OTOH, I’m one of those whiney fishies who doesn’t think wetsuits should be allowed unless water temp is under 60F, 60 degrees!! Talk about dangerous! Some of us would definitely wind up as casualties in those temps w/ no wetsuit. I can barely swim in water that cold with a wetsuit! and that the idea they should be used because they make things safer is a dangerous one. Dangerous, how? And that’s a personal thing that probably cost me hardware (yep, in the scarlet A class) a couple weeks back when I was one of maybe 10% of the field that was wetsuitless in perfectly comfortable 68F water. Perfectly comfortable to you, maybe. Remember we’ve been talking about different body types, weights, genetics, body fat %'s etc…USAT also has to think about these things when determining its rules.
Everyone’s got a slightly different view of how it should all work. It’s in the RDs best interest to make the tent as big as possible and keep growing the race/sport. I agree. Another reason a 60F wetsuit rule is insane. There would definitely be a significant drop in participation under those circumstances.
My complaint with wetsuits is that I worked my way through college lifeguarding to help pay the bills. I was left with a low tolerance for people who go out in the water and try to do something way beyond their abilities.
The novice triathletes out there are definitely way better prepared for water conditions than the kids I used to have to pull out of the water. But the lifeguard in me cringes every time I read a race report and someone talks about how they didn’t think they could have made it without the wetsuit. A wetsuit is not a personal flotation device. It wasn’t designed to be one, and is definitely not certified as such. It worries me to see people who seem to rely on it to do something it was not designed to do, instead of relying on their own abilities. It’s been drummed into me that those sorts of assumptions are bad water safety.
I want to see people out there loving the water as much as I do, and not getting scared by open water swims. I just think that’s it’s easy to rely on the wetsuit as a crutch instead of as a tool, and it’s hard not to worry a bit about people who see it as that.
I agree with Pooks. Its really a personal accomplishment more than an award. But its nice to see how your performance is compared to other similiar sized and aged athletes. I am a clyde and would rather not be a clyde and weigh under 200lbs but it aint happening anytime soon. I liken Clydes and Age Groups to Sailing where they have handicap and one design divisions, where similar boats of size and weight race against each other based on performance criteria. It creates a level playing field (with some faults, handicapping in sailing is not quite perfected) and more fun and more excitement for the masses. The one thing that has attracted me to triathlon is the diversity of age, size and sex and the comaraderie and encouragement for everyone to race and finish either fast or slow. We would want to eliminate all age groups and just have one division and one winner? I think if you train and finish your a winner, especially in longer races.
I’m very sorry if I was an ass, that I posted a reply that offended you, believe me I didn’t mean to!
This is a tricky subject and posting messages on a open forum is definitly not
an easy way to talk about such a delicate matter.
But it is an open forum so let me post one more, assuming that you are free to read or not…
As a physicist I belive in energy conservation! Meaning that if you put a certain amount of energy in a system and take out less, then there is energy stored somewhere in that sysem. The other way around, if you take more out than in, that energy must come from somewhere.
Therefore, I have a very hard time to believe, that if you put less energy in your body (eating) than you let out (moving, heat…) over an extended periods of time (years), that you can possibly not loose weight.
I know that there is good energy (easy to loose) and bad energy (hard to loose) and that some loose it faster, easier than others but if you want you can. It might be hard but yes you can!
Having said all that, I don’t want to imply that the only way to be happy in life is to have BF of 7%, not at all. But if you are unhappy with your current BF, change it!
I don’t argue that it’s the same for everybody. If I eat a plate of pasta and go for a 1h bike ride I probably burn all the calories I put in my body.
For other people that might not be true. After eating a plate of pasta and a 1 hour bike ride there are still calories left.
But, there is no way around Thermodynamics or any other law of physics, even if it’s a complex system like our body!
For some it will require a different diet vs training and timescale but at the end you can loose weight if you want to.
Human hormones like leptin or GH or GHRH will determine how your body will deal with calory intake. It will drive the burning, storing and releasing of energy in your body, I agree. Some will have a very disfavoring amount of the one or the other human hormone but if you know that and you deal with it you WILL loose weight. Yes life is unfair and you might have a body that requires you double the work than others but hey, the same hormones might lead to a biger sex-drive than those skinny people;-)
Hormone production changes with age. So if I don’t have a hard time right now to burn that plate of pasta I might have it much more difficult in 10 years from now!
