No Limits Read online

  3:07. I kept trying to figure out the mystery.

  An Olympic-sized pool is 50 meters long.

  I don’t swim the 50-meter freestyle sprint in competition. But I knew, of course, that whoever was going to win the sprint at the Beijing Olympics would do so, given advancements in pool technology and in swimsuits, in particular the Speedo LZR Racer, in well under 22 seconds.

  The 100-meter freestyle winner would go in about 47 seconds. The 200 free would end in about 1 minute, 43 seconds, the 400 free in about 3:42, maybe slightly under.

  There are three other strokes on the Olympic program: the backstroke, the breaststroke, and the butterfly. But races in those two strokes are only at 100 and 200 meters, not anywhere near long enough to be in the water for 3:07.

  There are three relays on the Olympic program, too. Two of them are freestyle relays, the 400 and the 800. Four swimmers take turns swimming laps, 100 meters apiece in the 400, 200 apiece in the 800. In neither of those could 3:07 mean anything.

  The other relay is what’s called the 400 medley relay. Again, four swimmers take turns swimming laps. In the medley each swims a different stroke: in order, the backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle. The winning time in the medley tends to be about three and a half minutes.

  I was completely stumped.

  Finally, I went to Bob to ask him what he thought it might be. Bob usually has the answers. It can be frustrating but it’s true: Bob usually has the answers.

  Bob’s interests out of the pool range across a wide variety of subjects. He can tell you about thoroughbred horses. About the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. About the genius of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Bob played violin and went to Florida State because it was an excellent music school; he studied music composition very seriously. He then switched to child psychology. Bob gets asked all the time if I see a sports psychologist. He answers: every day.

  The dynamic of our relationship over the years has been this: Bob pushed. I pushed right back. Bob can be gruff. He can be demanding. Sometimes he yells at me; as I’ve gotten older, I’ve shouted right back. The venting we do at each other just shows that I’m not scared of him, and he is for sure not scared of me. And the vast majority of the time, as in any partnership that works, and ours works, totally, we get along great. Because, bottom line, Bob is not only coach and mentor but so much more.

  When I was younger, he had taught me how to tie a tie. For my first school dance, when I was thirteen, he let me leave practice fifteen minutes early; when I showed up with the tie and went to put it on, he noticed that my shirt was buttoned one button off. So we fixed that together. When I was a teenager, he taught me how to drive. His car was a stick shift, and that’s how I learned. I always had trouble: I remember going to school one day, on a hill at a busy intersection, and of course I stalled the car in the middle of the hill. There were tons of people behind me. We fixed that together, too. I remember getting out of a workout and going to the prom—regular black tux, stretch white Hummer limo—and Bob was there to watch me head off.

  All the little things like that: Bob has always been there for me.

  At the Trials, I told Bob, I’m trying to make sense of this 3:07. What do you think it could be?

  At first, he said he didn’t know.

  The only thing he could think of, he finally said, was that 3:07 somehow related to the 400 individual medley, a race that like the medley relay combines all four strokes. The difference, of course, is that it’s just one person doing all the swimming, not four. Also, the order is different from the medley relay. In the IM, it goes: fly, back, breast, free.

  I had held the world record in the 400 IM since 2002. When I first set the record, at the summer nationals in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I touched in 4:11.09. Over the years, I had lowered the record a number of other times. At the 2007 world championships in Melbourne, Australia, I had lowered the 400 IM record to 4:06.22.

  3:07, Bob said, had to be a split time, meaning an intermediate time in a given race, in this instance after the breaststroke leg, or three-quarters of the 400 IM, with only the up-and-back freestyle portion to go.

  If you do that, he said, you’re going to finish in 4:03-something.

  That would be at least seven, nearing eight, seconds better than I had gone in first setting the record just six years before.

  More than two seconds better than I had gone in Melbourne.

  4:03? Obviously, some strong part of me believed I could go 4:03.

  If you put a limit on anything, you put a limit on how far you can go. I don’t think anything is too high. The more you use your imagination, the faster you go. If you think about doing the unthinkable, you can. The sky is the limit. That’s one thing I definitely have learned from Bob: Anything is possible. I deliberately set very high goals for myself; I work very hard to get there.

