Dara Torres who turns 45 next month is finding it slower going these days as she attempts yet another comeback in pursuit of making her sixth Olympic swim team this summer.

“I am middle-aged so that makes it more difficult,” she said in a rare concession to the passage of time. “When I had this knee surgery, having to do all the rehab the year I had it put me behind training this time. You have to make sure it doesn’t mess with your head because this is taking much longer to come back from than in the past.”

She is doing some of the things she did to prepare for Beijing, but has added some work with a naturopathic doctor, eating more throughout the day and consuming natural supplements such as black licorice root.

“I can’t do all out in the morning. I can’t recover,” she said this week by phone from her home in Florida. “Everything is about pacing but going fast enough to get into the next round (of a meet). I get three-quarters through the race and my body just shuts down.”

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(Photo of Dara Torres courtesy of Bryan Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0)