Does anyone wish they were in college again?

I'm 37 and I think life is pretty good. I really sowed my wild oats during college and in my late 20s. Now I'm settled down with a wife and 2 young kids. Yes, college was fun, but the stage of life that I'm in now is fun too.

It sounds like you wish you were young again, not wishing you were in college. School sucks. Stay healthy and age like a real man. You can break 5:00 miles until you're 65 based on Masters records. You can explore at any age. Hang around healthier friends if you're tired of talking about typical people dealing with 100% preventable diseases like obesity and diabetes and being frail

OP was a 4:45 miler, so he ain’t breaking 5 minutes ever again. You really sound tone deaf telling him he might break 5 until he’s 65. Are you people for real?

Why would I want to go back to the days when I was fast as f&ck, lived in a house with my best friends, had a wild girlfriend (now a not so wild wife), and be in the prime shape of my life?

Traveling the country racing, eating fast food and crushing Jagger all night before a 2 hour long run and feeling better than I do now fresh?

Nah give me that 8-5 with high quotas, back pin, youth sports 6 days a week and a mortgages.

Of course we want to all go back big dawg, the quest now is to make the best of your current spot in life

You're soft if you think slow college runners can't maintain fitness as they age. I was using an extreme example to show what the human body is capable of. The record at age 50 is 4:19. You can be a great runner for a long time even if you're a minute slower than the best in your age bracket. If you want to play the "woe is me" loser card, yes you'll become unhealthy and a joke

A 4:59 mile wouldn't be a PR, but times aside, I miss the quick recovery I had. I could stay up until 4 am to work on a school project (or stay up to party or play video games), get up at 7 am the next morning, catch a quick nap on the team bus, and still run close to my PR that day.

If I did that today, I'd risk a DNF.

I can't believe how bad the decline is. A co-worker of mine is just a few years older than me and is completely exhausted after climbing one flight of stairs. This was pretty much unheard of in college, I know of someone who successfully climbed a 14er on a bet even though he almost never worked out, and his diet consisted of beer and pizza. And almost everyone has stories of sedentary guys who eat like crap but still run a sub 6 mile on their first attempt.

Welcome to a decade+ of neglect. There's a reason people recover like sht when they no longer work out, are overweight, and sleep poorly. Decreased hormones play a big role but the detraining people go through after high school and college is immense. We could do dumb stuff as kids and feel fine because we were a well-oiled machine that relied on 10+ years of good habits to get us to where we were. We weren't consistently staying up late, eating poorly, recovering poorly, and feeling good. It was an occasional thing we could do and not notice because we built up a lot of resilience.

Personally I'm barely slower at 37 than I was at 18. Recovery is a lot harder, but I'm also 25 pounds heavier with a lot more muscle. That takes an exponentially greater toll on your body than being a tiny kid with no muscle and being 5'10" 130lbs.

The key is to not be hard on yourself. I neglected my body for 10 years and it took 4 years of training to feel "like the old days" again. You think it'll never happen. And it might not. But what is the alternative? If you don't try you'll certainly never feel good again.

Bodyweight is often overlooked when wondering why your body feels like sht and you can't recover. Get it in check, hit the gym, run your intervals, sprint, and do things we used to do at that young age. We can't live like an adult and wonder why we don't feel like our young selves if we aren't doing anything we used to do.

Just need to read The Consolation of Philosophy Big Dawg

Hopefully you'll be more content when you're older. Working your a$$ off and fathering two young kids is rough.

My kids are college age now. I'm happy that they're at a point where they are forging their own path and creating great memories. And I'm proud and grateful that my wife and I have helped them get there.

Maintaining fitness is fine, but who even cares that much about running a 4:19 mile at age 50, or 5:19 even? That isn’t really the OP’s issue anyway.

If you're young looking with a bunch of free time and disposable income, you can still live/act like you're in college or fit in with them.

On that note, you know it's backed by science that one's chronological age is not necessarily the age that one presents as. Development happens at different rates for different people. You might actually be a college aged guy in a older body. I know a teenager trapped in a 40 year old man's body. With emerging technology we might be able to transition guys like him into teenagers so they go to high school and date teenage girls. I really think they need to get this guy age affirming care or he gonna commit suicide.

Sure, if I could compete and not have to go to class. school sucks

No. Those professors are all doped up and liberally brainwashed. No thanks

Late 30s here

No kids, I'm with my long term partner but I sometimes wonder what's the point. I don't make enough money to live like a baller but I make just enough to have "career stress" that follows me around. I miss being young because you have your whole life ahead of you. You're at least somewhat innocent, naive to how sh1tty life actually is. When you're in college you don't think of your age, your health, your parents mortality, whether or not you'll make those life altering decisions. It's all a game when you're young.

More like middle school

In some ways I fantasize doing some things in college differently. Would havepaid better attention to course content, literature, lectures, and research. I rushed through studies and papers, doing what w most efficient and likely to get the grades I needed for grad school. And in my Music Major performance public recital on trumpet, I would have chosen tunes/music that I liked and was more proficient at--jazz--and not the standard repertory piece recommend by the MusicDepartment faculty. But,no,it was so hard to adjust after doing a four yr navy hitch, and shaky trying to get back to regular society. Pretty lonely time.

Yes, I would If I was allowed to play a sport (I already used my 4 years of Eligibity) The Girls on the Teams For the Most Part, are so pretty and cute, A lot better than The Ones I Have seen at Work, Or Anywhere really in my opinion Countless pretty Girls in Track and Field (Usually not The Throwers Though) Sprinter Girls have the best bodies and it is not close, Was Too Shy to meet girls in college and I was too busy with sports to be fair in giving girls time they should get