Athletic Depressant wrote:
You train, over-train, physically deprive yourself, compete, eventually lose for 4 years (high school), then 4 more years (college), and then if you're really good at depriving yourself, over-training and enduring failure and fatigue, you hit the pros for between 1-15 years of more of the same.
Then you retire at 30 or whatever and spend the last 5-50 years of your life telling stories about the "good" old days while criticizing teenagers and 20-somethings.
Don't relate to this at all. Running, or now some cycling is fun. Sure you don't win much, but it's the hard workouts and runs in cool places that make training worth it. Racing is a blast too (moreso on the bike though).
Not sure what you mean by physically deprive yourself. You can't deprive yourself from a starvation standpoint and be a good runner. I don't feel like I missed out on the common path of eating two extra slices of cake at each meal only to turn into a 250lb slug of a man.
So no, for me nothing is depressing. Running/Cycling hard is fun. Running and cycling in cool areas is fun. Racing is a little fun running, and incredibly fun on the bike. There are almost no downsides. I guess the closest thing to a downside is the "not winning" part, but if that's enough to make the whole experience not enjoyable I would say you miggghtttt be a little too obsessed with winning.