aquathletic vitae

NYT:

The crux of [Michael] Phelps’s superiority — the quality that allows him to maintain the power and efficiency of his strokes when other swimmers begin to falter and that allows him to overpower competitors in the final lap of a race — is his endurance. Years of [coach Bob] Bowman’s drills have developed and refined Phelps’s capacity to endure, but from the outset Phelps brought to the pool physiological attributes that place him at the limit for his species. Under aerobic strain, Phelps produces far less lactic acid than other athletes.... Genadijus Sokolovas, an intense former pentathlete from Lithuania who is the sports-science director for USA Swimming, explained to me how important this is: “I recently calculated how much Michael is going to swim in Beijing. We don’t know his final schedule yet, but if it’s similar to Athens, the total time he’ll spend in the water — preliminaries, semifinals, finals, warm-ups, cool-downs — will be the equivalent of running eight or nine marathons over the course of the Olympic Games.”

that's based on the number of calories burned. going by distance, he'll swim a "mere" 30 miles. yeesh. what a crazy gunard, right?

yet 'tis true. weird fishes = rad.

and something else true for ye, re: water. didja know...? Point Nemo is the spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that is the place on Earth farthest from land. fact!

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