Have you given up a sport that you were much better at just so you could be a runner?

I think that many chess players and distance runners are cut from the same psychological cloth -- intelligent, analytical, introverted, and strongly attracted to environments in which the rules are clear and there is a sense that one can achieve a certain level of mastery if one works hard enough.

I run because I suck at other sports.

Ultimate Frisbee, but i bet a lot of runners are good

I'm a pretty good gamer :p dota, HON, LoL u name it. professional gaming as taken on a sub sport culture its rather funny.

oh please wrote:

The answer is cycling. Not saying I could have been a pro, but I could (was) much more competitive locally at cycling.

For me it's the reverse, I'm a much better runner than cyclist but I've started cycling more. I like runners more than cyclists so I still run once a week with friends.

New Mills & Disley Junior Fishing Champion!

Not really a sport but then neither is golf

Baseball, Soccer. Such a tough choice to cut away from Baseball. I loved Baseball so much and was pretty damn good. Also quit soccer from two teams, but at that point lost the love of game mostly due to the teams I played on. Too much pressure. Quit my HS team(won 6 state titles in 8 years, 3 during my HS tenure) and a top club team. This was all to focus on track full time as a Decathlete.

Eventually stopped growing, and came to loathe lifting, and switched over to a mid-distance runner from the decathlon after freshman year. Spent the majority of my career injured. Although I threw the Jav a few times as a senior while I was injured. Always fun to see the faces of people when a 125 lb kid throws it +165. No clue if I could have done anything in baseball or soccer post-HS.

More talented at soccer. Same with volleyball, but I was too short to compete in college.

I guess my situation goes backwards from the OP's question.

I picked up racquetball a little in early high school. Was decent around the club, but never took it seriously. After taking some time off from running after college, I was looking for an outlet and took it back up. Got very serious. Worked very hard with a number of team sponsored guys. Got myself sponsored by E-Force.

I am a much better racquetball player with just 2 years of hard work than I was a runner with 10 years of hard work (albeit much of that work as a pubescent teenager). Anyway, I gave up running for a number of years so I could just play racquetball. There is a smaller pool of racquetball players than there are runners; so, I guess if you consider the percent of people who "run" I rank higher there. But if you consider just "competitive runners" and "competitive racquetball players" (which is the majority of them actually), I am still much higher on the rung with racquetball. After all, no running shoe company was going to sponsor me, that's for sure.

Ralphy wrote:

Very interesting I am collegiate runner currently but I too gave up chess. I was a multiple time state champion and placed very highly in USCF National tournaments. My final ranking was 1750 it dropped from 1980 after a terrible tournament following which I ultimately decided to give up chess for running. I am definetely happier now physically and socially.

I also did tournament chess for about a year in high school, then did a few tournaments freshman year of college where my performance rating averaged in the 1900's, but thanks to all the scholastic tournaments I had played my USCF rating stayed in the 1600's. Never played again after I blew a big money prize spring of my freshman year, and picked up running that summer.

I had a friend in high school who made expert (>2000) junior year (actually he had a floor of 2000 thanks to winning a large tournament). He was damn good and managed to beat quite a number of people in the 2300-2400 range, but then quit sophomore year in college to take up sailing and ultimate frisbee, which he also excelled at.

You're in good company - Bill Dellinger played a ton of racquetball.