a healthy Lochlan into the world. He’ll turn one year old later this month.
“It’s really cool to watch him change and learn new things every day – you kind of get to see the world through his eyes, which gives you an entirely different perspective,” Twichell said. “That has been really cool for me.”
As for swimming, Twichell has continued to take things day by day. She took a little more than a month off from the sport after giving birth but has since ramped up her schedule. Ashley and Derek have worked out a schedule where Ashley trains daily from 6-8 a.m. while Derek takes the morning shift with Lochlan. After her morning practice, Ashley will come home and take care of Lochlan while Derek works.
As her training started ramping back up, Twichell started to eye a return to competition.
“My first real race back was the Midmar Mile in South Africa in February,” she said. “The gold medalist from Rio and silver medalist from Tokyo, Sharon van Rouwendaal, was there. I really didn’t know what to expect – I had been training but obviously things are different after the baby. After the race, I was really pleasantly surprised with the result and I was able to stay right with her.”
Twichell continued her competition plan, swimming a 1,000-yard freestyle in 9:36.47 at a TAC Titans invitational and finishing fourth in the 10K at April’s Open Water National Championships, earning her the 12th U.S. National Team nomination of her career.
While she is back in the pool, her approach to swimming is certainly different.
“I didn’t feel awesome at parts of the race,” Twichell said of her 10K performance at Open Water Nationals. “That’s pretty normal but in my mind it was like, ‘whatever happens, happens.’ The most important thing in my life now is my family and (Lochlan). I was thinking about how I would get to spend the rest of my day with him and how we were going to take him to the pool. That different perspective is really cool. I’m swimming for us – for myself and my son.”
“The coolest part is just getting to do it now with Lochlan. He traveled with us to South Africa. Florida was really fun with him, too. He won’t ever remember these trips but we certainly will.”
Twichell is keeping the door open on how long she’ll continue swimming. She’ll travel – with Lochlan – to Italy later this month for the Italy Open Water World Cup, which is part of the selection for the U.S. team for the upcoming World Aquatics Open Water Championships this summer in Fukuoka, Japan.
She plans to keep her efforts going to show herself, her son and the other moms out there that they don’t have to put their goals aside after having a child.
“There aren’t a ton of women who have had babies and have come back to competitive swimming, for a variety of different reasons,” Twichell said. “I hope I can inspire some moms out there if that is what they want to do. It is hard being a mom and it’s hard being a parent but I think taking time for yourself is important.”
In May 2022, she added perhaps her favorite name of all to the list: mom.
“Being a first-time mom, you really don’t know what to expect,” Twichell said. “When they placed him on my chest, it was just the most amazing feeling.”
While Twichell and her husband, Derek, were over the moon with excitement to welcome Lochlan William Wall to the world, Twichell’s pregnancy journey was one that featured the Olympic Games, COVID, a shoulder injury, a jellyfish sting that resulted in an ER visit and a rejuvenated passion for competitive swimming.
Lochlan’s story starts back in 2019. Ashley had punched her ticket to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 by finishing sixth in the 10K at the 2019 FINA (now World Aquatics) Open Water World Championships. This was the first domino to fall in Derek and Ashley’s ideal timeline for starting a family after the Tokyo Olympics.
Obviously, COVID then threw a wrench into things and delayed the Olympics by a year. Twichell, who was 30 years old at the time of punching her ticket to Tokyo, would now have to wait until she was 32 to swim at the Olympics and 33 to start trying to have a family.
b
On top of the stress factors that come with the delayed competition and family timelines, a recurring shoulder injury (that she battled for years) reentered the picture leading into the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Swimming in June 2021.
“I had a lot of anxiety that year,” Twichell said. “I would get to practice and not know whether I’d be able to do the main set because of my shoulder. I love training and the grueling side of aerobic training but I felt like I was inhibited from doing that because the issue with my shoulder was so hard for me to mentally get over.”
The discomfort of the injury and uncertainty of COVID got to a point where Ashley texted her husband shortly before Trials and said she couldn’t wait to be done with swimming.
Ultimately, the shoulder injury healed in time for Ashley to swim at Olympic Trials, U.S. Olympic training camp in Hawaii and, eventually, the Olympic Games. At age 32, she was the oldest member of the U.S. Olympic Swimming Team.
“It was different (than I expected),” Twichell said of the environment at the Olympics. “With no friends and family there, it caused us (Twichell and her open water teammates Haley Anderson and Jordan Wilimovsky) to be a lot closer.”
On August 4, 2021, it was time for Twichell’s Olympic debut. She was about to become just the third American woman to ever compete in open water swimming at the Olympics.