  4:03?

  Then again, why not? No limits.

  • • •

  Every year since I have been swimming competitively, I have set goals for myself. In writing.

  The goal sheet was mandatory. I got used to it and it became a habit. When I was younger, I used to scribble my goals out by hand and show the sheet to Bob. Now, I might type them on my laptop and e-mail him a copy. Each year, he would take a look at what I’d given him, or sent him, and that would be that. He wouldn’t challenge me, say this one’s too fast or that one’s not. When I was doing this only on paper, he typically would look at it and give it back to me; now he simply files away the electronic copy I send him.

  I usually kept my original paper version by the side of my bed.

  The two of us are the only ones who have it, who ever got to see it.

  The goal sheet was famously secret for a long time…Until now.

  I didn’t look at the sheet every day. I pretty much memorized it, how fast I wanted to swim and what I had to do to get there. If there was a day when I was down, when I was not swimming well, when I simply felt tired or grouchy, I would look at it. It was definitely a pick-me-up.

  Pretty soon after I made my first goal sheet, I hit every one of the times to a tenth of a second. Precisely. Exactly. It’s like I have an innate body clock. I don’t know 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 went.

  My best time of the three turned out to be 2:09. Bob was obviously disappointed. After the 2:04.68 from the year before, he thought I was going to do 2:05, at least. Maybe, he told me, you could even break two minutes.

  In the back of his mind, Bob was holding out the possibility, no matter how remote it seemed, that I could finish in the top two at the Olympic Trials that summer in Indianapolis and make the Olympic team. At that point, I had produced nothing to suggest that the 2000 Olympics were truly possible. This did not deter Bob. He believed in me, completely.

  The way swim meets work, the heats are usually in the morning or early afternoon, and the finals at night. When I was a teenager, the heats would pretty much always go off in front of just a few people in the stands, typically parents, brothers and sisters, other coaches. I have come to like a noisy crowd. Early that afternoon in Federal Way, there was almost nobody in the stands.

  I went 1:59.6.

  That broke the age-group record for fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds. I was still only fourteen.

  That night I came back and raced the 200 fly again. I finished in 1:59.02, behind only Stephen Parry of Great Britain and Malchow.

  Afterward, I had my first interview. I was asked, did you think you could break two minutes in the 200 fly? Here’s what I said: My coach told me I could do it.

  It’s after that 1:59.6, Bob likes to say, that he knew I would make the Olympic team, maybe sooner than later. I had no idea. I was, after all, fourteen.

  The day after that, I set another age-group record in the 400 IM, lowering my time in that race by seven seconds, to 4:24.

  The next day, I wasn’t swimming in any finals. Sightseeing? No way. Into the pool I went.

  We got home from Federal Way on a school day. My mom, who was at work, had put a large banner saying, “Congratulations,” on the lawn and had trimmed it in red, white, and blue. Bob, who had brought me back to the house, took down the entire display. When she got home, Mom was furious. Bob was unmoved. It was a matter, Bob said, of tempering expectations. Best to keep everything in perspective. Bob asked my mom, “What are you going to do when he wins nationals? He got third. If he wins, are you going to buy him a car? If he sets a world record, what, a house? You can’t get excited about every step. There are so many steps. We’re on, like, step 200 of 3,000. How are we going to keep going?”

  Bob has, without question, helped refine my intense drive and dedication. He has also, without question, helped me believe that anything is possible. Two seconds faster than the world record? Doesn’t matter. Three seconds faster? Doesn’t matter. You can swim as fast as you want. You can do anything you want. You just have to dream it, believe it, work at it, go for it.

  I wrote the sheet that lay out my goals for 2008 a few weeks after coming back from those 2007 world championships in Melbourne. That meet in Australia had been one of my best ever. I won seven gold medals and set five world records, including that 4:06.22 in the 400 IM.

  In the 100 free, I wanted in the Olympic year of 2008 to go 47.50.

  200 free: 1:43.5.

  100 fly: 49.5.

  200 fly: 1:51.1.

