While Michael Phelps Was Training for the Olympics….

I watch the Olympics every night in awe. Here I am sitting on my couch – MacBook on my lap, ice cream sandwich in my hand – as the world’s best athletes compete.

These are people who have sacrificed so much and worked so hard to be the best in their sport. These are people who have given everything they have (and then some) to get to this point in their athletic careers. These truly are the best of the best on the planet.

It is really something to think about.

And then there is Michael Phelps who is not only the best guy in the pool this year, but ever. Ever in history. 8 gold medals in a single Olympics. Pretty freaking amazing.

It was actually watching Phelps win his 8th medal that got me thinking about all of this. Yeah, watching a 48 year old woman win the Olympic marathon was pretty sweet, but Phelps really hit home for me. After all, he trained at Michigan; we walked the same streets, ate at the same restaurants and, if I ever even knew where it was, could have swam in the same pool.

I rarely saw Phelps on campus, mostly because he was always training.

And I was not.

In fact, While Michael Phelps was training to be an Olympic God and win 8 Gold Medals I Was:

- Laying in my living room watching Law and Order SVU marathons with my roommates

- Drinking Boones Farm Strawberry Hill on my porch

- Planning elaborate parties that included A Groundhog’s Day fiesta, a Jell-O wrestling tournament, and back to back Beerlympics.

- Sneaking Jimmy Johns into the reading room at the library where I spent hours IMing my friends about the douche bags who walked in

- Shopping with my parents’ credit cards

- Figuring out ways to “bump into” the boy from last weekend

- Making power hour CD’s

- Baking brownies, smoking pot and then eating those brownies…and everything else in the kitchen

- Constructing ridiculous costumes to wear to the bar (and not for Halloween)

- Watching Peanut Butter Jelly Time on my laptop and dancing around my room

I am not saying that I regret any of those activities or decisions (well, maybe the whole pot and brownie thing…), but I do now realize just how great I could have been if I had applied myself to something besides drinking, eating and trying to get a guy to hump me.

Because besides the Gold Yogurt Cap I earned for Survivor Flip Cup in the Walnut Street Beerlympics of 2005, no one awards medals for the activities I devoted my life to.