Susan Walsh

Susan Walsh
Swimming
Durham, N.C.

Susan Walsh wasn't going to let her daughters have all the fun. The swimming bug bit Walsh again while she was on the pool deck, watching her two eldest children compete in a meet in 2003.

She decided she wasn't going to be a spectator any longer, and it certainly didn't take her long to get back up to speed. In 2007, Walsh captured six gold medals at U.S. Masters Swimming Long Course Meters Nationals, and did so convincingly by setting six new world records.

Walsh was born and raised outside Buffalo, N.Y., where she started competitive swimming, amassing a bevy of accolades. She became a fixture on the U.S. national team from 1978-84 and was selected to the Olympic team during the boycott year of 1980. Walsh swam at the University of North Carolina, where she is currently director of  endowment and stewardship for the school's Educational Foundation.

Walsh, a divorced mother of three, says that swimming at a competitive level can be challenging. "There are times when I wonder if I can keep doing it at this level, because it's a wonderful physical activity but it can be unkind to your body," she says. "When I finish a workout, I am exhausted. But I've got to go back and finish the rest of my day at the office. I'm thankful because it's so easy to get sedentary, which I did for a long while."

Walsh has one more added incentive to keep swimming. She had a heart attack when she was beginning to train again, and the doctors said the best thing for her heart was exercise.  

To further stave off Father Time, she has added a strength-and-conditioning routine to her regimen. She's also changed her approach to competition. "When I was younger, it was competing against other people," she says. "As I've gotten older, it becomes competing against yourself, because everybody's situation is so very different. You have children; you don't have children. You're working; you're not working. I'm not sure that when we all get up on the blocks we're all starting from the same place."