Sports & Fitness Anybody competing ?

For the more serious athletes/sportsmen/sportswomen.
Have you recently, or are you planning on competing in any events, competitions, regular team sports, etc ?

There is a general sports thread currently, but it would be great to know who's competing on a more serious personal level, even if your competition or event is not high level.

 

I played fairly high level amateur golf when I was in my teenage years.

Got distracted in my late teens and haven't focused on it since.

Now 36 and getting back into it slowly.

Playing an event in early July over 36 holes looking forward to it.

 

Competed in state powerlifting comps before.

Probably couldn't these days

 

What's to get distracted by as a male in your late teens ...
Good to see you getting back into it.
The US Masters should get you pumped.
Good luck in your July event.

 

Yes you could.

 

Are you Ace?

 

I haven't for awhile but I previously entered freediving competitions.
I would say 'competed' but I wasn't competitive. I was well short of the international champions I was competing against.

In saying that I do honestly believe that if I committed as much time to training as those guys/girls do I could at least get close.
I'm still dreaming of getting to 100m on a single breath. I've made it 75% of the way there. However life keeps getting in the way and so it's never changed from a dream to a goal.

Blacky

 

I decided to run a few marathons in 2012, the first being Paris in 2013 then Canberra and Berlin last year.

Set 3 targets for Berlin, which were to run a qualifying time for the Boston marathon, break 4 hours and run a PB.

Missed breaking 4 hours by 3 minutes but ran a PB and qualified for Boston.

Overall I placed 61st out of 372 in my age group and 17,054 out of 35,999 finishers.

Looking forward to Boston next year.

 

I am preparing to compete.
Track & Field - Masters 60m, 100m, 200m and possibly 400m.
Never competed in my life, so thought now would be a good time to start.
Have been doing 2 training sessions a week for the past 5 months via Skype with a Masters sprint coach in the US.
So far so good this time after a few failed attempts over the past couple of years which ended in injury due to going too hard too soon in an unconditioned body.
This time has been a patient and progressive effort bringing up all my weaknesses in preparation for this intensive activity.
Will be in the 40 year age group, but want to be at peak in a few years for the 45+ age category.

 

Congratulations, so much work there.
Two of my friends and I were going to compete in body building comp earlier this year but the extra time for training plus business plus kids -aaaghhhh! Easier to just fit training in around my own schedules and just be fit and not compete.

Love what you're doing though

 

Started training for a 4 minute mile last year but then started a Reno at home and my schedule at work got a bit too chaotic so couldn't commit and had to go back to maintenance mode. The past year has been great running/lifting wise though. No injuries and seems like my body has finally adapted to constant hard/tempo runs so training for a 4 minute mile run feels very achievable.
Run for the kids this Sunday in Melbourne is on the cards!

 

Not competing a such but always in the back of my mind fancied a crack at a Marathon.

I turned 41 this year so can't leave it too much longer.

Never been a runner, always been a bike rider. I head out and do 100+k rides at the weekend, MTB or mixed terrain gravel adventure rides with the Audax Voctoria club. I'm generally pretty fit but have never been able to run.

I've tried once or twice over the years and packed in after two "runs", put it in the too hard basket and convinced myself I'm not built for running.

I read a couple of book over Christmas, Natural Born Heroes (ripper of a book), and then Born To Run. Whilst not about "running" per se the books touched on the fact that humans were absolutely built to run, not necessarily to run fast, but to run far.

So, I started walking to work in January (5k each way) and added in a slow jog between lampposts, increasing a little each time and going very slowly. After about 3 weeks I actually started to enjoy it, so I go the Fitness22 "Couch to 10k" app for my phone. The training plan is to take a none runner to 10k in 14 weeks with structured runs 3 times per week.

I started it from week 4 as I'd already done a little bit to work throughout January.

Well, would you believe it, last night was session 9.2 and I've hit the 10k mark 4 weeks early!!! It was a tough session last night but if you'd asked me 4 weeks ago if I thought I could run 10k I'd have laughed at you.

So, goal number 1 was to get to 10k. Goal number 2 is to do 10k in under 50 minutes (last night was 56 minutes but that session was 5 minute walk, 20 mins run, 3 mins walk, 20 mins run and walk cool down). My current run pace shows I should be able to do it in about 48 minutes once I get to the sessions with no walk breaks. Sure, not going to set the world alight withe that pace but frankly it feels like a huge achievement just now.

The last few weeks I've really thought a Marathon was a pipe dream, but having hit the 10k and still building I'm starting to think the Melbourne Half Marathon this year would be a good goal to aim for then look at continuing building on the training for next years full Marathon.

 

At 41 you can still have some of your best running ahead of you, I was 62 when I did my first straight marathon, ran a 4hr.6min in Paris.

Check out this guys ideas.

Jeff Galloway's Run/Walk/Run Training Plan

 

That is brilliant. Good luck for Boston!
I'm hoping to qualify this year or next year too. Need to run 3:12 or less.

 

Great work! It still feels like a loooong way off to get up to over 4x my current distance. Just keep chipping away though.

Great link, cheers, plenty of reading there! That'll keep me occupied for a while. Just did the Magic Mile calc, current 1 mile pace gives a marathon time of 4:06 base on the calculator. Interesting.

 

@Propagate ,my last timed race(21km trail beach run) on the ocean road was exactly 4 years to the day tomorrow. I had a 75 year old guy running next to me and doing well for over the first 10kms mark as in keeping up with the top pack I promised myself that i'm going to be that kind of guy if ever reach that age. A complete stranger that struck a short convo before a race, yet , he influenced my life so positively that i will always and forever be thankful to him. So age is nothing to worry about

Loved your story and congratulations on demolishing your goals. Keep at it ,make it a habit and sooner than later, running will become like breathing!

 

This would be epic !!!
How far away are you?

 

That's awesome! When I first started mountain biking around 16-17 I used to ride with a guy that was 42 and he would smash me everywhere. 42 is sooooo old when you're 17 ;-) Now I'm almost there I'm not far off as fast as I've ever been on the bike, (dropped off a bit the last year or so as not getting the volume of k's in).

I'm hoping running is like riding, in that for the endurance side it's more about getting the miles into your legs over a long period of time than being naturally talented or young.

 

If the old dudes can avoid injury and get some consistency in their trainingf, they can be super competitive against any age competitors.

 

Around the 4:50 minutes/mile mark at the moment with no actual training or preparation at all. Just the usual after work 4 *5km runs a week(been adding some longish runs lately too).

I'll have to get a trainer for this one i think or at least go onto a running track to train because attempting really hard runs on the sidewalks have been very hard on my legs before and it lead to injuries.

Still veeeerrry far off from a 4 minute mile but i think i can get close to low fours with some good hard training.