Michael Phelps - Dolphin, Seal, Aquaman?

Okay, I'm still in 'Olympic' mode and will be until the games are over. This obviously isn't a sports blog but it's mine so I can write whatever it is I feel like writing. :) Now on to my our current Olympic hero, Michael Phelps, the most successful Olympian in any sport with 11 gold medals (and counting.) They said that his body is built for swimming just like a seal or a dolphin. He is 6'4" and his wing span is 6'7" (that is loooong.) Have you seen him flap those arms before every swim? It's like he's getting ready to fly. LOL What's more, he can bend his feet so far that it's like having flippers. He's even different inside, the following paragraph explains it.

"On the inside, Phelps is even more freakish. Genadijus Sokolovas, USA Swimming's director of physiology, looked at Phelps's lactate count in 2003 after he broke a world record. Sokolovas has pinpricked some 5,000 high-level swimmers, and none of them has ever posted a count of less than ten millimoles per liter of blood after a comparable effort. Phelps's reading was 5.6. The uncommonly low number is significant: It means his muscles recover remarkably fast between workouts and races, which, in part, is why he can compete in so many events in such a short time." - Outside Magazine, January 2008

Michael also consumes large amount of calories, 10,000 to 12,000 calories a day. Wow! His metabolism is on over-drive! He has a lot of muscle mass that he can burn these calories easily. He trains a lot and swimming for an hour, he can burn about 1,000 calories (that's just him, a normal swimmer burns less). Can you imagine being his mom and having him over the weekend? You'd probably be restocking the fridge every hour.