Every kid that participates in track and field dreams of the Olympics. I was no different, marking out the distance between my high school personal best and Olympic standards just to visualize how far away my long jumps were from achieving that dream.

Needless to say, walking into Stade de France, the track and field complex for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, was surreal. No, I didn’t come here as an athlete, but I did put serious time, effort, and hard work into getting here as a journalist.

I can hear three or four different languages just walking down the streets of Paris, but in this stadium everyone speaks the same one: fast.

The bell that signals the last lap of a distance race intoxicates the crowd in the same manner that the last 50 meters of a 100-meter final propels them out of their seats. Running fast is the common language of the world and the oldest Olympic tradition.

It stretches beyond the track, too. Any chance at watching Sha’Carri Richardson or Noah Lyles race, and also making it down to the mixed zone to talk to them afterwards, involves serious speed. The mixed zone is the common area between press and athletes where athletes can talk immediately after competition when their emotions are still in the moment.

The journey calls for racing down the steps of the media tribune, through a corridor and into a hallway, down two flights of stairs, down another hallway to a different stairwell, down six more flights of stairs, another hallway, and finally into the room that serves as the mixed zone. Of course there’s an elevator, but by the time it arrives on floor four where the press tribune is located, it’s quicker to just complete the gauntlet of stairs and hallways.

Sure, by the time you’ve reached the bottom, battled the constant current of people whose sole purpose in the world seems to be to get in the way, and fought through the French humidity that collects in the stairwells, you’ll feel (and maybe smell) like you’ve just completed an Olympic 1500 meters. But that’s the beauty of the mixed zone – most people smell, a lot of them are breathing hard, and just about everyone is sweaty.

This whole thing can be avoided by watching events on one of the TVs in the mixed zone that display live events happening on the track, but who comes to the Olympics to watch it on TV? I’ll take it in live and practice being fast, and maybe a little bit sweaty, in order to watch history play out in front of me.

I’ve been dreaming of this, after all.

By Madie Chandler | @madie_chandler