Summer training for Winter Olympic bobsledder

(WTNH) - Four days a week in this so-called off-season, Olympic bobsledder and Connecticut native Erin Pac trains. Hard.

She won bronze in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The former college track and field athlete was the driver of the two woman bobsled team.

"Imagine going in your car, without a seat belt, top down, and not knowing how your car's gonna drive," said Pac, all at speeds up to 90 miles an hour. A total rush.

On summer days when she's not training Erin works at Chestnut Fine Foods in New Haven as a cook and waitress. Such is the glamorous life of an Olympic medalist in a sport that is not exactly mainstream.

"There's some other people who have to work and pay rent. We still have to live," Pac said. We are normal people. It's part of the sport and I've come to learn that over the years."

Erin gets some money from the U.S. Olympic Committee and she has sponsors who give her helmets, sunglasses and supplements, but the rest -- about ten thousand dollars a year -- she has to raise on her own.

It helps to have a coach who is also her boyfriend. "Anytime we are training on the track and in the gym I always say 'you're my coach right now, no kissing, no touching, no hugging 'cause you're my coach.'"

Pac says it's a calling, qualifying for the annual bobsledding World Cup and the Olympics every four years. She's already won an Olympic bronze. What's next?

"Of course I want gold, but right now I'm just taking it one step at a time and we're training year to year," she said.

Pac grew up in Farmington and now lives in Milford. She will be going back to Lake Placid, New York, to train later in the year and get ready for the World Cup.