A great night (morning) of swimming.

I'm spoiled. But I am also blessed. And thankful. I have a great job right now with AMAZING perks. I've been in China for nearly a month and still haven't had a full day off. However, I have been able to get some downtime to see some events recently. This morning happened to be one of them.

Today I got the chance to visit the Water Cube and check out some fantastic swimming. Have I mentioned I really enjoy my job and get some awesome perks?

When we got here, out supervisers told us to make a list of our top 3 picks to check for events we wanted to see and they would try their best to get us a ticket. My first two choices were obvious - modern pentathlon and men's epee fencing. I was offered a ticket to fencing but had to work that day, but in replace of it, I was given a ticket to this morning's session of swimming (which was evening for folks in the US).

If you didn't see it on tv, the roster of races that went on today were men's 200 m free final, men's and women's 100 back final, women's 100 breast final, men's 200 fly semi's, and women's 200 IM semi's. Not a bad replacement ticket. Haha....I can't even type that with a straight face.

The racing was ridiculous. Michael Phelps is SO INCREDIBLY FAST. It blows my mind how good he is. Back when I was still competing as an athlete, I had the honor of sharing pool space with him when he came down to CO to train for a brief altitude camp. My coach would pull me out of the water just to watch his technique and see how it supposed to be done.

Flawless. Efficient. Effortless. Really, really, really x 100...good.

While in CO I saw him do a workout where he kicked 50m faster than I could swim. That's really when I knew he was on a completely other level.

And that's the great thing about watching the Olympics and great athletes live. You truly get to see how talented they are. And for sport neds like me, that's akin to Malcolm X going to Mecca. Just opens your mind.

Outside of Phelps, it was great to see Team USA completely dominate the racing. 4 finals and 7 medals. Holy cow. 2 world records! Seriously? And I got to watch that in person?

Here are a few tidbits of inside info for you to nibble on...

• Phelps is a nice guy and shy. Who always tries to remain low key and is rarely demanding. he was great to work with when we picked him at the airport and got him onto the Village bus without notice.
• Phelps wanted that 200 record. You could tell because he wore the full body suit when he normally wears just the leg suit. It is really too bad we didn't get to see him race Ian Thorpe and Vandenhoogenban in their primes. He would have cleaned their clocks.
• Great to see Aaron Piersol win the backstroke in the 100 and break his world record. The guy is California cool. I don't think I have ever seen a more laid back person. And he is a U Texas alum. Gotta love that.
• Natalie Coughlin is hot. But you already knew that.

• Watching the racing in person is a bit anti-climatic. Its hard to tell who wins becuase they don't immediately display it on the monitor. At least not in finish order. They post it all according to lane assignment. So the entire crowd has to wait a few seconds to figure out who won when it is close. And every race looks close. Also, without the build-up from a television broadcast, you don't get that overwhelming feeling unless you know the sport and can appreciate what happened. For example, when Coughlin won, the crowd was kind of apathetic because it wasn't a world record. And that felt really odd. Here she won the gold and was 2 tenths off her record, yet the crowd was silent. Strange.
  
• Because of the seeming lack of crowd energy, it almost more fun to watch the racing on the big screen tv's we have in the dining hall with all the staff and athletes who are all cheering wildly. The energy after yesterday's men's 4 x 100 was ridiculously intense. One person said they could hear all the shouting and cheering while on the elevator coming off the 11th floor (dining is on the 2nd floor).


• The crowd at women's water polo was more intense than it was at swimming. Go figure.

• The warm up pool is behind the medal podium. It is out of view of camers and spectators.


• From my vantage point, Phelps is getting tired. He was stretching his legs all through the medal ceremony and immediately before his 200 fly. And in that race, he really took his time and conserved energy - which is hard to believe considering he broke his Olympic record. It is ridiculous how much better he is than everyone else. He should win 8 golds as long as everything holds up in the relays. His toughest challenge will be his teammate Ian Crocker in the 100 fly. But I would throw money on him winning 8.
• I talked to one of the coaches today and he had a great theory on why Phelps is so good. He believes it is because he has only had one coach, and that chemistry is so strong that it translates to some amazing perfomances. Bob Bowman knows exactly how far to push such a talented phenom...and it is scary how good he is.

That's all I have for now. I'll try and post more this week. Everything has been insanely busy up until a few days ago. And it will get crazy again shortly, so I'll do what I can to keep you all updated. Hope everyone is well! Please keep emailing me!