Common Bond

Michael Phelps is at a pinnacle. The whole sporting world has slowed to watch this giant of sport do something that has never been done before. I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to witness his greatness over the last week and to share a love with him for the sport of swimming. I feel like a bit of an insider, having suffered through similar pain as Phelps has because of swimming workouts, weight sessions, and mental battles.

Of course, Phelps has faced more yardage and intimidating workouts than I have. His mental battles have been on a different scale than my mental battles, but they are essentially the same. You want to kill your alarm clock when it starts beeping at 5:45am five days a week. With your toes curled around the edge of the pool at 5:59am, the last thing you want to do is to jump into a cold pool. You want to be in a warm bed. You show up to a workout hoping it won’t be that bad, but you see your least favorite set, the one that makes you have spotty vision, makes you throw up in the gutter, makes your lungs burn and doesn’t allow you to get that long cooling breath that you need to dose the flames.

You face these challenges almost everyday for years on end so you can dive in for a few minutes, one minute, or even less. I once calculated the ratio between the time it took me to swim my best event, the 50 freestyle, and the time I would spend that season training for that event. The ratio was 1: 80,000. That’s a staggering number. Not really something too many swimmers face, but I know Phelps has lived that reality two times over probably, and that’s why I get goose bumps before his races. That’s why I scream during the last 50 meters. That’s why I am literally shaking from adrenaline after every race.

That’s why I jumped up off the couch and felt like I just won a gold medal eight times during the last week. Forget the fact that I get told by strangers that I look like Michael Phelps. Forget that I really am one person away from knowing Phelps. My college roommate, Scott Usher, swam with Phelps in the Athens Olympic Games in 2004. He has traveled to many meets with him and he has his cell number and is a legitimate friend with him, not just on Facebook, but in real life. Forget that I joke with my wife that since we are one person removed from Phelps “we are almost famous.”

No. It’s not any of those things.

It’s the stinging pain, the struggle, the pursuit of perfection in an element that we weren’t built for that binds me to this Olympian—the greatest ever.