No Limits (18 page)

There were afternoon practices as well, along with weights three times a week; and “dryland,” push-ups, pull-ups, medicine ball or yoga, and, depending on the time of year, separate cardio work.

Bob spelled out in meticulous detail how each practice would go. He wrote the program out in longhand, then made copies for each of us and for the coaches. It was way too complicated to memorize. The trick was to dip your own copy in the pool water, which would give it just enough stick to get stuck to the metal guardrail at the end of each of our lanes. Each workout also included a notation in the corner: how many days to go until the Trials in Omaha as well as the Games in Beijing.

There were kicking drills. Work with kickboards, snorkels and paddles. With fins. Parachutes.

There were no bathroom breaks. At least for the guys. If you had to go, you went, right there in the pool.

Around all this working out there had to be resting, noon-time naps, especially.

And there had to be eating. Lots of eating. Thousands of calories. During the Olympics, that rumor got started that I was inhaling twelve thousand calories a day. It seemed to spread like wildfire. It's just not true.

Maybe eight to ten thousand calories per day. But not twelve thousand.

When I was in Baltimore, later in my high-school years, I used to go after practice every morning to a restaurant named Pete's.
Breakfast there went like this: three sandwiches made of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onion, and mayonnaise. An omelet. A bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast with powdered sugar. And, as a kicker, three chocolate chip pancakes.

In Ann Arbor, my days started before that morning practice with a PowerBar, a bagel, a bowl of cereal, or a Pop-Tart. Just something quick and easy, some carbs before working out.

After the morning swim, I would go out for a real breakfast to places I soon discovered as I found my way around Ann Arbor.

If it was Benny's Family Dining, I liked to slide into a booth near the front, away from the cigarette smokers. Breakfast would start with a bowl of rice pudding. Then: three eggs over easy, hash browns, sausages, and wheat toast. Maybe a side of bacon. Sometimes, I'd go for the Mexican or Southern omelet. If I was off to Mr. Greek's, I would have a Greek's skillet: scrambled eggs, gyro meat, feta cheese, tomato, and onion, with bacon or sausage on the side. Plus a short stack of banana chocolate-chip pancakes. If I was really hungry, I might also get an order of cheese fries. At ten in the morning, cheese fries at the same meal with pancakes. Sounds so bad. Tasted so good.

The Maize and Blue Deli Delicatessen was another regular stop, for stuffed sandwiches, two or three. Maybe the No. 29, Jennifer's Dream: turkey, provolone, mayo, Dijon mustard, lettuce, tomato, and pickle on grilled white bread. Or the No. 30, Forever Turkey: turkey, provolone cheese, Dijon mustard, tomato, and onion on grilled sourdough rye. Or possibly the Maize 'N Blue Special, No. 69: roast beef, smoked turkey, cheddar, Jarlsberg cheese, mustard, lettuce, tomato, onion, and mild pepper on a sub roll.

If I didn't want to sit down, I'd hop by Bruegger's, the bagel place, for two or three sausage, egg, and cream cheese bagels to go. Sausage, egg, and cream cheese. Tastes great.

Whether I ate at one of my favorite places or grabbed the
bagels to go, the next destination was always home, to rest before the afternoon workout, usually four to six
P.M.
After I'd get up for that, I'd have something small to eat, maybe a sandwich, or leftover pizza, or a bowl of cereal.

At night, it was off to the Produce Station, one of those grocery stores that sells every different kind of fruit and vegetable as well as ready-made dinners like chicken or steak. If not there, to a Mexican restaurant called the Prickly Pear for the buffalo enchiladas. A place called Casey's had awesome burgers.

I had my few spots in Ann Arbor, and at those spots I had my selections on each of the menus. It got pretty quickly to the point where I didn't even bother looking at a menu. I got the same thing every time. It's always been like that with me: At that meet in Federal Way when I was not yet fifteen, I ate every single meal, twenty-one over seven days, at a place called Mitzell's, next to our hotel, and at every single meal I had clam chowder as an appetizer and cheesecake for dessert.

Erik, meanwhile, after moving to Ann Arbor, tried to go organic. When I wake up, he used to say, I feel it, I feel alive.

