{"product_id":"age-is-just-a-number-isbn-9780767931915","title":"Age Is Just a Number","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom legendary Olympic gold medalist Dara Torres comes a motivational, inspirational memoir about staying fit, aging gracefully, and pursuing your dreams.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDara Torres captured the hearts and minds of Americans of all ages when she launched her Olympic comeback as a new mother at the age of forty-one—years after she had retired from competitive swimming and eight years since her last Olympics. When she took three silver medals in Beijing—including a heartbreaking .01-second finish behind the gold medalist in the women’s 50-meter freestyle—America loved her all the more for her astonishing achievement and her good-natured acceptance of the results.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, in \u003ci\u003eAge Is Just a Number,\u003c\/i\u003e Dara reveals how the dream of an Olympic comeback first came to her—when she was months into her first, hard-won pregnancy. With humor and candor, Dara recounts how she returned to serious training—while nursing her infant daughter and contending with her beloved father’s long battle with cancer. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDara talks frankly about diving back in for this comeback; about being an older athlete in a younger athletes’ game; about competition, doubt, and belief; about working through pain and uncertainty; and finally—about seizing the moment and, most important, never giving up. A truly self-made legend, her story will resonate with women of all ages—and with anyone daring to entertain a seemingly impossible dream.DARA TORRES has set three world records and has brought home twelve Olympic medals, including four golds. She is the first American swimmer to have competed in five Olympics. She lives in Florida.\u003cb\u003ePrologue\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’ve been old before. I was old when I was 27 and I got divorced. I was old when I was 35 and I couldn’t get pregnant. I was really old when I was 39 and my father died. But when I was 41 and I woke up in a dorm in the Olympic Village in Beijing, I didn’t feel\u003cbr\u003eold. I felt merely–and, yes, happily–middle-aged. “The water\u003cbr\u003edoesn’t know how old you are,” I’d been telling anyone who would\u003cbr\u003elisten for the prior two years. Though sometimes, I have to admit,\u003cbr\u003eI would think to myself, \u003ci\u003eGood thing it can’t see my wrinkles\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003eOn the morning of the 50-meter freestyle Olympic finals, I set\u003cbr\u003emy alarm for six o’clock. I’m a type A person, or as some of my\u003cbr\u003efriends call me, type A++. Basically, I’m one of those people who\u003cbr\u003ehas to do everything I do to the fullest extent of my ability, as fast\u003cbr\u003eas I can. When I recently moved houses I didn’t sleep until all the\u003cbr\u003eboxes were unpacked and all the pictures hung on the walls. I don’t\u003cbr\u003elike to do anything halfway, and I’d set this crazy goal for myself:\u003cbr\u003eto make my fifth Olympic team as a 41-year-old mother. And the\u003cbr\u003etruth was I didn’t just want to make the team, either. I wanted a\u003cbr\u003emedal. I wanted to win. Along the way, I also wanted to prove to\u003cbr\u003ethe world that you don’t have to put an age limit on your dreams,\u003cbr\u003ethat the real reason most of us fear middle age is that middle age\u003cbr\u003eis when we give up on ourselves.\u003cbr\u003eIt was a pretty crazy thing to be doing, especially under the\u003cbr\u003ecircumstances. If you’ve ever had a toddler or watched a parent\u003cbr\u003eyou adore die, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Young children\u003cbr\u003eand dying parents are truly exhausting, and I had one of each as I\u003cbr\u003emade my comeback. But I knew in my heart I could succeed–as\u003cbr\u003elong as I left no stone unturned.