Quote:
Originally Posted by suburbanite
I'm about to turn 28 in a month, and when someone asked my how old I was the other day I almost instinctively said 26. It subconsciously feels like the last two years shouldn't count and life should pick up where we left off in 2020. I'm lucky in the sense I didn't have to deal with having kids around all day, or missing the first two years of actual university life, or having elderly parents to worry about, but I still feel cheated out of what should've been two of the best years in the prime of my life.
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I feel like this when it comes to sports. I was already in the older half of players at my rugby club before 2020, but at (now) 27, still in my prime* athletically.
*prime being used relatively here - I'm always just barely in shape enough to keep up on the field most of the time - it's not an especially high level of rugby.
But after essentially two years off, in the last month we have finally been able to run actual competitive rugby games in Ontario. I've gone through a few ups and downs fitness-wise over the pandemic, anticipating an imminent return to competition that never came in 2020, then essentially giving up through the winter, then trying to ramp back to play in NY this spring. I'm finding it VERY hard to stick with my fitness enough to even get through practices, let alone actual games. Old injuries are playing up in ways the didn't before, I'm spending all my HSA coverage on physio...
At one point my goal was to keep playing men's rugby until 35, which the age you get to play "old boys" rugby. After how hard it was playing in the spring, I said to myself okay maybe 30 is a more realistic retirement age. This fall though, I don't know about that even. I just got married, I'm spending lots of time doing house renos and stuff, picked a project car. So I don't even have the same lifestyle as I did before, that might have given me more free time to put the work in to get back.
I fell as if we had never been interrupted by covid, I would have been able to manage a gradual decline in my abilities and kept trucking along for a few more years. Instead I feel like I've been knocked off a ledge and can't get back up.