Anytime you hit a curve, or you hit on the side of the wall, you hit against the side of the sled. We're taking four to five, sometimes six or seven Gs on our body every time we go down the track. And then the crashing.

I went to college, George Washington University, and played softball there. I also played professionally but with the real goal of being an Olympian and making the Olympic team.

I'm a squat person: I love squats. I love back squats, things like that.

I've been on every type of nutrition plan you can think of.

If one little girl who looks like me picks up a winter sport because she sees me, that's all anybody could ever ask for.

I grew up in Douglasville, Georgia. My father played football for the Atlanta Falcons. We lived a bunch of places when I was younger. I was born in California. We lived in Chicago for a little bit, and finally, we ended up in Georgia.

I am powered by the defeat in Sochi, as I am by all my defeats.

My favorite thing about South Korea is the people - they are so kind and helpful.

I love who I am. But being a woman competing in a male-dominated sport and always trying to push the envelope as a female athlete, you get a lot of comparisons to men and things like that.

I've encountered a lot of biases as a woman.

My mom has never cared if I did sports or not. Obviously, she's proud of me, and she loves the fact that I'm an Olympian and she's got these trinkets to hang around with the medals and whatnot. But if I wanted to do whatever, if I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, she was going to support me regardless.

We train six days a week, and each day includes some type of running or strength workout. It's all about getting functionally stronger in the positions that matter for racing, which means balancing the strength between my quads and hamstrings.

I'm not big on protein shakes - I think they're pretty gross, actually - so I have to make sure I eat enough meat, fish, and other good protein sources.

You could have the best run of your life and lose a race because somebody has a better day. Or you could have the worst run and win.

Bobsledding is an expensive sport.

Bobsledders are big athletes, and I'm a big athlete.

I really, really wanted to be an Olympian. My parents knew about this dream of mine, and they suggested I try my hand at bobsled. They'd seen it on TV at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002 and thought it would be a good sport for me.

Bobsled is best for athletes who are fast and strong, which were my strengths in softball.

If you've seen 'Cool Runnings,' it looks pretty easy. You're just riding in a sled, right? Not exactly. Bobsled actually involves a series of complex movements that aren't like those in any other sport. You put your body into a really awkward position to push a 400-pound sled downhill on ice.

In bobsled, you work as a team - a driver and a brakeman. Both athletes push, but the brakeman's biggest responsibility is to push as fast as she can and get in and ride down in a good aerodynamic position. The driver helps to push but gets in first and then steers the sled down the track. We aren't just along for the ride, despite how it looks!

It's hard to describe what it's like to live with a concussion. You want to enjoy things like you used to, but you can't. You wake up in the morning and wonder how you're going to feel that day: What will my reactions be like? Will I have a headache? Will I have to triple check to see if I unplugged the flat iron?

All growing up, the outside world wants to tell you what you can and cannot do as a female - what sports are acceptable, what sports are appropriate, what is appropriate to study, what is appropriate to say. But luckily, I have a strong family, and my mom is the most amazing mom in the world. She never let me worry about biases.

I was always encouraged to participate in whatever sports I wanted to be in.

I know how much my mom has impacted my journey and how much I wouldn't be where I am without my mom. As much as she says she's proud of me, I'm even more so proud of her because of what she's done and how she's been able to raise me and my sisters.

I'm freakishly good at squatting.

I trash talk all the time.

A guy like Usain Bolt would be sick behind a bobsled.

I love my teammates. I love my coaches.

I feel like sport can transcend a lot of different things.

Sport can transcend bias.

Love can overcome everything.

I train with track athletes, which is weird for bobsledders. I love training with track athletes because they help me work on my speed, and they give me something to cheer for during the Summer Olympics.

Biggest rival is Kaillie Humphries of Canada, and we are actually training partners. She was at my wedding, and I consider her a close friend.

I'm a representative of something that's greater than myself. I'm not just representing myself or my country: I'm representing Christ and what He's done through me.

My father was an NFL running back, so I feel like I might be more susceptible, genetically, to CTE.

Even though concussions affect women more often than men, there's not a lot of concussion research about women specifically. You can slip and fall and hit your head and have a concussion. And unless you know what to do, and unless you're able to take the right steps, you may not be able to recover.

There is a stigma in our sport that men are the better drivers. People think that, because the men compete in two-man and four-man, they are more versatile and that the women aren't great drivers.

I love driving the sled more than anything.

The things I've had to overcome have been crazy.

I think the hardest thing is that all of us would love to just stick to sports - but if you want us to be role models to kids, then you need to stand for more than just sports.

The Lord calls us to love everybody.

It's a challenge, but every single German or Canadian I want to beat, I still have to love them. That means competing the way God wants me to compete and helping my opponents if they have a need.

My father's NFL dreams never really felt like motivation to me, but it was something to aspire to. He was such a great athlete, the least I could do is try and use my athletic talent to represent my country in a different way. He represented as a Marine. Maybe I could do something to represent as an athlete.

If I'm honest, the thing I remember the most was the team mascot, Freddie the Falcon. I really remember there was a McDonald's nearby, and I remember eating a cheeseburger in the playground when the Falcon appeared. I'm not sure my dad appreciates that being my favorite memory of him playing.

Our sport is one of the few on the winter side that is so diverse. It shows we don't have to be limited by race or gender or whatever and how far we have come as a sport.

Being a minority athlete in this sport, it's been wrought with challenges, but I wouldn't consider myself a trail blazer.

We're a sport that was in obscurity for so long, we started to get used to that.

You get this feeling in bobsled, like a combination of excitement, anxiety, and pure nervousness, and you get that combination only very few times.

The first run in a four-man sled was one of the most nerve-wracking I've had in my life.