“One of my most vivid memories was, the morning of the race, walking to the ready room with Haley,” Twichell said. “It was weird because there weren’t any spectators but it was cool to have her by my side and know we were in it together. We’ve raced together and trained together for over 10 years, so it was really cool to share what I thought would be the last race of my career with her.”
Twichell took the race out fast – climbing into the lead pack and even jumping into first throughout points of the first two (of five) laps. She continued to fight in the lead and middle groups throughout the two-hour race and would eventually finish in seventh place among the 25-person field.
The plan was to be done with competitive swimming – she even said so after the race; it was time to start a family and hang up the cap and goggles. Those two dominoes went partially according to plan, as Derek and Ashley publicly announced their pregnancy in November 2021, however Ashley’s plan to be done with swimming quickly reversed.
“My first trimester I didn’t feel great, and I found out that swimming was one of the only things that made me feel better,” Twichell said. “I wasn’t going as much as I typically would – I was just doing about 45 minutes to an hour with a Masters team with my husband in the middle of the day. Just being in the water was so nice.
“Then I just kind of continued doing it. I swam throughout my entire pregnancy, and I swam on the day I was induced at 41 weeks pregnant.”
While swimming provided Twichell with a healthy habit for both herself and her baby, it did create a scary situation in Miami during the weekend of the 2021 Golden Goggle Awards.
The award show, which celebrated the summer’s U.S. Olympic Swimming Team while raising money for the USA Swimming Foundation, was expected to be a joyous occasion for a good cause. Derek and Ashley, who was 17 weeks pregnant at the time, got to Miami a few days before the show and decided to go for a swim in the South Beach waters. They walked about a mile down the shore and were just going to swim that distance back to their starting point, however a jellyfish sting to Ashley quickly halted things.
“It really hurt – like, more than I’ve ever had any jellyfish sting hurt before,” Twichell said.
Her decade-plus experience in open water has made her no stranger to jellyfish stings but this was the first time that one led to a tingling feeling in her legs, a feverish sweat and vomiting.
Derek and Ashley went to a nearby emergency room and, after about five hours of tests and fluids to make sure Ashley and the baby were okay, they left the hospital and later would still go on to attend the Golden Goggle Awards.
“I was so out of it that, when they did an ultrasound of the baby, I didn’t even look at it,” Twichell said. “I kick myself now for that because you have to take every opportunity you can to look at your baby.”
Six months later, Ashley and Derek welcomed a healthy Lochlan into the world. He’ll turn one year old later this month.
“It’s really cool to watch him change and learn new things every day – you kind of get to see the world through his eyes, which gives you an entirely different perspective,” Twichell said. “That has been really cool for me.”
As for swimming, Twichell has continued to take things day by day. She took a little more than a month off from the sport after giving birth but has since ramped up her schedule. Ashley and Derek have worked out a schedule where Ashley trains daily from 6-8 a.m. while Derek takes the morning shift with Lochlan. After her morning practice, Ashley will come home and take care of Lochlan while Derek works.
As her training started ramping back up, Twichell started to eye a return to competition.
“My first real race back was the Midmar Mile in South Africa in February,” she said. “The gold medalist from Rio and silver medalist from Tokyo, Sharon van Rouwendaal, was there. I really didn’t know what to expect – I had been training but obviously things are different after the baby. After the race, I was really pleasantly surprised with the result and I was able to stay right with her.”
Twichell continued her competition plan, swimming a 1,000-yard freestyle in 9:36.47 at a TAC Titans invitational and finishing fourth in the 10K at April’s Open Water National Championships, earning her the 12th U.S. National Team nomination of her career.
While she is back in the pool, her approach to swimming is certainly different.
“I didn’t feel awesome at parts of the race,” Twichell said of her 10K performance at Open Water Nationals. “That’s pretty normal but in my mind it was like, ‘whatever happens, happens.’ The most important thing in my life now is my family and (Lochlan). I was thinking about how I would get to spend the rest of my day with him and how we were going to take him to the pool. That different perspective is really cool. I’m swimming for us – for myself and my son.”
“The coolest part is just getting to do it now with Lochlan. He traveled with us to South Africa. Florida was really fun with him, too. He won’t ever remember these trips but we certainly will.”
Twichell is keeping the door open on how long she’ll continue swimming. She’ll travel – with Lochlan – to Italy later this month for the Italy Open Water World Cup, which is part of the selection for the U.S. team for the upcoming World Aquatics Open Water Championships this summer in Fukuoka, Japan.
She plans to keep her efforts going to show herself, her son and the other moms out there that they don’t have to put their goals aside after having a child.
“There aren’t a ton of women who have had babies and have come back to competitive swimming, for a variety of different reasons,” Twichell said. “I hope I can inspire some moms out there if that is what they want to do. It is hard being a mom and it’s hard being a parent but I think taking time for yourself is important.”