tessar wrote:
snackchair wrote:
There's almost no incentive to race pro in triathlon, so there's always going to be sandbaggers. The fact that its so much easier to get to Kona (or 70.3 worlds) as ager than as a pro just exacerbates that effect.
Which is, as usual, twice as obvious in the women's ranks. F35-45 is littered with ex-pros, could've-been-pros, and others who finish top-10 at regional championships (IM Frankfurt, for example) and maintain a website full of sponsors, race results and images from their winter camps in Mallorca. They're pro in everything but the official status.
But it's the same way in every sport. Cycling has categories, but there's a guy who's racing in my category who trains as many hours as he likes (which is more than 20 a week), is now on a two-week altitude camp in the Alps, fully sponsored head to toe and even if he weren't, he has enough money to buy top-end equipment - and he's as powerful as some local Elite category riders, but because he doesn't race often he doesn't want to upgrade. Meanwhile, I'm a university student with a three-digit account balance, an alu frame and have to think twice about whether I can afford two gels on this ride. Tough, but nothing to be done about it.
Can I just suggest that there is never a reason to spend money on gels in training, whether you are a starving university student or rolling in an 7-8 figure bank account after you took your startup to a NASDAQ IPO. It makes no sense to spend money on pre packaged foods as there are cheaper ways to get 10x the calories at 1/10th the price from the local grocery store.
As for the topic at hand realistically everyone under 45 is racing artificial age groups. The best guys in your age group all race pro. The top 40-44 year old in the world is Cam Brown. Frodo and Kienle in the 30's and so on. Only after you get to 45-49 are all the top guys in the world actually racing in your age group (provided they are racing). In my age group, we have guys like Ken Glah and Jurgen Zack, the one above me has Scott Molina. In the W45-49, the fastest women in the world is still racing pro too so the top age grouper is not the fastest either.
As H2OFun said, the age groups are there to keep us all entertained. I know it truly sucks that some people have better genetics or more money or more flexibility or all of the above, but that's just life. It works the same way in other domains of professional life too. The faster we all figure that out the better. The only one we can control is ourselves and what we get out of our own circumstances.
WRT to being a university student and having a 3 digit account balance, it is just money. Your acccount balance will get bigger in due course. This is the time in life to enjoy a bunch of things that you will not be able to do later in life. You can have money later, but you can have youth only once (and I know that the guys in 70-74 will tell me that I can only be 50-54 once, so just go do stuff that I can and don't worry about what goes on around me and what others may or may not be able to do). In my age group there are plenty of guys who are retired/semi retired and also sport tans in March from their 6 weeks camps in Florida or Lanzarote, while I get it done on the trainer around work obligations. Plenty of guys with big bank balances with freedom to train even better than most pros because they have no financial constraints. I say "more power to you boys.....you worked hard and earned it". Life is not fair. Just about to get on the bike for my commute to work. That's generally going to be my training against the guys training all day in Thanyapura with Macca, but that's fine.
Hopefully I will see you in Austria this year!