For the past three years, Seth Weil has lived with a host family in Princeton, NJ, working part-time at a juice bar. While that may sound like the one-sentence bio of a struggling college student, it’s actually a description of an Olympic hopeful’s downtime.
Weil started rowing a decade ago while enrolled at UC Davis, where he studied aeronautical engineering. Since then he’s earned a gold medal in a four-man boat at the U.S. Rowing National Championships in 2013, and in 2015 he was USRowing’s Male Athlete of the Year. Now he’s in Princeton, closing in on the last weeks of training before the U.S. Olympic coaches choose the final 12 rowers for the four- and eight-seat boats.
Like most aspiring Olympic rowers, Weil lives with a host family, both to save money on rent and find accessible housing. He holds down a day job at his host family's juice bar—where he spends time peeling and juicing vegetables—to supplement rowing. “Even if it’s just working at a juice store, it’s good to not have an eight-year gap in your resume,” he says. (Among the other 19 men vying for the Olympic team with him, Uber driver is the most common gig.)
“Training for something like [the Olympics], you feel like it’s a pretty selfish endeavor,” he says. “You’re not really a part of society. I’m not contributing a product or service. It’s nice to be connected to a community beyond just, ‘I show up and work out here.’ So living with a host family is a nice way to feel like you’re in a larger community, which is important to feeling like a complete person.”
With the exception of a small percentage of athletes (your Michael Phelpses and Usain Bolts), Olympians still need to make a living like normal humans after the Games. “To some extent people are really appreciative of the fact that you’re trying to pursue this long-term goal,” Weil says, “but by the same token I’ll come out of this cycle at 29 with no long-term work experience in any industry.”
Weil loves problem solving, and though it’s a far cry from juicing, he hopes to eventually find something in aeronautics when he finally hangs up his oars. He’s obsessed with aviation, so much so that he takes a long pause mid-sentence, then says, “Sorry, I’m watching sky-diving right now and some guy just opened way away from the airport.”
For now he’s water-bound, rowing 200 kilometers a week and eating enough to power through two two-hour sessions a day. “I can go through a can of whipped cream before I even reach the checkout at the supermarket,” he says, adding: “We eat so much food it would be disgusting if we listed all of it.”
So here’s all of it—6,000-8,000 calories a day's worth.
Pre-practiceCoffee (as much as possible), cereal with milk
PracticePowdered sports drink
Post-practiceClif Bar
Proper BreakfastOmelet with kale, hash browns, chocolate milk, oranges
LunchBeef tacos, salad, rice and beans
DinnerChicken breast, “massive” serving of broccoli, mashed potatoes, dessert yogurt.
Luke Darby is a contributor to GQ, covering news, entertainment, and the environment. A Louisiana native, he now resides in Cleveland, and his writing has also appeared in Outside, the Dallas Observer, and Marie Claire.Related Stories for GQOlympicsReal Life Diet