friesen wrote:
I think we are looking at this from different perspectives. You are thinking of it as middle of the pack(or front of pack) in your specific age group. I don't care that much about age group, I care about overall field. I don't care if I finish 3rd, or 10th, or 15th in my age group, I care about the 20, or 30, or 50 people that beat me. So, I, as well as many others might be mop in my age group, it's been years since I didn't finish in the top 2-3% of the overall field
My perspective for a FOP is - are you racing to win. Are you employing tactics and taking risks like surging to deliberate drop your competitors. Or are you pacing your own race, avoiding surges, purely looking for a PB.
The problem with the overall standings, is that unless you are in the elite wave, most of your competition is starting in different waves. So you don't actually know where you stand until the results come out. So the only people you are using race tactics against are the athletes in your wave.
My above arguments fall apart a little when considering age groupers racing Ironman. But they apply to the pros. In Kona, the ones looking to win will take risks and it is common for them to blow up. Whereas you will get other pros just concentrating on their own race (cos they don't believe they can win) and they sneak into the top 10 (as a result of potentially faster athletes blowing up).
Important to remember that there is no correct answer, we are simply arguing about our own opinions of arbitrary terminology.