Were you athletic as a kid?

[spokewench]

I guess I was athletic. I rode horses, ran track, played basketball with the boys, ice skated, played a little softball when I was young, played basketball and volleyball in college. I wasn't really a very good "ball" athlete, just fast so I would get put on teams.

I did not really have trouble with learning to ride a road bike, but I did have trouble learning how to mountain bike. The riding a bike on rocky terrain and the swift changes in ups and downs caused me some problems with shifting gears, and balance. It has taken me a long time to become a passable bike handler off road - just don't have enough guts.

The road bike after the first initial wow, this bike has skinny tires and is light sensation, was pretty easy to get used to.

[emily_in_nc]

I did not really have trouble with learning to ride a road bike, but I did have trouble learning how to mountain bike. The riding a bike on rocky terrain and the swift changes in ups and downs caused me some problems with shifting gears, and balance. It has taken me a long time to become a passable bike handler off road - just don't have enough guts.

The road bike after the first initial wow, this bike has skinny tires and is light sensation, was pretty easy to get used to.

What spokewrench said....

However, unlike SW, I was totally unathletic as a child, asthmatic, weak, sickly, sucked at all team sports and anything requiring running, always picked last for teams, used excuses to get out of gym class, you know the type! However, I did always have a bike -- tricycles as a young child, my first two-wheeled Schwinn with training wheels at six, and a bike of some sort from then on, at least through Jr. High, when I had a 10-speed with drop bars and downtube shifters, a red, white, and blue (very patriotic) "Free Spirit" (I think that was it) from Sears. I think that saved me from having a difficult time picking up cycling again as an adult since riding was one thing I knew how to do (not that I ever road very far or fast as a child, though).

My DH (who was a semi-serious roadie when we met) bought me a Nishiki road bike (21 speeds, I think) when I was around 25, and I've been riding on and off for the past 20 years (sometimes with several years off). For several years I rode only on the back of a tandem only, so I probably lost some handling skills then, but after that I even learned to ride a recumbent, which is when I learned to ride clipless (other than stoking a tandem, where clipless is a no-brainer). I then went back to an upright road bike with skinny tires (this was in 2003), which took only a short adjustment period to learn how to use the STI shifters.

But mountain biking on trails (which I just started trying to do last summer) is an entirely different story, as spokewrench said. I'm too fearful, I bail out very quickly if anything gets scary, and I have a very hard time with tight turns and slow-speed maneuvers and all the weight shifting involved. That may come from being severely unathletic as a child. I remember my DH trying to teach me golf -- what a disaster. Just couldn't do the proper weight shifting to have a decent stroke, and he thought that was because I avoided all games where a ball was involved as a child, like softball, where I might have learned that weight shift. It could be related....

Emily

[colby]

This is a hard one to answer. When I was very young, elementary school, I played on softball teams (we were the Kool Katz!!), was in girl scouts (camping, hiking, etc), played basketball with my dad, learned to ski, that kind of thing. I wouldn't say I was athletic, but we're talking 10 years old. During elementary school, I started swim team. Swim team was at a private pool independent of school, and was a very different social structure -- it was also during the summer, when school was out.

When I got to middle school, swim team was easy to keep. Girls from different schools, different walks of life, albeit slightly privileged (you have to pay to be a member). I tried out for the basketball team and despite what I thought was talent, I was shut out, and here is where I learned about sports and cliques. Tried again in high school once, and gave up. Looking back, I should have tried out for softball, soccer, something... but the girls intimidated me. I also was an honors student in band, and you choose between physical activity and studying... studying won. That's how I ended up falling out of swim team, just too many pressures, and as girls got into high school it got more and more competitive, too. I was never the fastest, but I did swim anchor in many relays. I did stuff on my own... rollerblading, riding my bike, less so the older I got.

In college, I wish I would have done rugby, hockey, crew... so many "non-traditional" sports I could have done. The stigma just stuck with me, and I was afraid to try until it was too late. I walked everywhere though, so I was pretty "fit" in general. I really focused a lot on studying, and I burned myself out on it, too... then I got a "real job" and moved on. In the business of making software, there are not a lot of athletes...

I think I still carry some of that old baggage with me, but I've learned a lot better about setting goals for myself. I really enjoy swimming again (except my messed up shoulder), I love riding my bike, and I love the feeling after a run (maybe not so much the running, until I get into a groove, especially in LSD runs).

[MomOnBike]

I was kinda-sorta athletic. I had horses, and successfully competed in local gymkahanas. After we rode, we'd go swim in a friend's pool. My old girl's Schwinn was pretty much my transportation (once I figured out how to ride the thing).

