Dutch runner Femke Bol is celebrating after winning gold in the mixed 4x400m relay. Bol, 24, shared a picture of herself wearing black shorts and an orange shirt, walking on the track. "Time to get to the start line of my second Olympic Games ✨I cannot wait to enjoy and feel the wonderful atmosphere while giving it my all on the track ❤️🔥This will be my schedule:
03/08 20.55 4×400 mixed FINAL
04/08 12.35 400 hurdles heats
06/08 20.07 400 hurdles semis
08/08 21.25 400 hurdles FINAL
09/08 10.40 4×400 women heats
10/08 21.14 4×400 women FINAL
Thank you for all the support, the journey to the games showed me once again how amazing the team around me is and I'm forever grateful for them 🥰," she captioned the post. Here's what the athlete's training and fitness regimen looks like.
Bol works hard for her record-breaking speed. "I think that speed is not the most natural thing to me," she told RunBlogRun. "I work hard to get more speed. But with the fatigue and the lactic, I keep thinking, what is the right pace? I think that is where my talent is. Also, in a 400 flat, what the pace should feel like. I love to go through the lactic and go deeper and go faster. Or in training, when I am full of lactic, can I do one more – when we have a lot of reps in a session. I think that is it, and I need to continue to be able to think and plan because you need a good plan."
Bol is a huge fan of fellow competitor Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. "It's inspirational and motivational how McLaughlin-Levrone's racing and seeing how she's raising the bar," she told Longview News-Journal. "In all honesty a couple of years ago if you'd told me people would be running 400m hurdles in 51sec, I wouldn't have believed it, and now I'm one of them doing it. The moment you see someone doing it… there's is something in your head that thinks 'maybe I can also do it'. For sure it's something that pushes me to become better and dream better on the 400m hurdles."
Bol trains with a large team in The Netherlands. "I train at Papendal, the National Dutch Sports Center," she told RunBlogRun. "There is a big group, I think fourteen 400m runners. And also Ajla Del Ponte from Switzerland. So it's a pretty nice group to be in. We train hard, a lot of tough training – some do more endurance, others more speed. It's a big group, but training is adapted to the person. I think it's a nice atmosphere that we train in. In the end, we're all sore and tired, but we keep having fun. We work together and push each other on. It's a great place to be and one of the best places in which to become one of the best athletes."
Bol has loved running since she was a young girl. "It was always a way to clear your mind and just have fun and not think too much about other things," she told Athletics Weekly. "That's still what I like so much about it. I have sessions I like more and I like less but I enjoy every session and mostly the lactic ones because then it really clears your mind and the only thing you can think about is the pain and how you are going to recover. I just love how you really can mentally challenge yourself so much in the sport and just let go of everything a bit by running."
Bol is proud of her accomplishments. "I sometimes ask how I have achieved these things, but I do work hard for it and do so many things for it," she told RunBlogRun. "It's not like I click my fingers, and I get it. But still, there are a lot of other athletes who train just as hard and are not achieving these things. I do ask how I have achieved this, and I think it's amazing. I am enjoying it a lot, which helps."
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