It's just less interesting to talk about how we had to skip a workouts to pick up the kids or ran a 4hr PB marathon.

I dunno about that. Frankly, I find it more interesting to talk to other people doing this in spite of life getting in the way than it is to hear about people who get paid to train 7 days a week.

I did a small triathlon with the local club this morning. Even in the local club, I'm a total Fred. Last one out of T1, mainly because I was struggling to get out of my wetsuit, but managed to pick up a few places on the ride. Ended up finishing around 10th from last (out of around 50 entrants) so I'm not exactly setting the world on fire, but I'm out here getting it week in and week out, despite a draining full time job, just like everybody else. Every time I cross the finish line before time runs out is a victory.

They are on Slowtwitch posting about Lionel.

FWIW, I always thought of "Freds" as a cycling term, usually used by racers to describe a less accomplished/less cool subset of non-racers. For tris it was always more MOP or AGs, since there isn't the same split between "racers" and "cyclotourists."

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
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Don't let the bravado and chest thumping and backdoor brags here on ST fool you into believing everyone here is elite. Sure,there are a lot of people here who used to race Pro,still race Pro and who are top age groupers but don't forget there just isn't enough room on the podiums of the world to fit the 100,000 ST subscribers.The vast majority are putzing along like you and me.

I wish more of us putzes would contribute 'cause maybe then we would talk about the silly fun stuff instead of over-analyzing and constantly arguing about almost everything.

This is correct.

Most of us are somewhere between putrid and mediocre when it comes to race results.

Probably why we spend too much time on ST. ;)

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

My name is Randy, and I'm a Putz

"Hello, Randy!"

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

They are too busy doing swim workouts in that Egyptian River.

There are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more people in this sport trying to figure out how to get in all their workouts, grocery shop, run kids around, keep up with the spouse, stay employed, get the trash and recycling out on the correct day than there are pro's, top AG athletes or as the infamous Kiley coined profamateur on here.

As a coach 50% of my job for the first few months is helping people optimize their life so they can be more efficient at things and optimize the training that they do to help them achieve or surpass their goals.

It's typically a lot easier to coach a full time pro than it is a working joe

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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I’m 47 and just getting started in triathlons. I raced motocross for most of my life, I also raced mtb enduro one season. I decided to build a tri bike and sign up for a local sprint and a 70.3 nearby this season. I work for the power company and have an erratic work schedule. I also have two bulging discs in my neck. Swimming has been both good and bad! The good is I have a swim coach that is impressed with how much I’ve improved in a short time, easily swimming 1.30 100yrd times and have gotten down to 1.13/1.19. The bad is swimming is aggravating my pinched nerve, I’m getting a nerve block to hopefully get through these races before I get fixed.

Glad to hear there are others like me out here. I don't really see a lot of posts from us mere mortals on the forum. Most are posting names I don't know. I can appreciate there are elites/pros here, but I don't really follow that level. If that's you, more power to you. I'm just out here doing this stuff because I want to be as healthy and strong as I can, for as long as I can. And to that, I can say with a good deal of pride, that at 54 I'm in as good a shape today as I have been since I got out of the Marine Corps almost 30 years ago. And that's the goal.Ya, I heard of "Fred" as a cycling term. I just didn't know if there was a similar term for tri. I am most definitely a "Fred" either way. At best, I'm a middle-of-the-pack finisher. Most of the time, if I'm honest, I'm much more of a back of the pack finisher.

I'm like you (but 64, not 54), and am doing it for the same reasons. I get bored just running or just cycling or just anything. So, while I'm not very good at any of the disciplines, I'm there and attempting it. I find if I have something on the schedule, I'm much more inclined to train (and even then, life sometimes gets in the way). I do adjust my events to a run or a cycle event, instead of only doing Tris (again, to not get bored).

I'm secretly hoping that in 10 years I can make a podium (because everyone else as quit). :)

But I also like to "dream" and get encouraged when I read about the elites on here (or at least from the folks who acknowledge that folks like me exist). I'm not encouraged from the folks who backdoor brag when telling us how bad they were last week, only getting 2nd in their ag (or they only swim 1:30/100 with some 1:13/1:19).

I got second once last year... There were two of us in the ag and since it was a small event they didn't have ag awards :)

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Not a coach. Not a FOP Tri/swimmer/biker/runner. Barely a MOP AGer.
But I'm learning and making progress.

Watch out, ST Petty Police might flag your "Fred" comment as offensive.

Most Freds are busy on the road teaching female riders what they are doing wrong on a bicycle. They don't have time to write about their epic ~32 kph average speed rides on ST, there is Strava, FB, IG (often all at the same time) to let us know how hardcore their rides were.