I did notenjoy the baseball/basketball/football thing that gym classes consisted of. Yuck! There was nothing in them for the likes of me. Still isn't.

My college gym classes were marksmanship and archery. I was asked to join the marksmanship team (an opportunity declined) and everyone was relieved when archery was over and I hadn't killed anyone. I did a lot of backcountry backpacking until I moved from Colorado, too.

So put me down in the active but not chosen for any teams category.

[LBTC]

Childhood memories are pretty few and far between in my brain. I wasn't happy as the youngest of six in a strict catholic family. I loved my bike, but was forbidden to ride it outside of my yard. I was a complete spaz around every type of ball - they always ended up hitting my smack in the eye and knocking me down. I could run pretty fast, but couldn't kick a ball (or hit it with a bat or whatever) to save my life.

Learned to swim at a young age, but only from family. Feel confident that I could swim a long time and a pretty long way, but I am not fast and have no form.

I could balance well, always liked it when we had gymnastics in PE and I could play on the balance beem. Discovered this at far too advanced an age to start in gymnastics club, even if my parents would have allowed me to, which they wouldn't.

The family started downhill skiing when I was 7. I loved going fast, had crazy form, looked like a spaz, but liked the thrill. Hated the family trip to a fancy hill that year, as, again, I was forbidden to use the chair lift or even the t-bar and had to stay on the bunny hill with tow rope on my own, which quickly got boring.

We had gymnastics rings in our basement. I used to love playing around with those.

As I think about it, my athletic history, like so many of the things I do in my life, is staccato. Short bursts of thing that I did, never mastered anything, never really had physical goals.

In high school when PE rugby sessions started, they made the girls do something else, and, even though I asked, they wouldn't let me play. I really wanted to learn to tackle people!! Of course, I never would have been able to catch or throw the ball, so I guess it makes sense.

When it came to the bike, I got on a mountain bike first. I really instantly loved being out in the woods and found that everything to learn was kind of overwhelming, but if any neural transmitters were really activated when I was a kid, it was the ones that let me learn complicated things. So I liked all the complex rules to learn for bike handling. It did not come naturally at all, but I just would talk to myself about all the things I'd read, been told, learned from experience, to get myself around that tough bit, up that hill, through that root section. It took me years to be reasonably good. I finally got fast enough to be between the fast and the medium fast guys on a regular basis. That was soooo sweet! I really felt I'd earned it. And I would be so surprised that, after I learned how to fuel right, and what to drink, etc, that I could be well into a 3 hour ride or more, and still have some left! That was such a wonderful discovery!

I found road riding scarier, so it seemed harder. I think I had some pretty high expectations of myself by the time I started on it. If I was doing high end mountain biking by then, shouldn't I be a really good road rider right away? Well, not exactly. It took ages to figure out how to grab a water bottle while moving. I still have trouble with knowing the right gear to be in, fear of those tiny little wheels and tires tipping over, fear of cars, etc etc.

Funny, I took quite quickly to kickboxing. I was just suggesting to DH that I might have formed a few neural thingies when I was squirming to get away from all those older siblings.

Yes, I have issues about my childhood too.

Of course, when I turned 30 I decided that I would get younger from then. It has mostly worked.

Now that I'm 39, I've been recently diagnosed with Crohn's disease. The fatigue that came from the disease last year kept me off my bike and not doing anything except gentle yoga and walking to work, from July through to January....now I'm working on regaining fitness and trying to determine what my strenuous exercise tolerance is, and what recovery time I'll need. Yet another complicated thing to work out, so I think I'll get there! If it isn't complicated it's not worth the effort.

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~

[bmccasland]

Gee, after reading all the posts, memories come flooding back. I could add ballet lessons to my list - after seeing the Nutcracker at the Paris Opera House when I was 5, but had to wait until we returned Stateside (2nd grade) for lessons.

And those clamp on roller-skates - check, had those too.

Swimming lessons - we lived in Louisiana, so had to learn to swim. But no swim team.

Continued with PE through high school - but was one of the last to be picked for things.

While in Michigan I learned to ski - downhill and cross country, and ice skate.

Moved to Arizona - ditch the skiing and iceskating - I lived in the desert, so took up hiking and backpacking instead.

Should I mention here that I was a military "brat? "

I was doing so well, staying active as a kid. Yeah, I played with dolls too, and embroidered. Then became a couch potato as an adult. Lived in Phoenix where the air is bad about 1/2 the year, but would drive up the mountains to cross country ski a few times each winter. Left Phoenix, and XH, moved to the mountains, FINALLY got a job as a biologist and got PAID to hike.

Moved to New Orleans, where we have lovely bike paths on top of the levees, and was drafted onto the office bike team. Have riden the MS Tour three years running, with one year off for Katrina .