Penn grad Nia Akins is about to release her first album. But first: Compete in the 800 meters at the Olympics.

The morning of the 800-meter final at Olympic trials, Nia Akins lost track of time. To relax before competing, Akins watched half of Boys in the Boat, and then picked up her guitar to play one of her favorite prerace songs, “Yeshua” by Jesus Image.

“There were like two hours where I was just playing,” Akins told The Inquirer. “I was just playing the guitar part of that song for like two hours, and the time just flew by. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to get ready to run.’”

The Penn graduate competed in her first Olympic trials in 2021, but just 22 seconds into the 800-meter final, she tripped and fell. Akins finished in last place, her dreams of making the Olympics delayed another three years.

As she settled in to her professional running career with Brooks, she wasn’t bouncing back from trials with the results she may have wanted — she finished seventh in the 800 at the U.S. indoor championships in 2022, and 11th at the U.S. outdoor championships later that year. But after her experience in 2021, she learned not to take any opportunity to race for granted.

“The first time I raced, I was like, ‘I finished. I finished on my feet. We did good,’” Akins said. “I think that was exposure therapy for me. Then the next time, it was like, ‘OK, can I run a little faster?’ I learned to appreciate where I was. There were times like indoor nationals this year, I was super sick that week, but I was like, ‘I’m so blessed to be racing, even though I don’t feel 100%.’ I wanted to race, and I was able to race. I’m just more grateful now than I think I was before, and not that I wasn’t grateful before. It’s just a higher level.”

In June, Akins avenged that fall, running the fastest time of her life, finishing in 1 minute, 57.36 seconds at the Olympic trials to win in the event and qualify for her first Games — a surprise to many, but not her college coach.

“She really is a great competitor, and she rises to the occasion,” Penn coach Steve Dolan said of Akins. “That’s not something to necessarily coach; that’s a person’s talent or instincts. There were definitely times at Penn that I felt like she would race even above the level she was training at, just because she had that competitive fire and wanted to be good and wanted to win.”

And, she did it with her trusty companion, her acoustic guitar.

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Akins, 26, always wanted to learn to play the guitar, but between Penn nursing school and her indoor and outdoor track seasons, she never had the time.

“My mom had gotten me a guitar for my birthday, and I just never really touched it because I was so busy,” Akins said.

But once the pandemic hit in spring 2020, Akins suddenly found herself with a lot more free time, so she used it to finally start learning how to play.

“I was like, ‘This is my window of opportunity to learn how to play the guitar,’” she said. “I started then and then just started writing songs about how I was feeling at the time, just because, I don’t know, it was a huge change for everybody. There was a lot of opportunity for inspiration from just the way things are going in 2020 with COVID, and then again, in 2021, just the circumstances of the year and how that went, I just found a lot of like solace in songwriting.”

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After those Olympic trials, Akins went back to her hotel, and wrote a song, “Smoke.” Akins had written and a few songs before “Smoke,” including her first song, “Paper Boats,” which she wrote earlier that spring and released in May 2021 under the pseudonym Teddy Oliver. But “Smoke” was the first song she released under her own name, about her experience at the trials.

The more she achieved as an athlete, the more pressure she felt to not show her emotions or to feel sadness, Akins said. Songwriting helped her get back in touch with those feelings.

“It forced me to pay attention to my emotions at the time that they were happening,” Akins said. “If I was sad, I’d write about being sad. If I was angry, I’d write about the fact that I was angry, and then I’d move on from it. It helped me be in the moment, be in the day, process it, and move forward. Especially since my whole world started to — it wasn’t like I was going to school anymore, it was just track. So when track isn’t going great, what do you turn to? For me, I turned to my faith, and songwriting was a vessel for me to connect with God and connect with my own emotions and then connect with my friends, the people that I met along the way that like to write music as well.”

She released her latest single, “Petals in the Fire,” on July 7, just after the Olympic trials.

“My dreams chase me now, got 1,500 more friends, than I ever did need though, shake hands with the voices in my head, chilling like a playground, they’d be so disappointed, if I let them down, swear if I could care less, I’d be invincible, so I try,” Akins sings in the first verse.

Her college teammates were shocked when she started playing the guitar, but a few of her teammates at Brooks, like Isaiah Harris, who’s competing in the men’s 800 meters in Paris, play instruments as well. They’ve joked about forming a band — the Brooks Beats, inspired by the Brooks Beasts (the name of their professional team).

Akins brought the guitar along with her to Paris and plans on releasing her first album, “Roses,” later this year.

Akins will race in the 800-meter heats on Friday, with follow-up races on subsequent days until the final on Aug. 5, if she qualifies.

Facing the most important race of her life, Akins is poised. In many ways, it’s just like any other race — they convene to train at camp beforehand, and then run 800 meters.

“We’re used to being at camp before big races, so it feels very mundane,” Akins said. “Nothing’s really changed, and I think that’s amazing because there’s so many new things. It’s nice to have some continuity. I think my coach does a really good job of bringing it down. He’s like, ‘It’s still a track. You’re still running 800 meters. Nothing’s changed. You know how to run. You’re just in a different place, and you’re racing different people, but it’s the same thing. It’s what you’ve been training to do.’ Nothing’s changed, honestly, and I think that’s super important for something like the Games.”

One thing that will change? Her postrace snack.

“I’m excited to race and eat croissants afterwards,” Akins said.