See, Ben gets it.


-bobo

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"What's good for me ain't necessarily good for the weak-minded."

Also I feel 5 year bracket before 40 is a bit weird.
20-40 should probably just be one big senior class.
See, Ben gets it.
-bobo///

Hey Bobo, good to see you are still at it, and guessing since you asked about the 60+ record in another thread, things are going well for you physically? I gave up any hope of ever doing an ironman around early 50's, of course my little heart thing didnt help there either..But all good now and even did my first sprint in 11 years, and had a blast!!


Speaking of age groups and how many there are these days, do you remember the qualifying for Boston back in the late 70's early 80's I believe. I really wanted to go do that race, but was just doing too many prize money races that had just started up around 81 or so. As I recall, there were two age groups for men, under 40 and you had to have run a sub 2;50. and over 40 and I believe it was 3;10. That was it, 2 AG's and 2;50 was the cutoff. Events were hard back then, and so were the runners..


Did the sports world just get wussified over the past 40 years?? (-;


Every once in awhile I look at the Boston time for my AG and think it would be fun to go, but then I realize that I would actually have to train and race a dam marathon to get there first, and then the dream starts to fade....Good luck old timer in your future adventures...

Are you referring to the study which includes caffeine as "psychological doping" and creatine as "physical doping"? Because I'd have to answer yes to both of those questions, too...

The 9.11 at 59 definitely isn't me but I have a time not a million miles off at 57 and I can assure you I have never doped (I appreciate everyone says that). It was on one of the worlds quicker courses and on a good day. My own views on superfast age group times are that the younger age groupers are basically pros (coaches/fitness instructors etc) and the older athletes (like me) only have to work part time. In addition we have seen huge advances in technology in the 4 or 5 years, bikes/shoes. I don't personally think it's all down to doping.

Yeah my original point & answer to the question is that it's ok to talk about doping in the context about this thread. That study is far from perfect because they lump legal & illegal doping together -- maybe to try to get a higher # of people responding with what they're taking? I would think that there are a good # of self reported dopers in that study, & that does concern me.

If a substance isn't banned then taking it is not illegal, not cheating, not unfair. Doping in sport has a very clear definition of taking banned substances for performance enhancement. Getting mad at someone who beats you because they took legal stuff like creatine and caffeine is like getting mad because they went to altitude camp, or ate more nutritiously, or even just trained harder.

There's (very very good) articles and posts here from Dr. Alex that lay out ratios and consumption rates of fructose and maltodextrin that are shown to boost performance by rather a lot. Is that cheating? Maltodextrin doesn't even occur in nature so surely one could stretch and call that chemical enhancement.

Providing a performance benefit is not enough to classify a substance as 'doping'.

I’ll try to get this post back on topic. I just interviewed Barbora Besperat (2nd overall AG Kona) for a podcast about age group racing in Kona.

Her run split of 3:04 in Kona was the 10th fastest on the day and of course first in the age group field. Made me wonder if there was someplace to look to see what the fastest splits are in Kona for “age groupers”…

Now in her case she will be pro next year so the narrative of the top age groupers are just middle/back of the pack pros is true here… she did just start Ironman in 2022 and hadn’t earned her pro card prior to the 2023 season.

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Mission Kona Podcast
https://www.strava.com/athletes/2568182
Kona 2024 Qualifier

This post was so awesome. You are spot on Monty. To qualify for Boston back in the day was really really hard. And the time standards you mentioned were spot on. Yep- tough as nails to get in. That’s what made it an elite marathon, not just another race.

For sure, wish I could find some old Boston results from back then, but my google skills are just not that good. But just from what you had to do to even get there, I would have to think that a shit ton of runners ran pretty fast. Now dont bother with the womens times, like comparing women from the first few Ironmans...It was a true sausage fest for sure back in those days..

And so funny that the general consensus was that women were just not strong enough to run marathons,, haaaa!