I hope this was supposed to be in pink font.


Oh wait, you admit you don't have any idea what goes on at collegiate Nationals?

Allow me to enlighten you. Collegiate nationals is the most competitive of the USAT nationals events available to amateurs (I'm excluding the elite nationals in several disciplines because that's obviously not an amateur contest). I'm serious. Collegiate nationals is fast as hell. If you haven't been, you should look at the results. Tuscaloosa is not an easy course, yet times are consistently fast there. Collegiate Nationals doesn't have "Age Groups," and the athletes at the top don't give a shit about winning an age group. I am ~top 5-10% there, I'm 21 years old, and I haven't given a shit about winning an age group since I was 15. The top 10%, maybe even top 15% regularly contend for the overall win at most local triathlons, and the guys at the tippy top are professional-caliber athletes. I don't know how much (or where) you've raced that you've acquired an opinion that the under-34 age groups are soft or sparse, but you are very, very, very, very mistaken. It is a fast fucking race. Since older people so often get to make blanket statements about younger people, I'm going to allow myself to do the same: "You people" need to learn how to use google, or athlinks, or the USAT results page, and familiarize yourself with the results/history of a race before making grossly ignorant statements such as you have just done. I don't really mean it though--this is just directed at you.

That is close to being one of the most misguided things I've ever read on here. Just to illustrate, 6 of the top-10 at Age Group Nationals last year were college-age (<24 for the sake of the argument), and the entire podium was comprised of the same. Bragging about winning an age group is stupid anyway. In many cases, those people who are given the age group awards would not have won them had the people who received overall awards were not removed from the age-category results...Especially silly is bragging about winning your age group at age group sprint nationals--all of the fast people raced the oly distance race!! If you are an AG national champion in the sprint and your time x2 > the AG national champion in the Oly then you haven't won anything at all IMO.

I'm sure it must be really hard to find time to train between your naps and YouTube videos and maybe the occasional class. Man, "you young kids" don't realize how much time you have and how easy it really should be to be fast at your age. Talk to me when you're a real working adult.

Quit making excuses. I'm fast now, and I'll be fast next year after I have a real job. Why? I'm used to fitting in training in between all the work I've had to do to graduate Aerospace Engineering in 4 years while working and coaching...it will be easier with a real-world job, not harder. If you want to cling to your precious age group because you think life is tough and the playing field isn't level, that is fine by me. Just don't be surprised when you see me looking down from the overall podium not giving a shit...


We all race the same race, nobody cares how you got there. Pros seem to understand this mentality, but hardly any age groupers do..

You know, if he's making a sweeping generalization of ALL college students using the ENTIRE collegiate population as context then he's probably right.

Right, but do all 12 have the possibility to score in that top 4?