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Jun 2020
7:46pm, 5 Jun 2020
46,953 posts
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Velociraptor
FF  
I used to enjoy street tennis. Got a terrible shock when I went to university, said, "Yes, I can play tennis and I've got my own bat," and found myself actually on a full sized court with a full height net. I was only invited once. (I did, however, do unexpectedly well in a table tennis tournament due to that portion of my youth that I wasted in youth clubs.)
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Jun 2020
7:55pm, 5 Jun 2020
16,635 posts
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Bazoaxe
Practically a shark
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Jun 2020
8:35pm, 5 Jun 2020
19,883 posts
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Dvorak
Continued ... But we'd quite enjoyed it; and shown ourselves that we weren't as fit as we'd thought, so decided to improve. With some application, and slightly more sensible pacing we got the 14:50 down to 12:30. Of course, being only 7 stone I only had about 60% of my current weight to haul round. I remember us as running every single day together, which must have started later in the summer.
Runs were generally 3-4 km, barely 2 km in the worst weather (but we still ran): longest runs into the country, 4-5 miles, times checked on our Casio watches. I don't have any records, unfortunately, but iirc about 40-45 minutes on a long run.
We'd run nearly everything fairly hard, but the real speed session of the week was Sunday, meeting around noon, then running a circuit of the town. I reckoned it as 3.75 km (remeasured, 3.65 km). 45m climb to halfway then 45m drop back home. Started at maybe 19 minutes, got it down to sub-17 every week, sub-16 on the best days. We'd by flying at the end  Which, if we'd started slightly late, was where we ran right into the crowds leaving the chapel! Of course, we didn't slow down.
Although it never occurred to us at the time, years later someone told me we'd become quite a feature: "those guys that run roond Denny every Sunday".
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Jun 2020
8:50pm, 5 Jun 2020
16,636 posts
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Bazoaxe
Dv - you were quite an athlete....
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Jun 2020
9:15pm, 5 Jun 2020
19,884 posts
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Dvorak
Yeah ... Whatever happened, eh?
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Jun 2020
12:03pm, 6 Jun 2020
5,832 posts
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57.5 Degrees of Pain
Frisbee was another summer favourite. Had to avoid the garden of the grumpy neighbour!
We were lucky enough to have tennis courts to play on. Scottish red blaize, but better than the street.
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Jun 2020
2:22pm, 6 Jun 2020
2,613 posts
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um
1970's
Played tennis for the school (ashphalt courts) ... used to get tickets for Wombledon each year. (only the outside courts, learnt to grovel & plead with people leaving to donate their centre or no.1 court tickets after about 5pm).
Also had a tennis club just down the road ... 6 grass courts, and everything you'd expect an english private tennis club to be at that time !
Then on to uni & 'infinite' supply of courts - hall of res had courts, and uni had plenty. And found some people played a lot better tennis than me. (eg those that had played young Wimbledon & county tennis)
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Jun 2020
5:22pm, 6 Jun 2020
12,683 posts
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Cerrertonia
First time I saw anyone play tennis in the flesh was at university. Same with hockey and lacrosse. I think tennis has tried quite hard to become more inclusive and widely available since then.
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Jun 2020
5:54pm, 6 Jun 2020
120,178 posts
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GregP
My parents were founder members of Mountnessing Tennis Club in the 1950s (I was junior champion sometime in the seventies) - so people not being exposed to tennis seems weird to me. That said I took 30-odd years off from the sport before joining Chelmsfordians TC a couple of years back.
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Jun 2020
7:02pm, 6 Jun 2020
18,379 posts
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Angus Clydesdale
TC being Total Codgers?!
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