No Limits Read Free Page B

how or why I was able to do this. I just could, and often still can. It’s another way in which Bob says I’m different, and always have been.
    When I was thirteen, Bob felt I needed to have some formal lessons in goal-setting. One day, on a school holiday, he surprised my mom by saying, I’m taking Michael to lunch today. He came and picked me up, and we went to this restaurant that I liked. He pulled out a sheet of paper. He said, okay, what are your goals this summer?
    Of course, I replied, I don’t know.
    He started suggesting some things I ought to do and said, why don’t we pick three events. Let’s start, he said, with the 1500 meters. The 1500 is almost a mile. A Bowman favorite. We were trying, even when I was that young, to lay down a base of endurance work. Let’s do that in 16 minutes flat, he said.
    Let’s also pick the 200 fly, Bob said, and I put down 2:04.68. That time was precisely one-hundredth of a second under the national age-group record. That would be a big drop for you, he said.
    Okay.
    Bob then said, let’s pick the 400 IM. He suggested a time of 4:31.68, which was also near the age-group record.
    He said, take this paper home and put it on your refrigerator. You’ll see it every day.
    That summer, at the 1999 junior nationals in Orlando, I didn’t win any events.
    In the 1500, I went 16:00.08. I was off by eight-hundredths of a second.
    In the 400 IM, I swam 4:31.68. Precisely.
    In the 200 fly, I swam 2:04.68. Precisely.
    The 200 fly time was nearly 10 seconds better than the best time I had done in practice about six weeks beforehand, when Bob had ordered a set of three 200 flys as a tune-up.
    In that 200 fly in Orlando I took third place. Bob congratulated me and said first place might have been bad luck. He said he had never coached anyone who had won juniors and then had gone on to win nationals as a senior.
    Later that summer, I went to the senior nationals in Minneapolis. In my first race, I finished 41st. My next race was the 200 fly. I finished dead last in my heat, in 2:07.
    This was maybe a lesson for Bob. Maybe I wasn’t ready just quite yet. Maybe I was just emotionally overwhelmed. I had touched in 2:04.68 a few weeks before; logic said I should have gone at least that fast in Minneapolis.
    That summer I turned fourteen. I can still remember being on the pool deck at nationals, getting ready for my heat, and thinking, there’s Tom Dolan. Tom Dolan! He was 6-feet-6 and was supposed to have only 3 percent body fat. He had gone to the University of Michigan and had already won a gold medal in the 400 IM at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. He was a legend not only for what he had done but also for how he trained: to the point of exhaustion, maybe beyond.
    Another time at the meet in Minneapolis, I remember, I was sitting in the stands and there, across the pool deck, went Tom Malchow. Tom Malchow! He had gone to the University of Michigan, too. And he had won a silver medal in the 200 fly in Atlanta.
    I was in awe. Here I was, on the very same pool deck with Olympic swimmers.
    The last day of the meet in Minneapolis, I wasn’t due to compete in any races. This meant nothing to Bob. “Get ready, Michael,” he said. “You’re doing a practice today.”
    What?
    I didn’t even have a suit with me. Why would I? I wasn’t supposed to race.
    I thought to myself, we’re already at the pool, are we really going to get in the car, go back to the hotel, drive all the way back here and train?
    Yes.
    It took us a good 40 minutes to go there and back. I didn’t like it, didn’t like any of it. Bob didn’t care. I went back in the water.
    That fall, back in Baltimore, we started training for the 2000 spring nationals in Federal Way, Washington, near Seattle.
    With six weeks to go, Bob had an idea at practice. Let’s do what we did last year as a trial run: a set of three 200 flys. Into the water I