Ledecky prepares for another big week at world championships

Swimming

Katie Ledecky shrugs off the notion that she’s doing anything special over the next week.

For the 20-year-old American star, the improbable has become the expected.

Of course, there’s nothing restful about her plans for the world championships in Budapest, where the swimming competition begins today.

Ledecky will race every day for seven straight days, a total of 6,300 meters if all goes according to plan.

That’s nearly 4 miles in total, encompassing freestyle races that range from 200 meters (essentially, a sprint) to 1,500 (the grueling metric mile).

To add a little perspective, Michael Phelps put in 3,300 meters — roughly half the distance of Ledecky’s program — on his way to a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. No one is aware of a pool swimmer ever covering so much distance within the confines of a single major meet.

For anyone else, it would seem ludicrous to even consider such a daunting plan.

But Ledecky did 6,200 meters at the last world championships, two years ago in Kazan, Russia, where she won five gold medals. She’s added the 4x100 free relay to her repertoire since then.

At the Rio Olympics last sum- mer, Ledecky captured four gold medals and a silver.

That must have seemed like a breeze, a mere 3,300 meters for the week since the 1,500 wasn’t part of the women’s program.

That will change at the 2020 Games in Toyko, so this will be the first test of what her program will probably look like at the next Olympics.

Life has changed quite a bit since her triumphant performance in Brazil.

A native of the Washington, D.C., suburbs, she moved away from home for the first time to attend Stanford, an experience that has given her a whole new balance and perspective.