Track athlete (400, 800) but I did cross country as well. My hardest adaptation is getting used to the longer distances and relaxed efforts during base training.

Basketball turned to Cross Country (I went to a small high school and had the same coach for both and he forced all varsity basketball players to go out for Cross Country). Cross Country turned into track (800m, 1500m, 3000m) which turned into running everyday after high school until a rec. league football game took out my knee. This injury forced me into swimming and biking during rehab and now I am back to running as well.

In response to tsilcyc question, I would have to say running is my passion, but cycling is my favorite activity right now, but I still consider myself a runner.

High School Football, Basketball, and Track. Army. After college football I needed a competitive outlet, and since I had always run as a part of training I turned to that. It helped that the cute grad student I was dating was training for a marathon. After a couple marathons, a buddy got me into mountain biking. I wanted to do a triathlon for a few years, but assumed I needed to be a good swimmer, so kept putting it off. I eventually actually watched a sprint tri and knew I could do the swim. I got hooked after my first one.

My running is pretty good, and my cyclng is catching up pretty fast. My swimming is still my nemisis. I consider myself a triathlete first and a runner second now, but on race day i love the bike.

I was part of the high school swimming team. And was an average swimmer. All I rode before getting into triathlons were mountain bikes. I still love mountain biking.
Now I think I prefer biking to swimming, although the hardest adaptation for me was the longer rides, especially in the aero position.

I've been swimming competitively since I was about 10 (haven't done it since college though). I've also done a bit of mountain biking. I was on my high school track team for one season, but ended up with a stress fracture...so I never really got to compete. My weak point is running. But I've been following the advice on here and have been running a lot slower then I normally would. And slowly but surely it's coming along! :)

When I was 5 or 6 my parents would take me to swim lessons and I wouldn't get in the pool I was too scared. That went on for a couple of years. I was not much of a swimmer. In school I started running. I was pretty bad. Probably the 5th man on the cross country team. I did my first triathlon in 1999 and I was proabably last in my age group. So it was pretty hard for me to train for everything. Swimming took the longest to get the hang of. I never was that great but I would ride for hours on the weekends and did lots of bricks and specialized running and biking workouts. I was a pretty good runner so my point is do the least of what you are good with and spend more time doing the workouts that are more of a challenge. In no time at all you'll be winning your age group ;)

raised as a swimmer. swam through high school and college competing at the national level. i used biking (mountain at first, then road) to keep myself in decent shape in the off season. running was always, and still is, my weak point. i have found that losing the swimmer "muscles" (upper body mostly) has really helped my running quite a bit. that and the fact that i do it 100x more than i ever did as a swimmer.

if i had to pick one thing to do on any given day it would be cycling. i would not give it up for almost anything in the world. it is my outlet and keeps me sane. i do not have to worry about anything else when i am riding. my strongest is still swimming and that is fun because with little training i have been able to maintain a relatively high level of fitness in the water. now if only that darn run would come around...

Christian

I have a quasi non-athletic background. I ran cross country and track in high school, poorly, and only for one year. After that, I stopped sports almost entirely. I rode my bike in college to get to class and for the years I worked until I found Triathlon, I was pretty much a sedentary car-driving, mouse-pushing, remote-surfing guy who thought an expanding waistline was unavoidable.
The way I like to spin my lazy 20s and early 30s is that I "saved" my body from injury :)
I'm glad I found the sport when I did because it has not only changed my physical composition but my thoughts and attitudes and outlook on life as well.

I think I was discouraged from sports because I was not competitive. As a result, I thought "Why bother?" if you're not going to be any good at it. I think this is the biggest hurdle to get people to rediscover an active lifestyle - that being at the top of a field is not what matters most.

All the above is very interesting reading and I urge all of you - and everybody else, to cut and paste this stuff onto your Bio on your Profile page for future reference.

PoC

I sort of miss that about the old site. It is nice to get a sense of people's athletic resume's. Lets folks know if advice is coming from a multiple IM finisher or someone who has done one sprint. While we all have something to share...it's a comfort to know if the advice has real experience to back it up or is from a book.

Wrestled four years in HS, ran one season of XC. Got into judo and rock climbing in college. Blimped up prior to getting married and started running again.

Cut and pasted. good idea.