Off the Deep End | W. Hodding Carter | Charming and intelligent!

Off the Deep End | W. Hodding Carter | A MUST READ for any Masters Swimmer!

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Off the Deep End

	Off the Deep End W. Hodding Carter Algonquin Books, 2008 - 209 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Hodding Carter dreamed of being an Olympian as a kid. He worshipped Mark Spitz, swam his heart out, and just missed qualifying for the Olympic trials in swimming as a college senior. Although he didn't qualify for the 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, or 2004 Olympics, he never stopped believing he could make it. And despite past failures and the passage of time, Carter began his quest once more at the age of forty-two.

Maybe he's crazy. But then again, maybe he's onto something. He entered the Masters Championships. He swam three to four miles each day, six days a week. He pumped iron, trained with former Olympians, and consulted with swimming gurus and medical researchers who taught him that the body doesn't have to age. He swam with sharks (inadvertently) in the Virgin Islands, suffered hypothermia in a relay around Manhattan, and put on fifteen pounds of muscle. Amazingly, he discovered that his heartbeat could keep pace with the best of the younger swimmers'. And each day he felt stronger, swam faster, and became more convinced that he wasn't crazy.

This outrageous, courageous chronicle is much more than Carter's race with time to make it to the Olympics. It's the exhilarating story of a man who rebels against middle age the only way he can?by chasing a dream. His article in Outside magazine, on which this book is based, was the winner of a Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.

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Charming and intelligent!

This is a wonderful read! It is well-written, intelligent, and funny. I agree that this is a great read for Masters swimmers but also think it is a great read for any middle-aged person who decides that life is not on that downhill slide but rather that we can still accomplish tremendous things. Its about the joy of setting goals and then experiencing the day-to-day effort of working towards those goals - having a direction that is exciting.

I have been really inspired by Dara Torres making the Olympic Team at 41 - I know a lot of people have also been inspired by her performance. What is more interesting to me is that I am also inspired by Hodding Carter and his efforts to make the Olympics - he didn't make them but his journey and where he ended up are really something. Well done!

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A MUST READ for any Masters Swimmer!

As a Masters swimmer, I really enjoyed this book! I finished it in a couple of days and handed it off to one of our coaches, who really enjoyed it as well. I told the rest of the team to go buy the book... We have all had Olympic dreams of one sort or another and looking at someones thought process was really interesting. Plus, there are some really very funny parts of the book if you know anything about swimming, as well as some good training insights for those of us over 40. Good Luck Hodding!

Wonderful book

As a fledgling swimmer who is close in age to the author, I can't say enough good things about this book. I absolutely loved it. I think non-swimmers will enjoy it as well, though swimmers will surely be able to appreciate it that much more. And while the literature on swimming is no doubt a bit thin, this surely ranks as one of the best books ever written about swimming. Bravo!

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Avoid your mid-life crisis

If you are in your 40s, for that matter 30s or 50s and struggling to keep up to what you physically could do before-this book is an inspiration. It is funny, a quick read, and really is a good chance to look inside yourself and see if you are trying as hard as ou can. I highly recommend it. For non swimmers, the author does not get lost in swimming jargon or discussions, and when he comes close, he apologizes. great book.

Off the Deep End by W. Hodding Carter

Hodding Carter offers plenty of dry wit along with an incessant immersion in wildly entertaining self-styled swimmming regimens in pursuit of a lofty 2008 Beijing Olympic qualifying spot on Team USA...at age 45. Fabulous zeal and uttely shameless creativity in finding ways to train himself in odd places while dealing with the mid life pressures of job, husband, parent of young children. For the novice, this was also an, at times, deliriously funny direct window into what it takes to go after a dream this big. Who straps on a little surival basket of goodies and a flag to a surfboard, ties it to his torso and swims from island to island with a former Olympic Gold medal swimmer in the Florida Keys?!! All in a day's work for Carter. Truely was pulling for him to make the Olympic 2008 team. Thanks Hodding for all the extra info readers are able to follow. (Indiana University swimming/kinesthetics department for example. How else would I have found out chocolate milk is the recommended recovery rehydration beverage of choice for swimmers of multiple events. Yep, IU actually published findings on research entitled: "Efficacy of Chocolate Milk as Recovery Fluid....".) What's not to love about this zany and yet true watery vision quest for the Gold! A great read for anyone who feels the magnetic pull of water world, at any level, mild to mesmerizing. Training tips are a pleasant surprise bonus.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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