\u003cbr\u003eThe race started at 10 a.m., so I’d worked out my schedule leading\u003cbr\u003eup to the race. I needed to drink my Living Fuel breakfast\u003cbr\u003eshake at 6:15 a.m. so I’d have time to pack my roller bag–two\u003cbr\u003epractice suits, two racing suits, two pairs of goggles, two racing\u003cbr\u003ecaps, two towels, and my dress sweats, in case I got a medal–before\u003cbr\u003eI caught the 6:45 a.m. bus over to the Water Cube. I’d then do my\u003cbr\u003ewhole routine–wake-up swim, shower, get mashed (a massage\u003cbr\u003etechnique done with the feet), do my warm-up swim, get stretched,\u003cbr\u003eand put on my racing suit–all before I headed to the ready room,\u003cbr\u003ewhere all the swimmers wait before a race. My teammates, I have\u003cbr\u003eto tell you, thought that roller bag was the funniest thing in the\u003cbr\u003eworld. They were all 15 to 25 years younger than me, the ages I\u003cbr\u003ewas at my first, second, and third Olympics. (I was already beyond\u003cbr\u003etheir ages by my fourth.) Their bodies were like noodles, and they\u003cbr\u003eall carried their gear in backpacks. But I’d noticed that backpack\u003cbr\u003estraps made my trapezoid muscles tense up. Swimming fast, for\u003cbr\u003eme, is all about staying loose. So I had a roller bag. If I looked like\u003cbr\u003ea nutty old lady–fine.\u003cbr\u003eThe Beijing morning was humid and dark when I left the\u003cbr\u003eOlympic Village. All the other swimmers were probably still asleep.\u003cbr\u003eI think that the only other person awake in the Village was Mark\u003cbr\u003eSchubert, the National team coach of the USA Olympic swim3\u003cbr\u003eming team. Mark had also been my coach at my first Olympics, 24\u003cbr\u003eyears ago. And he’d been my coach at Mission Viejo, where I’d\u003cbr\u003egone to high school to train at age 16. I love Mark. He’s like my\u003cbr\u003efairy godfather, constantly dropping into my life at just the right\u003cbr\u003etime, giving me what I need, and then disappearing again. That\u003cbr\u003emorning he’d woken up in the Beijing predawn to help me prepare\u003cbr\u003efor my race. We’d come a long way together. Though he\u003cbr\u003ewasn’t my coach in the months leading up to the Olympics, he’d\u003cbr\u003etaught me the discipline and the commitment to detail I now so\u003cbr\u003eprized. We were now going–literally–one more lap.\u003cbr\u003eI rolled my bag out to the sidewalk as quietly as possible. I didn’t\u003cbr\u003ewant to wake anybody–partly because, as a mother, I knew the\u003cbr\u003evalue of sleep. But selfishly, I also wanted my competitors to stay\u003cbr\u003ein their beds. The longer they slept, I told myself, the greater my\u003cbr\u003eadvantage and the more time I had, relative to them, to prepare.\u003cbr\u003eSince my daughter had been born I’d been saying that waking\u003cbr\u003eup with a kid in the middle of the night was going to give me an\u003cbr\u003eedge at some point. I hoped this was it.\u003cbr\u003eOver at the Water Cube the competition pool was empty, so I\u003cbr\u003eyelled “Good morning!” to Bob Costas, who was broadcasting up\u003cbr\u003ein the rafters, found my lane, and dove in. I don’t usually do a\u003cbr\u003ewake-up swim in the competition pool, but the 50-meter freestyle\u003cbr\u003eis a really strategic race. Time can contract or stretch out. It’s\u003cbr\u003eonly one length of the pool–just 24 or 25 seconds–but it’s also\u003cbr\u003eeasy to get lost. If I’ve learned one thing from all my races and all\u003cbr\u003emy years, it’s that the Olympics can be disorienting, and the middle\u003cbr\u003eof things is where we tend to lose the plot. Part of my plan for the\u003cbr\u003emorning was to learn exactly where I was going to be in the water\u003cbr\u003eat every stroke of the race. So as I swam I memorized all the landmarks,\u003cbr\u003ethe intake jets, where all the cameras were on the bottom\u003cbr\u003eof the pool. That way I’d have markers in addition to the lines 15\u003cbr\u003emeters from the start and 15 meters from the end. I’d know when\u003cbr\u003eto keep a little energy in reserve, and when to take my last breath\u003cbr\u003eand gun for the wall.\u003cbr\u003eMore was riding on this race than on any other race I’d swum.\u003cbr\u003eBack in Florida I had a child, Tessa, who’d one day study this race\u003cbr\u003eto find out who her mother was. I had a coach, Michael Lohberg,\u003cbr\u003ewho’d believed in me before anyone else, who now lay in a hospital\u003cbr\u003ebed with a rare blood disorder, fighting for his life. I’d had a\u003cbr\u003efather, Edward, whom I’d lost to cancer just as I’d started this comeback,\u003cbr\u003eand who’d wanted so much for me to realize my dreams, and\u003cbr\u003ewho I felt was with me every day.