Phelps and Me

Hey - I have kind of committed to blogging for the new channel swim site iasc-swim.com where I am going to update weekly on Mondays. I am going to X-post here, unless anybody gets there knickers in a twist. Please check out the other site and have a sniff around. It smells professional.

Here is the post:

Tonight I walked into the bedroom with a measuring tape. "Honey, will you measure me?" My long suffering wife has a permanently raised eyebrow and this request gave the other one cause to twitch. Michael Phelps (Olympic athlete and bong-smoker extraordinaire) has a freakishly disproportionate height to reach ratio. He is 6' 4" tall and has a reach of 6' 7". He also has size 14 feet. It is safe to say if he hadn't become a swimmer he would have had a stellar career as a clown. The ability to pick a custard pie of the ground without bending his knees would definitely get him the glad-eye from the bearded lady.

Mrs M, took the tape off me and gave me a good old measuring. I am 6' 0" tall with a reach of 5' 10". I wear size 8 shoes and don't have double jointed ankles. If I joined the circus I would probably be relegated to cleaning out the elephant's cage. My hands are stumpy and shovel-shaped. I don't know what Phelps hands are like, but I imagine they are like perfectly shaped seals paws.

As if you couldn't figure this out for yourself, comparing me to Phelps is a futile exercise. Apart from our ability to eat 8 – 10 thousand calories a day we don't have much in common. He grew up swimming every day, I swam on Wednesdays. He won medals, I learned how not to drown. He qualified for the Olympics at 15, I played a good bit of all-Ireland schools bridge.

As you can see there are quite a few parallels. Truth is, I am not that obsessed by Phelps. As a spectator, I just can't get that involved in individual sports. I don't know why, what Track and field athletes do is undeniably impressive, just a little sterile, a little boring. I realise that this all sounds mealy-mouthed. He has won 16 Olympic medals (age:23), and I am sitting on the couch in my pyjamas (age:33). I prefer team sports, I have clearer view on the whys and wherefores, what makes them tick.

But.

The level of physicality, and psychological nature of my training has caught me a little by surprise and I am beginning to understand and respect individual sports, and thus sportsmen, more. I am spending hours in the pool each week and the amount of boredom is staggering. The amount of mental toughness required to do this 8 hours a day, everyday, is and will remain an alien concept to me. I don't foresee a week that I will be in the pool for 30 hours, unless there is a guy with a gun keeping me there. That these guys can keep their head together is amazing, more amazing than how they train their bodies in my opinion. The level of mental acuity and toughness is beyond my reach. In all fairness, the physical aspect is too. In my defence (because I feel I am giving myself a bit of a hard time) there are days I really don't want to get into the pool and I do anyway. Besides, I am just jumping in the sea of a couple of hours. Perspective, I think, is required.

No wonder Phelps took recreational drugs, I would be a little suspicious if he didn't. I suggest to him that he should fill his pool with bong water. If an Olympic swimming pool is 50m x 20m x 2m, that means he’d need approximately 2,500,000 litres to fill his pool. Luckily that is the same amount that six stoners generate during a game of Risk, so getting the water shouldn’t be an issue.

Overall, I think I will stop comparing myself to Phelps. Yes, Spitz is the man for me. You just have to look at his moustache.