Finding her feet

Kidron started competitive swimming at the age of 14, which was considered late. She tried everything to make up the time, including watching online videos on all the great swimmers and breaking down their performance, stroke by stroke, late at night in her dorm room.

She was always curious about Beijing and China. In March 2008, she traveled to Beijing for the first time when the city was gearing up for the Olympics.

In 2010, Kidron made her second trip to Beijing. Taking on a communications internship, she spent the whole summer with a swimming team in Beijing in preparation for the 2012 US Olympic trials.

She trained in the morning and evening and went to work in the afternoon.

Her local teammates gave her a taste of the capital, sometimes literally, as they took her to restaurants and to meet their families for dinners at home.

"People were so welcoming and so open to just let me in and I felt like that we are all connected," she says. "It was the best summer of my life. When I got home, I felt like I left a piece of my heart in Beijing."

After failing to make the 2012 Olympic team, in June, she moved to New York from Los Angeles and swapped her swimming goggles for running shoes.

"I loved that I could run and see the New York skyline at the sunrise and sunset. It was a special way to explore the city," she says.