\u003cbr\u003eAnd most unexpectedly, at least for me, I had a lot of fans.\u003cbr\u003eI’m not being coy when I say the fans were unexpected. I’m\u003cbr\u003esaying they were unexpected because I didn’t yet understand how\u003cbr\u003eovercoming perceived odds works–how even just attempting\u003cbr\u003ethat can inspire people, and how the energy from those people can\u003cbr\u003eboomerang back to you, giving you the strength and energy you\u003cbr\u003eneed to reach your goals. So I was surprised–deeply surprised,\u003cbr\u003eand also grateful–that my dream was contagious. I’ve always been\u003cbr\u003egood in a relay, but I’ve never been quite as strong in my individual\u003cbr\u003eevents. I’ve just never been at my best when I’m swimming\u003cbr\u003ein front of the whole world just for myself. But now I had the\u003cbr\u003esupport of everyone nearing or over 40, everyone who’d ever felt\u003cbr\u003ethey were too old or too out of shape to do something but still\u003cbr\u003ewanted to give it a try. I had everyone who didn’t want to give up.\u003cbr\u003eI just couldn’t let all those people down. I felt they were depending\u003cbr\u003eon me almost in the same way my relay teammates did. We\u003cbr\u003ewere in this together. I couldn’t entice so many women and men\u003cbr\u003einto dreaming a little longer and aiming a little higher, and then\u003cbr\u003enot win.\u003cbr\u003eOf course, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I wanted to\u003cbr\u003ewin anyway. I’m pathologically competitive. I hate to lose. That’s\u003cbr\u003ejust what I’m like. If you and I were in a sack race at a field day,\u003cbr\u003etrying to jump across the grass with our legs stuck in bags, making\u003cbr\u003etotal fools of ourselves, I’d still want to cross that finish line first.\u003cbr\u003eI’d give it everything I had. But now I wanted to win this race not\u003cbr\u003ejust for myself. I wanted to win it for everyone who believed–\u003cbr\u003eeveryone who \u003ci\u003eneeded \u003c\/i\u003eto believe–that a 40-plus mom could still\u003cbr\u003ecompete.\u003cbr\u003eAt 7:25 a.m. I got out of the pool and walked to the locker room\u003cbr\u003eto take a hot shower. The wake-up swim and the shower were\u003cbr\u003eboth part of an effort to get my core temperature up. Everybody’s\u003cbr\u003ecore temperature drops during sleep, and that temperature needs\u003cbr\u003eto rise if you want to swim really fast. My plan for the remaining\u003cbr\u003etwo hours before my race was to have my stretchers, Anne and\u003cbr\u003eSteve, mash–or massage–me with their feet, then swim again,\u003cbr\u003ethen have Anne and Steve stretch me, and then put on the bottom\u003cbr\u003ehalf of my racing suit, with plenty of time remaining to lie on a\u003cbr\u003emassage table in the team area and listen to a bunch of rockers half\u003cbr\u003emy age sing a song called “Kick Some Ass.” The mashing and the\u003cbr\u003estretching were critical to my performance. All the other kids in\u003cbr\u003ethe Olympics might have thought they could do their best by just\u003cbr\u003eswimming a little warm-up, pinwheeling their arms a few times\u003cbr\u003eand diving in. But not me. I was the same age as a lot of those\u003cbr\u003eathletes’ mothers. Michael Phelps had started calling me “Mom”\u003cbr\u003eeight years earlier. I needed every advantage.\u003cbr\u003ePhysically, I have to say I didn’t feel great–stiff, still not fully\u003cbr\u003erecovered from the prior day’s semifinals. (Okay, let me pause right\u003cbr\u003ehere and say it: I’m totally fine with aging except for the recovery\u003cbr\u003etime. Is it really necessary to take 48 hours to recover from a\u003cbr\u003e24-second sprint?) I also felt sick to my stomach with anxiety. I’m\u003cbr\u003elike that, even after all these years: On the day of a big race, I feel\u003cbr\u003elike I’m going to throw up. I know it’s part of the adrenaline surge\u003cbr\u003eI need in order to psych up and win. But my relationship to that\u003cbr\u003esurge is like an addiction. I run toward it, crave it, can’t live too\u003cbr\u003elong without it, and then it makes me feel terrible. That prerace\u003cbr\u003enausea gets me every time. I suppose when I stop feeling it I’ll\u003cbr\u003eknow it’s time to call it quits and hang up my Speedo for good.