I like this.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

This keeps coming and the math guy in me can't really argue the point, but...

There are a lot of race directors who do make an assumption that similar ages have similar average performance expectations when they group wave starts that put the slow groups first and the fast groups last to compress the time on the bike and run course. You can say age means nothing to performance expectation, but I would bet that if you take a large enough sample and throw out the outliers in the data, the mean and average would be pretty close, and the bell curve would be fairly tightly compressed.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

That’s kinda the point. AG is racing among your peers whether fast or slow because most of the time a 50 year old is on avg the same as another 50 year old.

What the cat system would do is remove the outliers and place them in the properly placed category against similiar performance based athletes.

So it’s sorta semantics but AG doesn’t really qualify you on anything but age because it’s basic human nature that similiar aged people will behave more similarity.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Disagree... I've seen 50 years olds doing better than 2:15 , and them somehow another 50 year old at 3+ hour standing on the AG podium with these guys..

Did you miss that I talked about the outliers and I also said “most of the time on avg” they behave similiar.

Your using outliers to disprove my point that on average most 50 year olds act like 50 year olds?

Got it

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I don't think they are outliers. Mostly years of experience vs the I just retired let's do sports now person

More reason for cat racing. over all winners at ironman 5150 superseal olympic tri (listed by AG):

1. 50-54
2. 30-34
3. 25-29
4. 30-34
5. 35-39
6. 45-49
7. 35-39
8. 30-34
9. 18-24
10. 45-49

3 masters athletes in top 10

At USAT oly nationals the first masters athlete was 34th and there was 2 in the top 50.

Robert Skaggs really skews the results anywhere he goes.

Sure. There are random races where the winners are old guys. But when young talent shows up. The kids win. Look at du nats last year. 1 40+ in the top 10 in the sprint and none in the Olympic.

I think it's a mistake to think the participation crowd in triathlon would not show up if you had proper "categories" and also a generic "participation" corral.

Cycling does have the participation corral also, it's called fondos. Cycling just makes the huge mistake of not doubling up on fondo event courses to use them at the same time for some categorized racing.

Don't think that if Ironman suddenly had "cats" that all the non-competing finisher crowd wouldn't show up. They'd still show up.

It would be like showing up for age grouped USAC racing. Think about how stupid that would be. You would never do USAC by age group versus category. It would be so freaking stupid.

So there's no masters category in USAC?

Perhaps someone can explain why there appears to be categories in this race.

https://www.usacycling.org/...udes-with-criteriums

Define proper. Its arbitrary no matter how you slice it.

I don't know what USAC is so I don't need to worry (or care) what they are doing.

Ironman is already about finishing. Sprint/Olympic is a lot more about competing and like to "win your age group" is a very popular mentality.

Triathlete's like age group racing - so why change it to be like something they don't do or care about?

I presume this is a rhetorical question from you?

Call it racing when only 17 of 250 people finish within 30min of the AG winner? I picked the 1/2 from Raleigh for what would be my age range. Even a 1/2 hour is a stretch over a 5 hour total time. Really, I'd say within 15min is competitive as that's still a cumulation of both 1/2mph slower on the bike and 1min/mi slower on the run. So now you're down to 7 folks of 250.

I challenge calling it racing if only 7 in 250 are even in contention.

Of course the shorter you make a course, the more competitive a field "appears" to be.

It sounds more like to me "we've done it this way forever and will continue to do so".

I cannot be convinced it is a good idea. I just can't.

Sometimes it makes sense. Youth sports mostly age ranges, and a couple skill levels in each age range (rec soccer and challenge leagues).

Sometimes it doesn't........golf. Imagine a 50 year old washed up old golf pro being in the same "age group" as all the other 50 year old golfer duffers. That'd be silly.

IMHO the only way you can honestly call an AG competitive is if you increase the podium to some "percentile" of finish times in that AG. Then the competitive group also becomes participatory.

You want your competitive groups within a decent percentile of each other.

Are you being sarcastic? USAC National Criterium Titles are awarded at the National Road Championships in Masters age groups, in 5-year intervals, at least up through age 89.

Yeah. Kind of like the Tour de France.

Random? But it's IronBrand, yo!

I'm not talking about masters.

Why does USAC have cat system but then the master's division is AG system? I actually never knew USAC did anything w/ AG's for any categories. Of course I've not actually been an sanctioned member for like 15 years and let me coaching credit lapse many years ago.

I still think one of the bigger issues you still run into with triathlon is that everyone is on the course at the same time. USAC road races even if they are sent off in waves, most of the time categories never ride up to one another affecting each other on a very consistent basis like it occurs in every triathlon event with X fast AG behind the Y slow groups, etc etc.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I've made posts folks disagree with. The world won't change for me. And that's fine.

To me age groups make sense when used properly. I think a mix works best. I don't know the mix, but it isn't 100% cat and it isn't 100% AG. I'd lean towards cats for under 50 years old and lean towards AG's for 50+ years old.

Like if under 35 y/o, categories only.
35+, you have A and B
then 50+ it's mostly AG distinctions....50-60, 60-70, whatever makes sense.

Or have an A and B cat for all AG's above 40 or something.

It's both. A Cat 4 will always be a Cat 4, just one that can race appropriately categorized masters races once they turn 35 or 40. Said 42 year old Cat 4 could never race a 40+ 1,2,3 race, for example. They could race 40+ Open.

Don't you have to be a 3 or above (at least in the younger groups)? Lots of local masters races have an "elite" masters where you have to be a 1/2/3.

A random 38 year old can't just up and enter a USAC national criterium (or any criterium). It's not exactly the same.

Cause sometimes you're a 35 or 40 year old cat 1 who trains 5 hours a week and you can no longer compete with the 24 year old 1s and 2s who train 20 hours a week, but you still want to show up on race day and show people what's what.

So master's are the place to do so. :D

To me age groups make sense when used properly. I think a mix works best.

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To be fair we basically have a mix. It's just only 2 categories- Pro or AG. And I think especially at IM where everyone is on the same course in looped situations, cat system isn't really all that much better because of the fact that your still having to mix the course with "idiots".


So as I said earlier, cat system works great when your racing the same "ability" people on the same "closed" course. But we really never have that especially at the IM courses because as I noted every NA IM has looped bike venues except 2- Kona and IM FL.

Of course the cat system likely really would excel at sprint and olympic distance, and a course like 70.3 Raleigh where they are on 1 looped courses and the fast guys can truly go off the front by themselves and never have to mix with lower level ability athletes.

So in the context of triathlon the AG system likely is the easiest to use across the board when you can't "close" races to similiar abilities. That fact seems to be forgotten when talking about category systems and promoting the cycling format as a better format. Yes that would be great at shorter distances but not really all that helpful or different in looped courses cus you'd still have to ride through the muck.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II