What sport, if you had focused on instead of running, could you have had equal success as you did in running?

Boxing. I was 11-0 (7 ko’s) as an amateur when I swapped sports for running.

Mikeh33 wrote:

Sprintgeezer wrote:

Baseball. Was a shoe-in for MLB, but stupidly went into the military instead. Was a better baseball player than sprinter.

But since birth I have always held the 100m, the iron cross, and the clean and jerk in the highest of esteem.

Moron.

No one is a shoo-in for the MLB. No one!

True that. There are no guarantees

GrampaSimpson wrote:

Curling, horse shoes, bean bag toss.

(Note: you can drink beer in all of the above)

Bean bag toss is also known as cornhole

Transducir wrote:

competitive eating

Funny

One of my brothers would have excelled at eating, the same guy who threw close to that American HS SP record while just fooling around. He’s huge, but with a small piehole mouth.

When he was a little kid he was at the next-door-neighbor kid’s birthday party, and his dad was barbecuing for all the kids. He handed my brother the platter of 14 hamburgers and 14 hot dogs, with the expectation that he would deliver the food to the other kids.

Lol he sat down and ate it all himself, no problem. I think he was 10! He has only gotten bigger, and hungrier, since.

Yes, he’s now around 6’0”-6’1”, 310-320, and has never, ever worked out. He has my quickness, goes maybe 265-275 lean, and doesn’t give a crap. Not a competitive bone in his body. 45 years old now, has lived at home all his life.

Idiotic undeveloped athletic talent. It’s guys like him who have me believing that maybe, just maybe, some WR’s could be broken cleanly.

Which ones, I have no idea.

None really but tennis would be the closest. If you consider billiards a sport, I would have been pretty good putting in the hour a day I did most of the last twenty five years.

WinnytheBish wrote:

How's the nostalgia circle jerk going on this thread?

Seems to be more comedy than nostalgia in this thread

I want to be a pogo-sticking foo.

Didn’t know that was a sport

I mean, American Football

I had a pool table in the house growing up (though I never played it out of the house). At a work training retreat, all my co-workers were playing pool at the bar. Even though I hadn't played in years, I played one game and cleaned up the table, which surprised everyone else there. I was happy with that, so I decided not to play another game that night, thus ending my pool "career" on a high. I have no idea what constitutes good at billiards though, having never watched the sport.

I was into cycling before running, doing it as a free-range kid, so wandering far and wide, even in junior high doing 30-mile rides on back roads solo. The downside of being a free-range Gen Xer was that I also didn't have parental support (both money and time) to go bike racing. My weekends up locked up in a (non-English) language school on Saturday and church on Sunday, and sports were seen as frivolous in my parent's world/culture. I only decided to do running ahead of my junior year because it was a similar sport that had easy/free access in high school. I had equal potential to do as well in road cycling and cross country mountain biking. A high school classmate was considered the "protege of Greg Lemond" and later a cross country mountain biker, but I don't think he was any more talented than me on a bike. He coaching, ability to go to races within a team structuree, etc. that I didn't have. In my one (partial) season of bike racing in college, I could easily drop all my teammates (including college race winners) on any climb and leave them far behind with knocking myself out. But then I couldn't keep racing because my bike frame broke and it took a year to get it warrantied. I switched back to running at that point.

I also would have been as good or better in Nordic skiing as running. I taught myself at age 30/no coaching, and within 3 years was competitive (when my skis weren't horrendous) with decent college skiers and beat a guy fresh off winning the Alaska state high school skimeister title the week before (despite my having bad technique at that time). I know several Olympic skiers, and the one Olympian guy I know who is similar in age to me is not a better athlete.

Well, since I was average at running I would say all sports. Low bar.

BTW, baseball? You passed up baseball in college? So much less pain.

I think a lot of ncaa runners could be very successful in road cycling.

personally I never focused or had the opportunity to cycle competitively but my college team mates and I were able to put up some impressive numbers with the university cycling club on bad equipment.

I was able to naturally get very thin, 135-137 at 6’0” my power to weight would have been fantastic

I think most runners would have the most success in sports without tons of hand eye coordination, no offense.

I dabbled in wrestling and weightlifting and showed some promise in both. Wish I had a chance to really try gymnastics when I was younger.

American football? I could run and hit all day long. Catching? Throwing? No way, no how. Same with basketball, I could be physical and get up and down the court, but can't shoot to save my life. I always figured cycling would be relatively easy to pick up but haven't really tried. I'm proving decent at downhill and XC skiing these days.