  200 IM: 1:53.5.

  And the 400 IM: 4:05 flat.

  There’s more on the sheet, other races as well as split times for every single race.

  But these were races I was likely to swim at the Olympics.

  In writing that I wanted to go 4:05 in 2008, I knew full well that was ambitious. That would be more than a full second better than I had ever done before.

  And yet: 3:07.

  Which meant 4:03.

  • • •

  I started swimming when I was seven.

  Mom put me in a stroke clinic taught by one of her good friends, Cathy Lears.

  “I’m cold,” I remember saying.

  And, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  And, “Can’t I just sit here and watch the other kids? I’ll stay here by the side.”

  Mostly, I remember, I simply didn’t like putting my face under the water.

  Miss Cathy told me I could use the backstroke, if that’s what I wanted. But I was going to check off every item on the practice plan. “You’re going to learn,” she said, “one way or the other.”

  I complained and whined some more.

  Even so, I finished every item on her plan. And soon enough I learned how to flip over onto my tummy and learned to swim the freestyle.

  It would be a couple years yet until I would be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. All everyone knew, in particular my mom, my sisters, and my coaches, was that I had all this energy and that I could bleed off a lot of it by playing sports: baseball, soccer, lacrosse, swimming, you name it.

  What I discovered soon after starting to swim was that the pool was a safe haven. I certainly couldn’t have put that into words then but can look back and see it now. Two walls at either end. Lane lines on either side. A black stripe on the bottom for direction. I could go fast in the pool, it turned out, in part because being in the pool slowed down my mind.

  In the water, I felt, for the first time, in control. Swimmers like to say they can “feel” the water. Even early on, I felt it. I didn’t have to fight the water. Instead, I could feel how I moved in it. How to be balanced. What might make me go faster or slower.

  It would be ridiculous to say that I was a world-class talent from the very start. If it wasn’t for the fact that Hilary and Whitney were swimming, I probably wouldn’t even have started swimming.

  I was a kid. A kid who was given to whining and—it’s true—crying. I was seemingly forever on the verge of tears. My coaches remember a kid who was constantly being picked on. When I was younger, it seemed like almost anything could set me off into an emotional jag or launch me into a full-on tantrum, throwing my goggles and generally carrying on.

  All this agitation was
probably just my way of seeking attention. Mostly, I wanted to fit in, especially with the older kids. I just wanted to be acknowledged.

  And yet, amid all this drama, I already had a dream: I wanted to win an Olympic gold medal.

  One.

  Just one. That was it at the start. Just one medal.

  I also knew that winning Olympic medals was, truly, possible. It happened to people I knew. When I was seven, Anita Nall, a North Baltimore swimmer, won a gold, a silver, and a bronze at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. When I was eleven, Beth Botsford, another North Baltimore swimmer, won two gold medals in Atlanta.

  My Olympic ambitions might not have been obvious, granted, especially early on and especially in the mornings, when I’d have to get up for practice. I have never been what you’d call enthusiastic about being up early in the morning.

  Mom would come to get me out of bed. It would still be dark out. She would turn on a soft light in my room, a little night-light, and say, “Good morning, Michael. It’s time for morning workout.”

  I would grump and groan.

  Mom would go down the steps. I would just lie there in bed, nice and comfy. A few minutes later, she would come back and say, “Pop-Tarts are coming out of the toaster now. I’ll be in the car waiting for you. Pick them up on your way out the door, because Bob’s expecting you at workout.”

  My mom would go out to the car and sit, waiting for me. Bob is a morning person. He likes to get up before dawn. It’s his favorite part of the day. Always has been.

  Later, into middle school and high school, I remember driving in the dark to the pool and there never being any lights on at any house on the way there, and it would just be my mom and me, alone, going to practice. Sometimes my mom would yawn; I still can’t believe how loud she sounds when she is yawning.

  Once my mom had dropped me off at Meadowbrook, about 15 minutes away from where we lived, in Towson, Maryland, I usually wouldn’t make it home again until it was dark again. Bob would take me from practice to school, or to breakfast and then to school, and then in the afternoon we would go back to the pool. Mom would come get me at maybe seven at night.