I felt alive, too, even if I wasn't going organic. I ate whatever I wanted, really. But I also ate my salads, my greens, making sure to give my body everything it needed.

But not twelve thousand calories per day. If I had done that, I would seriously have fit the funny headline in the
New York Post
during the Beijing Olympics that reported I was eating that much: “Boy Gorge.”

•   •   •

As intense as the pace in Ann Arbor could be, swimming maybe 55 miles per week, it was a piece of cheesecake indeed when compared to our training sessions at the USOC base in Colorado Springs, altitude 6,100 feet. Those camps were, in a word, brutal.

We went there three times in the eighteen months preceding the
2008 Trials, once after the Melbourne Worlds, once as the calendar was turning from 2007 to 2008, then one last time, as April 2008 stretched into May.

The point of these excursions to Colorado was twofold: Swimming at altitude helps build endurance. And being at the USOC base makes you focus completely on swimming, because there is nothing else there to do. It's a place with absolutely no distractions. You swim, you eat, you sleep. Literally, that's all there is to do. Bob likes it that way. He has a captive audience.

The idea that you could ratchet up your endurance by training at altitude became widespread in track and field after Kip Keino, who had been born and raised at elevation in western Kenya, ran to Olympic glory in Mexico City at the 1968 Summer Games. From then on it was only a matter of time until it spread as well to other sports, including swimming.

It's easy to explain why altitude training works. Red blood cells carry oxygen; the cells in the muscles demand that oxygen. The more red blood cells you have, the more oxygen you can carry to the muscles. Training at altitude builds more red blood cells. Thus, back at sea level for competitions, the harder, faster, stronger—whatever—you should be able to go.

The trick at altitude is to ride the fine line between doing enough but not too much. Thus the coaching dilemma: How much to challenge each of us without anyone breaking down? The working theory for Bob and Jon was that we would do just as much work as if we were still in Michigan, but instead of two swims per day it would be spread over three—the shorter sessions being less of a challenge to the immune system. Even so, Bob would spend most of his time in Colorado worried about us going over the edge because once you're over, it's over. You don't come back, at least not quickly.

Bob's mentor, Paul Bergen, believed in the benefits of training at altitude; that led Bob to the altitude-training protocols developed by Gennady Touretsky, the former Soviet national sprint
coach who, from a base in Australia, directed Alexander Popov, the Russian swimmer who won the sprints, both the 50 and 100, at both the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Bob managed to get copies of what Touretsky had done. Using that as a starting point, then mixing in Jon's proven success in designing programs to hone middle-distance swimmers, Bob designed his own plan that pushed each one of us to our limits.

Each Colorado trip runs for three weeks and includes roughly seventy swimming, conditioning, or weightlifting workouts. Everything gets carefully plotted out on a Cambridge planning pad, on graph paper, that Bob buys at CVS drugstores, eight at a time; he always buys them in bulk because he's afraid one day they're going to stop selling them.

At the final camp, the one in April and May, we swam, all in, about 200,000 meters, or just under 125 miles. If we were running on the roads, that would have been the equivalent of nearly five marathons.

The push is both in the mileage itself and in the intensity of the workouts. There were days of aerobic work, which for us meant a workout where we were not breathing hard and our pulse would average 120 to 140 beats per minute, alternating with days of anaerobic work, swims where we were breathing harder and our heart rates were pushed up to 175 to 200 beats. The area in between aerobic and anaerobic work, 150 to 175 beats, is called the “anaerobic threshold”; that threshold zone, according to Jon, provides the most optimal intensity for improving endurance. It was obviously critical to find that zone. Complicating things just a bit, that zone was different for each of us. How to find it? It was done in Ann Arbor the week before leaving for Colorado. Each of us was put through a timed swim, 300 meters ten times; the results were fed into a computer program of Jon's design; the program calculated the 100-meter threshold pace.

Altitude added a two-second difference. At sea level, my threshold before the last trip to Colorado was 1:05.7; at altitude, it then
became 1:07.7. Peter and Erik were training for longer distances than I was. Erik's threshold at sea level, for instance, was 1:03.5; at altitude, it became 1:05.5.

