Rusty Smith, a 22-year-old on the National short track speed skating team that is based at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., is sharing a weekly diary during the World Cup season on his preparations for the Olympics.

I've been back in Colorado Springs, Colo., for about a week. My life right now mostly consists of training and a little work.

	RUSTY SMITH
	Smith Age: 22 Hometown: Sunset Beach, Calif. Sport: Short track speed skating Accomplishments: In the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, he was 13th in the 1,000 and a member of the sixth-place relay team. At the 2000 Worlds, he placed fourth in the 1,000 meters, seventh in the 500 meters and eighth overall.

I've been battling with a little bit of an injury. Last weekend, I fell and hurt my elbow. I've been going into sports med and getting it looked at every day. I had X-rays taken, and they say I'm fine. It's difficult right now, but I'm fortunate that it's only my elbow. It's difficult to sleep and to do some workouts because I don't have range of motion in my arm.

Training is starting to get hard again. The past couple of days, we've started to buckle down. We're starting to do three workouts a day for four times a week to get a little endurance training in. There are only five weeks until the Olympic trials, so we want to make sure we're getting stronger going up to that point. There's a competition this weekend for every speed skater in the United States except for two of us. It'll be a good way to judge how everyone else is skating before the trials.

When I'm not training, I'm just relaxing. We start training at 7 a.m. and go to 6 at night -- with some recovery downtime between workouts.

At 6 p.m., I go to work at Home Depot. I have an Olympic job though the United States Olympic Committee where I work 20 hours a week and get paid for 40 hours. I work in the hardware department helping people get all the tools they need for building projects. There are a lot of regulars who ask me how skating is going, and my co-workers are interested in how I'm progressing.

My life consists of training, and every once in a while, like last week, I get to see a college hockey game. I also went to see a movie on Sunday with some friends -- Monsters, Inc., which was good. Unfortunately, I suggested going early to avoid the crowds, and the movie was packed with families.

Despite the injury, training is going well. I'm trying to get stronger and stay focused on my ultimate goal: to make the Olympic team and bring home two or three medals.