A few years ago, I was at the State Games of Mississippi’s masters swimming competition — as a participant, not a reporter — when someone said something that made me laugh.

“How does that time compare to Michael Phelps?” the naive older woman asked after a bunch of us old codgers had completed a 50-yard freestyle race.

“It doesn’t,” or words to that effect, was my reply.

Watching Phelps in the pool at the Rio Olympics this week has been as humbling as it is astonishing. He makes winning gold medals look so effortless that it’s easy to forget not only how hard it is, but how far above the average person he is.

In swimming, the premiere sprint races are the 50- and 100-meter freestyle. If you want to brag about your prowess, those are the times you cite. When I was doing masters races a few years ago, I considered myself slightly above average for clocking times of 30 seconds in the 50 and 1:09 in the 100. A lot of people were faster — anything under 27 seconds and a minute is considered “good” — but that was nothing to be ashamed of for an amateur.

The other night, Phelps swam the 100-meter freestyle in 47.1 seconds during a relay. That means, in a head-to-head two-lap race, he could have given me a one-lap head start and still made it close. In a one-lap, 50-meter race he could give me half the pool and win.

It’s an old mantra in sports that no matter how good you are, there’s always somebody better. That rarely applies to Phelps. Watching him swim is watching awesomeness in action.

Watching all of the Olympians is that way, really. The gap between them and even a good amateur athlete is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Just to make the Olympics in a timed sport like swimming or track and field requires an athlete to achieve a time incomprehensible to us average Joes. Not only winning, but dominating, takes them to another plane entirely.

For all of the corruption, graft, green water, sewage-filled water, and other horrors associated with the Olympics, that’s why we keep coming back. It’s the spectacle, and the wondering how we’d do against these guys.

The answer is “not very well,” but we can still dream and live vicariously through them.

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Ernest Bowker is a sports writer for The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com