Alex Walsh | 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 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? .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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