Leptin doesn’t hold the key to anything…unless you like to sit on the toilet a lot because you can’t digest the nutrients you do need. Maybe you need to do a few more searches to figure out what your talking about before you start giving diet advice. Aren’t you like 20 something and 140 lbs?
The problem with most nutrition programs is that they rely to heavily on carbs for energy. Most endurance athletes think that is the only type of calorie that will produce energy, not so. We had a discussion about this a couple of months ago on this forum and an athlete named Michael McCormick was brought up. He focuses heavily on protein and less on carbs (he has a sub 9 hr IM to his name). The art is teaching your body to burn fat, not sugar for energy. Carbs when not timed correctly, or when in to large a quantity will cause your blood sugar to fluctuate and cause the subsequent insulin spike which then causes more calories to store as fat. The older you get the slower your metabolism and the worse this problem can become.
This would take to long to get into with any real depth but it can be stated that there is a nutrition approach that will help your body burn a greater percentage of fat for calories than sugar.
I don’t argue about that…but you still have to take in the calories in order to store them. No intake no storage!
…The lack of leptin is responsible for the increase in appetite often found when people drastically reduce calorie intake. A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine reports that daily injections of leptin over one year led to decreased appetite and weight loss…
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appetite right?
I said it might be harder for some
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…The amount of leptin produced in the body varies significantly from one person to the other, even when amount of body fat is similar. Individual differences in leptin production or resistance may be at least part of the reason why some people have a more difficult time losing weight and maintaining that weight loss. There currently are only a few descriptions of leptin gene mutation in humans, so leptin therapy is not a panacea for weight control for the majority of overweight people. The exact mechanism of leptin’s action on energy and appetite regulation has yet to be determined. Although the latest results are promising, more studies are needed before researchers completely understand leptin’s role in weight loss for the general population…
“Recombinant Leptin for Weight Loss in Obese and Lean Adults”. Heymsfield SB, Greenberg AS,
Jufioka K, Dixon RM, Kushner R, Hunt T, Lubina JA, Patane J, Self B, Hunt P, McCamish M. JAMA
1999 Oct;282(16):1568-1575.
"Free fatty acids and insulin levels-relationship to leptin levels and body composition in various
patient groups from South Africa". der Merwe MT, Panz VR, Crowther NJ, Schlaphoff GP, Gray IP,
Froguel P, Joffe BI, Lonnroth PN. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord 1999 Sep;23(9):909-17
Earlier I was in a rush and couldn’t type a full statement on the entire apparent functioning of the hunger and weight regulation systems.
The basic essence of things is that our body is the product of evolutionary processes that have optimized us toward being able to tolerate certain foods and certain conditions better than others. The basic idea is that humans are designed to be fairly small, lean, active, and that by living a lifestyle (including diet) that is close to our ancestral one that we can all bring ourselves closer to the ideal of health… our modern society and triathletes especialy tend to eat a diet that is vastly different from what out ancestors ate. In the past few decades the increasing use of high-glycemic carbohydrates has influenced bodyweights and obesity dramatically even though there has been little or no change in the actual amounts of calories consumed. There are substantial interpersonal differences in the way people tolerate foods, some of which is related to ethnic ancestry… and this is the ONLY reason that 95% of the population doesn’t qualify as a Clydesdale.
To direct your search on understanding how the body metabolizes food and regulates weight then do google searches for a few keywords. Insulin, Glycemic Index, Glycemic Load, Leptin… reading on these few topics should bring you new vocabulary words that you can then look into using the internet to further your own understanding. The topic is simply too broad for me to be albe to write a statment on in any reasonable time frame. Also, be wary of articles that don’t cite sources. Bad information runs wild, but there is good science behind all of this.
I will never accuse an overweight person of being unmotivated or lazy, especially when they are racing ironmans. All that’s needed is sufficient understanding of your body and the willingness to make the subtle changes in your diet to make it happen.
Lean meats, slow acting carbohydrates, vegetables, good fats. It’s not a food pyramid… but instead more of a pie with almost equal sized portions.
If you look at the research it’s pretty clear that high-fat and some other diets that are supposed to magically “teach” the body to burn more fat simply don’t work. The changes in fat metabolism occur as a result of training, not diet.
