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

Soccer(I was remarkable and should have juggled 3 sports XC, Soccer, Track) and Golf(when I'm on I'm on), perhaps skiing(skiied a few races when I was 12 in u-18 division, won them all, never did more in the sport)

stil_kannonier wrote:

Soccer(I was remarkable and should have juggled 3 sports XC, Soccer, Track) and Golf(when I'm on I'm on), perhaps skiing(skiied a few races when I was 12 in u-18 division, won them all, never did more in the sport)

Although I've never before heard someone say they were remarkable, you certainly were.

The ability to run distance at a fast pace for longer distances, relative to top-end speed, takes natural ability and most people do not have it. As for the three major three major sports:

Baseball. Your average good distance runner will not have the necessary first step quickness or the upper body strength to catch up to a high fastball. Some skinny people can still throw really hard, so pitching is a possibility.

Football. Forget about it. A distance runner is not going to have the size and/or speed to play.

Basketball. Our average distance runner is not going to have the quickness to play guard or the size to play forward or center.

The caveat is that your average LRers are outliers with the ability to be scholarship level athletes in multiple sports.

Soccer would have been my other sport of success, I played 2.5 seasons at high school then, cross country coach asked to try out and that is how I got into running. I have been running for the last 6 years, since then.

anyone else in here transitioned from soccer to running with success?

Mountain bike racing in middle school/high school. Definitely wasn't as good. I chalked it up to being a super efficient runner, to make myself feel better.

TheXCrunner wrote:

Soccer would have been my other sport of success, I played 2.5 seasons at high school then, cross country coach asked to try out and that is how I got into running. I have been running for the last 6 years, since then.

anyone else in here transitioned from soccer to running with success?

Brie Oakley was a soccer player who didn’t start running until 11th grade, and she won NXN senior year in 2016.

There is a lot of coulda woulda on this thread. Be thankful for what you have for goodness sake.

I'm absolutely sure there was no other sport in which I could have even nipped at the heels of being sub-elite. I have zero fast-twitch muscle fibers, very little flexibility, poor balance, poor coordination, and a tiny frame on which little musculature can build. As a kid I was terrible in every "sport" I tried, but I could run, ride a bike, swim, pogo stick, jump rope, etc. all day long and never get tired. It wasn't until adulthood that I discovered distance running was actually an available sport (I was 26 years old the first time women ran the marathon in the Olympics).

In summary, the only things I could ever do athletically were those that required a moderately hard aerobic output over a long time, but I wasn't big or strong enough to be an effective swimmer or cyclist. Running it had to be, and the longer the distance, the better. Thank goodness I didn't discover the existence of ultramarathons until I was old enough to know better.

Biathlon. I was a natural marksman and love xc skiing and have good aerobic power and leg muscles endurance plus wide shoulders etc. I don't like cold and I sweat profusely..

I realized in the last few years I'm much better at calm sports that require a lot of relaxed focus like archery and freediving. So much better at them compared to running

Much better at ultimate frisbee too.

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.

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. BaseBall would have found you by age 14,15 . You lost interest because you are not good enough.

My running story is hilarious. I used to be a middle linebacker, I was going to be a varsity starter freshman year. I was 5’9 175-180 lbs. I was way good at the sport, I could see myself being a D2/D3 football athlete if I followed through with it, but I hated practice and the constant headaches and bruises that came with it. During conditioning I would absolutely decimate the entire team. Leading into freshman year, I got my shoulder injured and started gaining fat and getting out of shape really fast. Coach made me go to cross country conditioning to stay in shape. I sucked at XC in the beginning. I ran 30:26 at the inter squad race to get an epic 2nd to last of the boys (the last was physically disabled) out of 25 or so. I improved to a now only slightly below average 24 minutes by the end of the season and loved every minute of it. Soph I ran 65 and 2:32 in the 400/800, along with 19:27 for XC, JR year 57/2:08 And 17:47, and then Sr year pulled a 16:07 at footlocker and looking for sub 52 and 1:58 in order to make my universities traveling team next year. I’m also 6’1 and 165-170 lbs now. Quite the big change over the years!

For me, chess. I started tournament chess in tenth grade, a year before my first season of cross-country running. In the eleventh grade, I finished among the top fifty at the National High School Chess Championships. As an undergraduate at MIT, I was on the chess team as well as the cross-country and track teams. After college, in the military, I finished third in the U.S. Air Force Chess Championships and played on the Air Force team in the U.S. All-Services Chess Championships. I was, however, still competing in roadracing; during chess tournaments; I was training on the roads between games.

I think I had a lot of talent in chess, but it's at least as time-consuming as distancing-running to reach a national-class level. Running was my greater passion, and it was difficult to be a serious tournament chess player as well as a serious runner. I played my last serious chess game when I was twenty-four. With running, I made the right choice.

Football. I was fearless, could lay a good hit on anyone, cover any receiver, and played pretty good defense as a defensive back. I never put on weight so I went with running.

You sir are of the few posters on this thread who have estimated their abilities objectively. As an aside, athletes with an extremely high percentage of Type I fibers are probably as rare as athletes with an extremely high percentage of Type IIx.

And if you could jump rope well, you didn’t totally lack athletic coordination!

Reggy Arnold 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. BaseBall would have found you by age 14,15 . You lost interest because you are not good enough.

Yes.

It was back in the day, and they did find me . Played a bunch in the US, but knew already that I was going to go in the military and be a pilot. Baseball, and all sports, were a very distant second, or even third.

I will say it again: Moron.

You know that saying “youth is wasted on the young”? I always turn that around and say that wisdom/wealth is wasted on the old”.

Lots of big assumptions, I know. Still: moron. What a life!

BTW they found me younger than that, even back in the day.

Curling, horse shoes, bean bag toss.

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