College Vs. High School Sports

     When I was in high school I always knew no matter what I wanted to do sports in college. Whether it was triathlon or cross country and track I didn't care. All I wanted was to have a team that I could have as a built in friend group and a group of people passionate about the same thing as me.

    Now that I've been through high schools sports and now a full season of college triathlon I've noticed that doing sports in high school and in college while in the way are the same are also vastly different from each other. Granted I've only had a triathlon season which isn't technically a high school sport so I can't yet speak on differences directly between like college or high school track for example but I can slightly compare it to when I did swimming and cross country in the same season in high school.

    In high school my typical fall days consisted of a swim or dryland swim practice in the morning before school, getting a quick bite to eat and getting ready for classes, then going to my classes for the day. After school I had a break (the length depending on the day as my school did block schedules and I had a release period), then cross country practice, and a swim practice after that before I went home to get any homework or other activities in when I got home. How I was able to pull that off, get good sleep overall, and have energy throughout most days, well good question cause I honestly don't know if I could still pull that off. 

    Being in college my typical days consisted of 2-3 hours in classes throughout the day, a morning swim, and either a run/lift in the afternoon or a bike at noon. I had a lot more downtime and even my morning practices started later in the morning by at least 30 minutes yet I find college sports more time consuming and overall more tiring than high school was. Am I getting old? Absolutely but it's interesting how even though I spend less time at practice the intensity of it must be more than I realize in the moment.