Riley Dunn - (Author)

A Letter to Swim Coaches Everywhere: Thank You From the Archive (Thanksgiving Tradition) Dear Coach, I would like to begin this letter by asking you a question. A simple, one-word question: Why? Why did you pursue this career? Why do you wake up at the most ungodly hours every day, just to inevitabl...

Training Pool Bucket List: 8 Unique Pools Around the World The pools we train in are pretty universal. Whether you're indoors or outdoors, they mostly consist of the same things. Picture the pool you train in daily, and I'm going to guess the basics. There's probably a pool deck infested with variou...

Meet Preparation: Fun Ways To Get Ready For Competition It's that time of year, athletes! The time when we set our clocks back, ringing in the new season with overbearing darkness at 5 p.m., excruciatingly chilly air temperatures, and holidays GALORE. It also signifies an important season for swimme...

The 'Small' Finale: How to Cope with A Bad Champs Meet; And What It All Means Hey swimmers. As the swim season comes to a close, as it always does, I'm sure plenty of you (if not all of you) just had a pretty important swim meet. Practiced all year, tapered for a few weeks, took extra good care of y...

A Hypothetical Evening at Dinner For the Four Strokes The four strokes in swimming walk into a restaurant: Butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. Butterfly hops, skips, and wiggles its way through the rusted door. Backstroke, oddly enough, walks backward. Breaststroke propels itself thro...

A Universal Experience: The Sports That Led Us ... Thankfully ... to Swimming Sometimes I find myself questioning every life decision I have ever made, specifically the decisions pertaining to my sport of choice. Especially when I'm waking up at five in the morning for swim practice. Soccer teams do...

4 Things I Wish I Knew Sooner: Swimming Edition Hey little swimmers. When you think of the sport of swimming, what comes to mind? It's probably a certain time that you're dying to achieve, or ways to get better, or maybe it's the idea of a faster, stronger, better version of yourself. I'm not here t...

The Answers You've Been Waiting For: What Your Best Stroke Says About You Have you ever taken a BuzzFeed Quiz? You know, the iconic miniature tests completed with a few clicks of a button, only to reveal some totally absurd and equally irrelevant piece of information about yourself that is probably ...

15 Fun Facts About the U.S. World Championships Team The United States announced their official FINA World Championships roster on May 1st. The team holds 41 swimmers; 21 women and 21 men. The official roster, including the additional entries  is as follows: Women: Phoebe Bacon (19) Katharine Berkof...

Offseason: Handling Your Well-Deserved Break The Right Way! Swimmers everywhere, allow me to ask you a question. Do you recognize the term, "offseason?" Or is it a foreign concept? At this point, it might feel that way. Behind countless days of training, it almost feels infinite. Like it will never ...

The Swimmer Edition of Rockin' Hairstyles: The Go-To Looks Of the Pool Chlorine. It's a chemical added to pools to kill germs that have the potential to make swimmers sick. It's a beautiful thing. But every rose has its thorn, my friend. This chemical is, although a warrior for keeping us swimmers h...

The Health Benefits Of Your Favorite Thanksgiving Foods Picture this. Your mom just made your favorite meal for dinner: Steak and potatoes! You sit down at the table, tuck a napkin into your shirt, and dig in. You're a swimmer, after all. You need the calories. You scarf down every last morsel of th...

Mental Toughness in Sports: The Struggle Is Real Swimmers train like monsters. The hours per week certainly add up, not just in the pool but in the weight room, doing dryland exercises, relentlessly chucking a medicine ball around the pool deck until our shoulders give out. We've got the physical tr...

7 Reasons Why Sprint Squad is the Best Squad "All right folks! Split up into your groups! Let's rock and roll!" Your coach cheers and graciously pairs those words with a few enthusiastic claps. You quickly hop out of your warmup lane, carefully organize your equipment in your mesh bag and make your ...

Like a Girl: The Pride In Being a Female Athlete “Back of the line,” the scruffy-headed blonde boy barks at you, shoving you away from the lane with a sharp elbow to the ribcage and a harmony of laughter. It’s time for swim practice, which means it’s time to pick a lane to swim in. You look down at ...