As tough as it might be, waking up at 04:30 every morning is self-inflicted. It allows Evans to train and return home early enough to spend the day with her children before her afternoon session.
“I feel blessed because I’m a working mother but I get to be home with my children the majority of the day. I feel like I get the best of both worlds. Doing things to keep myself happy and content outside of my family, I think it makes me a better mum,” she explained.
“I feel like as a mum you put so much on the back burner and every once in a while you think ‘I’d love to do that’. For me, it was a question of missing the sport and wanting to swim again, having no huge expectations, seeing how fast I could go and how far I could push my body at the age of 40.”
Evans insists there was no defining ‘lightbulb’ moment when she decided to stage the unlikeliest of comebacks.
She had kept herself in shape after giving birth and was still in regular contact with coach Schubert from her previous Olympic medal haul. From there, a plan began to take shape in the summer of 2010.
“I was approaching my 39th birthday,” Evans said. “I was at the beach with my family and my coach texted me some of the results from the national championships. I said ‘Wow, they’re swimming about 8:25.00’ and my coach said let’s see if you can do that.
“When I started I couldn’t swim 100m. I was in good shape but not swimming shape, so we basically started from scratch.”