\u003cbr\u003eThat day at the Water Cube, as my mother came over to wish\u003cbr\u003eme luck, and then came back to wish me luck again, I took a few\u003cbr\u003eswigs of Accelerade to try to calm my nerves. \u003ci\u003eBreathe, Dara, breathe,\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eI told myself. \u003ci\u003eIt’ll be over in 24 seconds. \u003c\/i\u003eOf course, Mark Spitz once\u003cbr\u003esaid the really great thing about being a competitive swimmer is\u003cbr\u003ethat your career ends quickly. He said the reward for all the long\u003cbr\u003ehours in the pool is that you get to retire at 23 years old. Oh, well.\u003cbr\u003eI was not following Spitz’s schedule (though he, too, attempted\u003cbr\u003ea comeback at age 41). So I tried to focus instead on what I’d\u003cbr\u003elearned at the Olympic Trials, where I’d felt so bad just before my\u003cbr\u003efirst heat that I was crying in the hall but swam really well anyway:\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eYou don’t have to feel good to swim fast. \u003c\/i\u003eI must have said it to myself\u003cbr\u003ea hundred times: \u003ci\u003eDon’t freak out, Dara. Remember Trials. You don’t\u003cbr\u003ehave to feel good to swim fast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eFinally, I went down to the team area and lay on a massage table\u003cbr\u003efor a while, listening to my iPod and watching the muscles in my\u003cbr\u003equads tighten up. Then one of the coaches told me it was time to\u003cbr\u003ego to the ready room, which was a good thing. Because despite all\u003cbr\u003emy supposed maturity, for the last 20 minutes I’d been acting like\u003cbr\u003ean annoying kid. Every 30 seconds I’d ask: \u003ci\u003eHow much longer? Is it\u003cbr\u003etime yet? \u003c\/i\u003eI couldn’t stand the wait. I’d been working toward this\u003cbr\u003emoment for two years, or 24 years, or 41 years . . . Let’s just say it\u003cbr\u003ehad been a long time. I’d done everything I possibly could. I’d assembled\u003cbr\u003ethe best team. I’d worked hard and smart. Now the only\u003cbr\u003ething that was happening was that my muscles were tightening up.\u003cbr\u003eThe ready room is where they put all the athletes just before a\u003cbr\u003erace. I hate the place. In the ready room it’s just you and the seven\u003cbr\u003eother girls you’re swimming against, and it’s either hear-a-pindrop\u003cbr\u003etense or filled with forced conviviality. When I was younger\u003cbr\u003eI’d sit in the ready room with my Walkman (remember those?),\u003cbr\u003eand then my Discman (remember those, too?), staring at my fingernails,\u003cbr\u003ealways keeping an eye on the trash can so I’d know where\u003cbr\u003eto run to vomit. That day, on purpose, I left my iPod in my roller\u003cbr\u003ebag. But as I ducked my head in to give the official my credentials,\u003cbr\u003eI could see everybody else sitting already, messing with their fingernails,\u003cbr\u003eor with their caps and goggles, looking sick and miserable.\u003cbr\u003eAnd the room was hot and stuffy.\u003cbr\u003eFor my entire career I’d been just like them–enjoying my\u003cbr\u003eOlympics by putting massive amounts of pressure on myself.\u003cbr\u003eWhich is to say not enjoying the Olympics at all. But this time I\u003cbr\u003efelt totally blessed. \u003ci\u003eI was at the Olympics\u003c\/i\u003e. How cool is that? I’d sat\u003cbr\u003ewith LeBron James and watched Michael Phelps swim. And guess\u003cbr\u003ewhat that’s like? \u003ci\u003eFUN\u003c\/i\u003e. In just five minutes the eight of us girls\u003cbr\u003ewere all about to do something incredible: swim in an Olympic\u003cbr\u003efinal. By pretty much any sane person’s standards, we’d already accomplished\u003cbr\u003esomething. We were the eight fastest female swimmers\u003cbr\u003ein the world. We’d already won. I wanted to enjoy the experience.\u003cbr\u003eI wanted them to enjoy the experience. I knew we were all going\u003cbr\u003eout there to try to beat each other, and believe me, I wanted to\u003cbr\u003ewin. But I felt the occasion called for a joke.