When we got into the pool in Colorado, we would then each be assigned the same general workout but be expected to finish laps at times that were calculated from each individual threshold. So, for example, if it was Monday afternoon of the first week, the main swim would be called a rainbow set, when we progressed through a color code from the computer printout doing 4,000 meters, forty 100s. The 4,000 would be broken down into five groups of eight swims; after each 100 we earned a slight rest period, 12 to 19 seconds, depending on where it was in the sequence.

Each of us would be told to do two of those five groups below the threshold, what Bob and Jon called the white, then pink pace; then one at threshold pace, red; then two sets above threshold pace, blue and purple, the colors getting darker in the way your skin might show signs of hard work and lack of oxygen.

The white pace for me, then, would be eight laps holding a time of 1:08.3 per 100; pink, 1:06; red, 1:04.8; blue, 1:02.7; purple, 1:00.5. Erik and Peter would have their own times.

The red pace, 1:04.8, doesn't correlate exactly with the 1:07.7 threshold time because I wouldn't be asked to swim the set continuously; instead, I was doing it in intervals, the computer figuring out the difference.

It's physically demanding and perhaps even more so mentally.

Coming into Omaha, however, we knew we were in great shape. It showed in the 200 free finals. I won, and Peter came in second. Erik came in sixth, a finish that got him onto the 2008 U.S. team and meant he would be swimming, at the least, in the prelims of the 800 relay in Beijing. He was pumped. For everything he had done in his career, Erik had never been on an Olympic relay. Not even once, and when we were sitting around
the hotel room in Omaha before the 200 free final, he asked me, what do you think it's going to take to make it?

1:46, I said.

I can do that, he said.

Hop a wave that first 100, then destroy it coming home, I said.

Erik finished in 1:46.95. At 150, he said after the race, he not only could hear the crowd roaring, he could feel the roar in the pool. The last 15 meters, he didn't risk even one breath; he just put his head down and went for it. He said afterward, “If I pass out, I pass out.” Better to have finished sixth and passed out afterwards than get seventh, he figured.

He did not pass out.

Klete came in fourth; he was in, too, along with two more up-and-coming talents from the University of Texas, Ricky Berens and Dave Walters, Ricky finishing third, Dave fifth.

As it turned out, Erik did not make the team in the 1500, to his, and pretty much everyone else's, surprise. Erik had come down from altitude and gone 14:46.78 at the Santa Clara meet in May, a U.S. Open record in the 1500; he finished an easy first, by 12 seconds, in the 1500 qualifying heat in Omaha. It seemed a foregone conclusion that he would not only win, he might set a record, especially when he told me the day before the finals, I'm feeling so good, so fresh.

That 1500 final was scheduled for the last day of the Trials, after I had finished my swims. Walking around the arena before the race, thinking Erik might finish in the low 14:40s, I ran into his parents, who said, well, how do you think he's going to do?

Really well, I said.

It just didn't turn out that way. Two-thirds of the way through the race, as Erik kept dropping farther and farther back, I found Bob and Jon poolside and I said, why is this happening?

No idea, each of them said. His warm-up was fine, his splits awesome.

After the race, Erik answered questions from the press for a
long time. I waited for him. When he finished and got to me, I said, “You all right?”

“I don't know what it was,” he said. “I felt so good today. But as soon as I dove in, I just didn't have it.”

We stood there and hugged each other. Then he walked off. There wasn't anything more to say.

At least he was on the team. And in the relay pool. I was fired up about that. I was either going to be swimming with him, or for him.

•   •   •

Before the 400 free relay in Beijing, there is absolutely no question that the most exciting relay I had ever taken part in was the 800 free relay in Athens. There was also no question that this particular event had a special place in the tradition and culture of American swimming.

Before that Athens relay, for instance, Eddie showed us video of the 800 relay final from the 1984 Los Angeles Games. What a race. This was one of the few events at those Olympics unaffected by the Soviet-led boycott; everyone knew all along it was going to come down to the Americans and the West Germans, with Michael Gross. Coming into the Games, the Germans held the world record; in the prelims, a U.S. team broke it.