In the winters of 2000 and 2001, after I had begun working at the Maryland Department of Planning in Baltimore, I would take a night Spinerval Training class each Wednesday at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club in Mount Washington. On winter nights, about 30 cyclists and triathletes would arrive and haul their bicycles and metal trainers up to the second floor of the old aquatic club building. We would set up our trainers, attach the rear wheel of our road bikes and then begin a 50-minute training session with the famed triathlon coach Troy Jacobsen. Most nights as we set our bikes onto our trainers, a teen-ager was swimming laps in the lanes of the pool below us. People spoke of him as ”the Kid.”Most of us watched him through a window that extended the length of the room. Some of us would actually position our bikes so we could overlook the pool while training ourselves. All the while, the Kid swam back and forth continuously in one of the training lanes. I remember one particular night when I focused on him for a long period. It appeared that this 15- or 16-year-old swam even faster in his later laps. As I trained, I was dripping puddles of sweat, my leg muscles burned, yet he seemed tireless. Coach Troy would shout at us, ”Give me more” until my legs and lungs could barely turn the pedals. At those moments, I would glimpse through that window at the Kid swimming lap after lap. He looked like a skinny fish. What was most amazing is that he didn’t seem to show fatigue. Was he superhuman? Later, I would see him with his mother as the bicycle folks hauled their gear back down the stairs. He had a great smile. You wanted to say “Hi”  to him, his sister and his mother as you passed by on your way out of the aquatic club. By that point, the young man was preparing to swim or had just completed his first Olympiad. Gold-medal greatness was yet to come.