\u003cbr\u003e“Anybody else hot? Or is it just me?” I called out to the girls. “I\u003cbr\u003efeel like I’m in menopause.”\u003cbr\u003eI saw a smile creep across the lips of Cate Campbell, the freckly\u003cbr\u003eAustralian redhead who up until that moment looked like she was\u003cbr\u003eabout to meet a firing squad. I knew how she felt: like her whole\u003cbr\u003efuture depended on the next five minutes. I now was old enough\u003cbr\u003eto know that there’s a lot of life that happens outside of the pool.\u003cbr\u003eThat she was going to lose loved ones and yearn for things that\u003cbr\u003ewere outside her control. Swimming is not like real life. You can\u003cbr\u003edetermine for yourself how hard and how well you train. You\u003cbr\u003ecan control how you dive, how you turn, how you position your\u003cbr\u003eshoulders for your touch. But I knew what Cate was going\u003cbr\u003ethrough. Swimming fast can feel like the most important thing–\u003cbr\u003ethe only important thing–in the whole world. I’ve been there,\u003cbr\u003eI’ve felt that. She was 16.\u003cbr\u003eMaybe it was this perspective that caused me to ham it up just\u003cbr\u003ebefore 24 of the most important seconds in my life. Maybe it was\u003cbr\u003enerves. Whatever the reason, I did. With just a few minutes to go\u003cbr\u003ebefore the race, all of us zipped up like sardines in our tight new\u003cbr\u003eracing suits, officials walked us down the hall to the rows of chairs\u003cbr\u003eunder the bleachers. My mantra for the past two years had been to\u003cbr\u003edo everything all the other swimmers weren’t doing–that extra\u003cbr\u003evertical kick in practice, those long hours of active recovery–so\u003cbr\u003eI’d have something over them. But now the mom in me came out.\u003cbr\u003eI wanted to take care of everybody. I wanted all these girls to enjoy\u003cbr\u003ethe event. I wanted them to relax. I knew that Libby Trickett, Cate’s\u003cbr\u003eteammate, a really spunky Australian who’d gone into the Games\u003cbr\u003eranked first in the 50 free, had just gotten married. So I asked her\u003cbr\u003eif she was going to have kids, and before I knew it, as 17,000 fans\u003cbr\u003esat waiting for us to come out and compete, I was telling them\u003cbr\u003ewhat it’s like to give birth to a child. And not just telling them. I\u003cbr\u003ehad my feet up, as if they were in stirrups, yelling like I was in\u003cbr\u003elabor, just as I might have if I was sitting around my house yukking\u003cbr\u003eit up with my closest friends.\u003cbr\u003eThen it came time to walk out to the blocks for that long, fast\u003cbr\u003elap. When I got to my lane, I dried off my block with a towel, lest\u003cbr\u003eI slip. Then I took off my sneakers and my two T-shirts, and walked\u003cbr\u003eto the edge of the pool to splash my body and face. Back at the\u003cbr\u003eblocks, I roughed up the skin on my forearms and hands on the\u003cbr\u003eblock’s surface so I’d have a better feel for the water. Each time,\u003cbr\u003ejust before a race, the officials blow a series of whistles–first a\u003cbr\u003ebunch of short bursts to warn you to get all your clothes off except\u003cbr\u003eyour suit, cap, and goggles. Then a long whistle meaning it’s\u003cbr\u003etime to get on your block in ready position. After that, the starting\u003cbr\u003esignal begins the race.\u003cbr\u003eWhen I heard the long whistle I took my mark, with my right\u003cbr\u003eleg back, my left toes curled over the cool metal edge, staring\u003cbr\u003edown my long blue lane. I had just one word in my head, \u003ci\u003etone,\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003ereminding me to keep my body tight, in a toned position to knife\u003cbr\u003einto the water on my start. I knew everybody who dreamed my\u003cbr\u003edream with me was on that block, too. But I also knew, at the\u003cbr\u003estarting signal, that I’d be diving into the water alone.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301222207717,"sku":"NP9780767931915","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780767931915.jpg?v=1767721136","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/age-is-just-a-number-isbn-9780767931915","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}