No Limits by Michael Phelps Read Free Book Online Page B

for the Olympics was out of my control.
    I don’t worry about other guys when I’m training, not even Lochte. I get myself ready. Of course I’m racing at the Olympics, or anywhere, against other guys. But I’m also racing against the clock. And, maybe mostly, against myself, to see how good I can be.
    That said, I want to be clear: I have the utmost respect for my competitors. I love to race them. Those guys help me. The faster they get, the faster I get, because I don’t want to lose.
    If I could do 4:05 at Trials, I thought, maybe I really could do 4:03. My lactate response after the 4:05 proved perfectly normal. Which made me think: I’d had a racing heartbeat beforehand yet had thrown down a world record, and immediately afterward the blood work showed I was completely back to normal.
    Which made me also think that it’s all in how you respond to pressure.
    I also knew there were things I could fix to get me to 4:03. I knew my breaststroke could be faster. I knew I could go out harder in the fly and still be relaxed. That’s one of the biggest things I have in the medley; I can go out so much faster than other guys in the fly, that first leg, yet be more relaxed and comfortable. It’s called easy speed. I have it.
    3:07.
    The dream kept visiting me throughout my week in Omaha, as I went on to qualify to represent the United States at the Beijing Games in five individual events: the 400 IM, 200 free, 200 fly, 200 IM, and 100 fly.
    I also swam 47.92 in the preliminaries of the 100 free, thetenth-fastest time ever. The point of that swim was to be in the pool for the 400 free relay, nothing more. I didn’t even swim the semifinals or finals of the 100 free.
    After the Trials, then, it seemed all but certain I would swim at the Games in three relays: the 400 free, the 800 free, and the 400 medley.
    All in, eight chances for gold.
    All in, including preliminary and semifinal swims, 17 races in just nine days.
    After the Trials, all of us on the U.S. team went off to Palo Alto, California, for a training camp; then to Singapore, for more practice but in the same time zone as Beijing; then, finally, on to Beijing.
    In Palo Alto, I was on my game. Bob said it felt like every day in Palo Alto for him, watching me, was like Christmas. However, Lochte was on, too.
    Lochte and I don’t do a lot of head-to-head sets because, as Bob figures, somebody’s likely to learn something about the other guy. One morning, however, we lined up for a complicated set, four of each stroke, that ended with fast 50s of each stroke—fast meaning race pace. On the fly, Lochte was close to me; on the back, dead even; on the breast, he was perhaps a full second ahead, a huge difference; we were dead even again on the free.
    I was happy with the set. Bob was happy, too, but you could almost see him thinking, hmmm. I knew he had noticed how fast Lochte had gone during the breast.
    If I never once imagined Ryan beating me, Bob probably thought about it every day. Maybe that’s the way we have to go.
    The Singapore camp was mostly about resting and recovering, not hard training. I did do one butterfly set that undeniably hinted at what kind of shape I was in: three 100 flys, with easy 200s in between, each 100 faster than the other. I did the last one in 51.6. It was maybe the best practice I had ever done, and just to put it in perspective: A week before the 2007 Worlds inMelbourne, I pushed a 53.8, which Bob and I both thought was terrific.
    So, a 51.6. Bob walked over to another one of the American coaches and said with a big smile, well, my work is done, I’m officially on vacation.
    Hardly. But we were both feeling good about where I was.
    When swimmers are gearing up for a big meet, we go through a cycle that’s called “shave and taper.” As the meet draws near, the idea is to keep training but include more rest, drawing on the weeks and months of hard training beforehand, the