tsl: Your story is kinda like mine. As a kid, the last thing I would have told you was that I was any kind of an athlete. I was a bookworm. A nerd. Clumsy. Physically talented at nothing. Chosen last in any team sport. No way I was an athlete. Thinking otherwise was laughable.

But I discovered I liked athletics. I think it was basketball first. Then surfing. Then skiing. And now it's cycling. Nowadays, a 100 mile, 10,000 foot bike ride is a pleasure ride for me, and I participate (reasonably well) in 500 mile endurance races. That puts me eons away from most people my age, and especially the overweight and out of shape people that I considered athletes in high school. Frankly, the gap between those people is wider now than it was in high school ... but our positions have changed.

Facts are facts. If those other people were athletes then, I'm certainly one now.