Have you ever had another significant sport in your life before running/tri?

Played hockey to a high standard, pretty much took over my life. Played last week and have spent 3 days icing and resting my leg joints! Felt old and slow.... plus stopped me doing any tri training! Annoyed.

Dustboy wrote (see)

Lot's of " ex sporty types" here. As time passes by, how do you feel about slowing down and watching your perfomances drop off? Do you find it frustrating, or just accept it as part of life?

Find it very frustrating looking back at some of my times, 10k in particular knowing that chances are I won't get within 3-4 minutes of that again. I do accept it most of the time but looking at results there's often a 'what if' moment 

Also wish I'd known how relatively good I was bearing in mind the turn up and race attitude we had back then.

m..eface wrote (see)

I played women's rugby as well. No not really but coached Brighton Uni Womens team for 3 years and they won the poly cup final and got to the Uni cup final as well. They lost against Loughborugh in a tough game but had played the week before in the Poly cup final as well.

Had four in the squad play in international teams! 2 Welsh, 1 English and 1 Scot.

Thoroughly enjoyed the coaching but with my own playing the week was something like

Monday - University Rugby Training
Tuesday - Rugby Womens Training
Wednesday - Unversity Game
Thursday - Local Club Training
Friday - Day Off
Saturday - Club Game
Sunday - Womens Training & Mens Training

Plus weights at lunchtime. No wonder I had to resit my final year!

We probably have friends in common. I played at Reading Uni then started North England and England squad stuff when at Waterloo. Happy days and on reflection I  maybe should (could?) have achieved more, a full England cap on the wall would have been very nice.

I agree on the old schedules. Bizarre that when I think back to all the hours taken up but never being truly fit. For a long time STIL and I were both playing competitively and between us that accounted for every weekend day and night of the week except Friday, given to rugby.

Iron Muffin wrote (see)

I agree on the old schedules. Bizarre that when I think back to all the hours taken up but never being truly fit.

I thought the same thing when I wrote it, how could I train so much yet 15-20 years on I much 'fitter'. That said I don't think I could lift, press, curl or pull half what I used to. Can definitely run further at sustained pace now but then most of what I did was 10-30m sprints.

Fitness for task - and the current task is just constant effort & endurance not power.

Specificity!

Hmm.

Junior county squash  & Cricket, played cricket at good club level for 20 years, very average club footballer, 35 min 10K runner, then did nothing but dring beer for 5 years before taking up running again and eventually Tri.

It bothers me not at all that it now takes me 42 mins to run 10K because age graded thats 35:xx! Thank god for age grading, plus the standards have dropped and I win a lot more these days.