The reason that lower-carbohydrate diets seem to cause greater fat burning has to do with the way that the body uses insulin and the side effects of insulin release in response to high glycemic, high-carbohydrate diets.
If you wish to discuss this on a more technical level and bring science into the picture then I’ll be more than happy to do so, although the topic is huge. Most of the research so far into leptin and other hypothalamic functions has so far been happening in mice, but as mammals we function in generally the same way and so this research holds great promise for future treatment of human obesity.
Dre, you are hanging around some goofy “influential” people. Who the hell thinks that Princeton has a law or med school? Great place to go to build a bomb, though. (I know, it was actually built in Chicago, but those Princeton guys spent alot of time thinking about it.)
(The title of the post is what my coxswain labeled the Princeton boat as we rowed through them my freshman year.)
I am 6’5", 210. When racing in the Clydesdale division, I have finished last once and first once and everwhere in between. It all depends on what “type” of Clydesdales sign of for that division for that race. For me, I just compete against a time goal I have set for myself. The division finish is just a fun twist that I am able to compete in because of my size.
BTW, the main reason I rather sign up for the Clydesdale division in races is the fact that all the “little” guys like to draft off of me People really jockey for position behind me during a run into the wind!
“I liken Clydes and Age Groups to Sailing where they have handicap and one design divisions, where similar boats of size and weight race against each other based on performance criteria. It creates a level playing field (with some faults, handicapping in sailing is not quite perfected) and more fun and more excitement for the masses.”
I’m a sailor and I don’t want to go here. Age and weight groups are like classing sailboats by color, but it beats the crap out of any alternatives I can find. I have fled to one-design sailing because of the bitching and moaning about handicaps. Imagine having your bike, wetsuit, running shoes, (and maybe body fat %?) measured the night before a race and being assigned a handicap based on the results. Big regattas these days are mostly one-design and look a lot like triathlons. There are good sailors and bad sailors in each class, but they compete with boats in their class. Some sailors will never compete in the Melges 24 class, but they enjoy racing against their peers.
THis is why I like the Clydesdales, too…drafting in the swim! Luckily for me, many times the Clydesdales are put in the middle aged men’s AG swim wave…I pick out a friendly big guy and stay right on his feet the whole way…as long as he’s going straight and doesn’t leave me behind! Even if I’m feeling like he’s going too slow and another smaller guy comes stroking by…I’ll choose to stick right behind my big new best friend…I know his wake is where I want to be! I’ll even make sure I help him get his wetsuit off when we get to shore as thanks. I’ve gotten nothing but big grins from the guys I’ve drafted on and then helped at T1.
In fact, I’m looking for a volunteer clydesdale “swim leader” for White Lake 1/2 on May 4th. (Actually, I don’t know if they are in my AG swim wave or not!)
dear zinc, i can understand why you do not want clydesdale around . i was at the award ceremony at st.anthony’s i got one of those 10th place awards. i am sorry you had to wait and watch the awards ceremony so long. by the way i am 5 '11 215 lbs with 7 percent body fat.
I don’t mind waiting for the awards… that was no problem, although I must admit that I was getting really hungry… recovery drinks don’t satisfy quite like a decent meal, but anyway… The issue is that you’re recieving awards for a category based on choices, unlike age group categories. By the sounds of things, with a little work you could be a high-calibre bodybuilder… something that I and most other triathletes would not be able to do without gaining 80lbs, while you can’t be an outright competitive triathlete without losing 80lbs. This is a choice and the degree to which it isn’t choice is the same as the other genetic/biological factors that make one a good triathlete (lactic tolerance, VO2Max, etc)
At St. Anthony’s the problem was compounded by sending the Clydesdales off in the first wave which left many of the fastest age groupers dealing with the slowest clydes out on the bike course… again, the crowded bike course and people ignoring the rules made this a safety issue.
Simply eating healthy won’t stop you gaining weight if you eat too much. Trouble is, it’s difficult to reset your appetite while you’re training because you’re constantly stimulating it.
Most people tested underestimate their daily calorie intake by **40%. **
It’s an unpleasant analogy I know, but in countries where there are food shortages there are no people your size.
People really jockey for position behind me during a run into the wind!