Former broadcast journalist Savannah Louie representing Atlanta on "Survivor" Season 49
Landmark reality show "Survivor's" 49th season premieres on Wednesday night, and one of the contestants from Atlanta is used to the pressure.
While most of the people working out in Piedmont Park may be training for one of metro Atlanta's many races, Savannah Louie was working out for a very different purpose.
"I cannot tell you the amount of hours I spent running back and forth on this stupid field," Louie said.
Louie was going to fulfill a lifelong dream: Being a contestant on "Survivor."
"I started watching before I could really understand what 'Survivor' was, and I've loved the show ever since I was like, you know, this tall, right? So the first time I applied, I was 17 years old," she said.
She didn't make the cut then, but Louie went to Fiji for season 49 to compete for the $1 million prize.
"The fact that I not only sent in the application but I went out there and did it, I surprised even myself, like by just even staying out there for longer than 30 minutes is a huge accomplishment," Louie said.
The training doesn't exactly prepare you for life on a deserted island.
"Think about the most exhausted you've ever been, the most stressed that you've ever been, the most hungry you've ever been…take all of those kind of negative emotions and put them together and then imagine yourself trying to perform at a high level under those conditions," she said.
But something that did prepare her was her life in Atlanta.
"You have so many different people of so many different backgrounds, whether that's their race, their beliefs, whether that's their economic standing, so when you look at a game like 'Survivor,' you're on that island with 17 other people who are most likely very different from who you are, and for me, I feel like that diversity is represented here in Atlanta," she said.
Louie said she felt her background as a broadcast journalist also gave her a leg up.
"You're getting these people to trust you with their stories, which are often the most intimate details of their lives, and not only that, but you're getting them to trust you on a tight deadline, like that is so difficult," she said. "So when I went out to Fiji, I thought 'I need to have that same mindset.'"
Now, everyone in Atlanta can see if all the training paid off, and Louie hopes she can make her city proud.
"For the Atlanta community, I hope they can see some of themselves in me. I hope they can see someone who wants to fulfill a dream, and it might take a lot of work, you might have to grind a lot, there might be days where it really sucks, but at the end of the day, you can seriously do anything that you set your mind to," she said.
You can watch the latest season of "Survivor" live at 8 p.m. every Wednesday on CBS Atlanta starting on Sept. 24.