(all of the above in pink)

I'll raise my hand as a decidedly not front pack individual who participates in triathlon and posts around here. I love the sport and the training, but triathlon fits around my life. I don't fit my life around triathlon. I've barely had the chance to do any training recently due to injury, moving, figuring out where the kids are going to school, changing jobs, and various other parts of my life and that's a bummer, but I've got two healthy and happy young kids and that's the priority right now. When I line up at Morro Bay (hopefully!) I will be laughably slow, but I'll see what kind of performance I can squeeze out of myself on the day then drive back home and have dinner with my wife and kids. I hope my life settles into a better rhythm over the next few months and I can get into the same groove I had most of last year, but for now I'll enjoy being a dad and hanging on to the little bit of fitness that I have at the moment.

Even the best AGers are just one major injury or illness from a DNS (did not start), so gotta keep that in perspective.

For sure though, ST tends to slant toward experienced triathletes, or at least ones keen on optimizing their performance. Which leads to arcane discussions about yaw angle effects on aerodynamics, debates on which sugar/electrolyte mix is the best recipe, etc. - a lot of which is definitely above the head of even a dead middle of pack AGer.

Still, it's good stuff, and plenty of stuff to learn from. I'm really glad there are a lot of pros and high-level AGers participating here (of whom I am definitely NOT one of!)

Yes and amen. This is half the reason we created our company. (Genuinely not a shameless plug, but may read like one anyway. We just needed a more efficient way to get ourselves and our clients fueled right, without missing family time to get it done.)

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Dr. Alex Harrison | Founder & CEO | Sport Physiology & Performance PhD
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I guess in that regard, I'm ahead of the game. Except for my fat, 11 year old cat and two birds, I live alone so I don't have that pull in my life. My biggest training obstacle is working 12 hour shifts. Factoring in daily preparation and the to/from travel, that's 14 hours of my work day. It doesn't really leave me a lot of time for training on those days, so I don't. Fortunately, it's still pretty easy to stay conditioned for sprints and even Olympics just four days a week. But I want to finish IMAZ this year so it's challenging to fit that kind of training in just four consecutive days a week. I've been thinking about breaking up my work week (2 on, 1 off, 1 on) just so I can get one day's training in between. That is not a particularly appealing idea though.

r/triathlon

Finishing > DNFing > DNSing > Hanging out on the sofa watching life go by.

You are in the game and not Fredding!

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Tad

It took awhile, but I finally discovered that its not the destination that's important, but rather the journey.

Speaking of MOP........

I raced the local sprint triathlon this weekend & finished 4th out of 7 in Male 50-54 AG.......................

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

I was no 42 on the oceanside start list and was called a Fred

So the Fred definition is hard to define.
I was not no 42 but just wanted to point it out that for some people even pros are Freds that have no reason to race in the category they chose to

Yep. So true.
I've had 4x DNS (2x tri, 1x trail race, 1x OW swim event) in the past 2 years due to illness / injury / stress +laziness.
Never ever had one before in my life.
I don't like being in my mid 50s... never had this before hitting 50 !

Now throw in nursing a very poorly beautiful dawgie for 9 months through cancer, and trying to train a hyperactive working line gundawg pup too, and getting to the start line is hard. I need to retire from work to become a full time dog training triathlete !

Accurate assessment. I lurk here in search for marginal improvements, gear advice and expert tips and post my dumb questions on reddit.

Similar to some of you my biggest challenge is changing around my workout plan to balance family/friends, work and fatigue. I try to WFH 2 out of 5 work days a week and get an AM and PM workout in. I'm usually limit myself to training for an hour after work when I commute into work and make up missed hours in the early morning on the weekend.

This forum has been around for a while you can easily search for the Fred like topics. After a while they become repetitive

(I'm reading your reply as snide and snarky. If I've misread that, I apologize in advance.)

Uh... Yeah... This is because new people get interested in triathlons and find the site (at least I did). Then they have a million questions (at least I did). The search feature is nice, but not exactly great at narrowing down the number of threads that really match what you want. Likewise, data on what training/nutrition/kit/bike/etc. works "best" is constantly updated.

Someone asked in 2011: Performance gains overtime: Triathlon Forum: Slowtwitch Forums

When they could have just searched and found from 2003: Running Faster--How?: Triathlon Forum: Slowtwitch Forums

But then, over the eight years training methods changed a lot. Not one answer in the 2003 said "Run more", but many of the answers to your question in 2011 mentioned running more (in fact I loved the answer to run 150mpw).

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Not a coach. Not a FOP Tri/swimmer/biker/runner. Barely a MOP AGer.
But I'm learning and making progress.