I Wanted to be like Mike

I wanted to be like Mike. After this month’s Olympics in Beijing, who wouldn’t? By now you’re familiar with Michael Phelps, the 23-year old American swimmer who singlehandedly won more medals than Mongolia, Malaysia and Moldova combined, breaking world record after world record and making all the other swimmers look like Water Baby class dropouts with swim diapers and runny noses. I first told myself I’d never be like Mike – at least not in the pool. My competitive swim career ended in the phone booth of a local swim club as a ten year old. Whether it was the fear of competition, the early morning practices or how my new Speedo pinched me in all the wrong places, I hid from the coach and cried to my mom over the phone until she agreed to rescue me.

So how else could I be like Mike? After watching his Olympic victories and scouring the internet for any and all stories about him, I learned that Mike likes to eat. Hey, me too! I love to eat. Maybe I could be like Mike. I wouldn’t need to shave my body or wear a form-fitting bathing suit to eat just like him. Sure, he swallows 12,000 calories a day, not a normal amount, but how hard could it be to sit around and eat? I’ve been doing it for years but never had a goal – maybe this time, with focus and the right amount of coaching, I could live the Olympic experience and never leave my kitchen.

My Phelps Gastronomic Emulation Experience took place last Sunday. I’d learned that Mike works out for six hours a day, so I needed to burn a few calories before sitting down to breakfast. I can’t even sleep for six hours a day, and I certainly wasn’t going to swim for six hours, so instead I ran for three miles, burning 458 calories, which was not a good sign. Michael probably burns that flossing his teeth.

Preparing breakfast was a workout in itself. First, a five-egg omelet, then three chocolate chip pancakes, three slices of French toast, followed by three fried egg and cheese sandwiches on whole wheat buns with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and fried onions (a nice touch). Oh, and a bowl of grits, which I hear is a southern delicacy – which, if true, is the reason the South lost the Civil War (“Git that blue coat, Jessup!” “I cain’t - my belly’s a’swollen with them dang grits!”). I finished cooking and sat down with the feast before me. The mood among the coaching staff in the kitchen was not one of positive encouragement. “You’re gonna barf,” my daughter told me as she paced back and forth. I wore swim goggles and my two fourth-place butterfly medals from my younger days to get in the mood as I began eating.

Whatever calories I burned during my daybreak run I gained back after the second bite of the mayo and fried onions in the first egg sandwich. The sandwiches were going down faster than expected, and the omelet wasn’t so bad. And those pancakes, wow! Chocolate chips are yummy! “I can do this no problem,” I said to myself between forkfuls of eggs and French toast. Even the grits were good – well, ok, “good” might not be accurate. How about “edible?” On to the second egg and cheese sandwich and some coffee and maybe a few more bites of the omelet. Ding Ding! Open wide! Here comes the chocolate chip choo choo around the corner for more pancakes! Let’s not forget the French toast. The food was disappearing, and I felt fine, even though I was in a full sweat as my goggles fogged up. Just a few more nibbles of the omelet and maybe a spoonful more of the grits before I returned to the French toast. Hmm, well, maybe I should take a breath or two – I mean, no need to rush it right? “Let me get through these pancakes, and then I’ll worry about the last egg sandwich,” I murmured to no one in particular. Fifteen minutes into the first meal of the day, my belly was filling up, the coffee was cold and the grits, um, the grits started to look and taste like wallpaper spackle. But I needed to get through that last sandwich – a few more mouthfuls and I’d be done.

How does Michael Phelps do it? I felt like I swallowed fifty pounds of wood pulp and couldn’t imagine keeping my head above water much less doing the backstroke for 360 minutes. With half a bowl of grits and a few slices of French toast remaining, I sulked away from the kitchen counter. No time to think about failure because lunch was coming soon. The menu - one pound of pasta (with sauce), 1,000 calories of energy drinks, and two ham and cheese sandwiches. As I imagined every bite of lunch, I lay on the floor of the living room, delirious with carbohydrates. My son yelled to no one in particular, “This was a really bad idea.” I began to concur but drifted off to a fitful nap.

At 1:30 PM, about four hours since breakfast, I headed to the pool, knowing I needed to burn more calories if I stood any chance of surviving. There are few sights sadder than a 41-year old short fat man wearing borrowed goggles, gym shorts and a heart rate monitor around his bulging pale belly trying to swim laps. I swam for thirty minutes, the pace going something like this – stroke, breathe, burp, stroke, burp, breathe, stroke, burp. I burned 273 calories, an amount Mike burns as he clips his enormous toe nails on his cartoonishly huge feet.

I arrived home and decided to skip lunch – two sandwiches, a gallon of protein shakes and a pound of fusilli? No way. But the day wasn’t over, and there was still time for redemption, so I hopped on my bike and spent the next ninety minutes riding up, over and down Oak Hill and home, burning another 1,100 calories. Maybe my mini-triathlon had the intended effect, because when I got home, I was hungry for the first time since dawn.

For dinner each day, Michael Phelps consumes an entire cheese pizza, another 1,000 calories of energy drinks and a second pound of pasta with sauce. It’s rare when a grown man has an excuse to order, buy and eat an entire pizza pie, and I relished the moment. As I returned home from the pizza shop, I thought I heard the faint tones of the Olympic theme song playing in a distant meadow, but it turned out to be one of the four strawberry cream Myoplex shakes I chugged in order to get a head start on the meal. The shake had a vague taste of gorilla sweat combined with the fruity aroma of marshmallow circus peanuts and a metallic finish like when you chew on a lint-covered pencil. The pinkish liquid was seeking a place to call home in my gut, and the sound was unnerving.

By the fourth slice of pizza, I faced the reality that I was no Olympic athlete – I couldn’t swim like one, and I now knew I couldn’t eat like one. The giant bowl of pasta never stood a chance, and the idea of taking another swig of that strawberry bilge water masquerading as protein made me want to cry and/or vomit. My son saw the anguish on my face and said, “For your own health, just say, ‘I quit’ and walk away.” I did just that. There would be no gold medal for me this day.

I no longer want to be like Mike. I don’t have the time, the physique or the talent. He’s the greatest athlete in the world, and I’m the fourth greatest athlete in my house. Besides, those grits were really gross.