It should come as no surprise that being an Olympian is exhausting.

But the extent of the exhaustion shocks even the Olympians themselves.

"I feel like you don't really even realize how exhausted you are until everything's over with because you're prepared for it. You know what your schedule is going to be before you do it, so you're mentally prepared and you're physically prepared," said two-time Olympic American swimmer Regan Smith, who won five medals in Paris. "And then you go through it, it's brutal, but you don't truly let yourself feel how exhausted you are because you can't afford to."

In the fifteenth daily edition of In the Village: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast, titled "Day 15: Weight in Gold," Smith and fellow U.S. teammate Ryan Murphy discuss the best ways to decompress from competing at the Olympics — whether that be with a tropical vacation, family time, or a good therapeutic cry.

"You put so many things on the backburner to prepare for this, and so I just have all these things I want to catch up on," said Murphy, who earned three medals in Paris. "I just want to get out with the guys, play golf, catch up with people. I'm ready."

Hear all of that and more on the latest episode of In the Village.

New episodes of In the Village will be released every day during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. 

Follow the show on on the iHeart App, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast platform.