But it is apparent in the thread that i stumbled upon that even having Clydesdale/Athena divisions in any race causes some contention. There seems to be a disagreement about what it means, and i have discovered that i myself seem to have been misinformed. Kevin was pretty articulate about it:
The clydesdale division is EXACTLY for those big dudes who are nothing but muscle. It wasn't created for fatties, this is the biggest failure in the clydesdale movement right now.Wow. This makes a lot of sense since Clydesdales are not fat horses, they are huge, muscular, slow and strong horses. The interesting thing to me is that i still fit in this category. I am not tall by any means but even when at my lowest weight i was considered to be about thirty pounds overweight and firmly in the Athena group by fifteen pounds. I was in the best shape of my life but too "overweight" to enlist. I am slow and steady about swimming, biking, and running, a fact which drove my swim team coach and mountain biking instructor bonkers. But in Softball i was one of our strongest hitters and would consistently get doubles because i could hit it far and would run full out, getting more speed in that situation that i would while running for endurance. Determination is what it has always been about for me no matter what the sport.
Clydesdale racing is not for an out of shape fat guy to claim an award, although at small races that often happens. Clydesdale racing is about those large framed muscled up guys. These guys train their asses off, work VERY hard, and given their size put in some amazing performances. However due to the nature of their build, they will never score in their age group at a big race.
I have the perfect example, a friend of mine named Lance from Delaware, has a 5k time in the low 18s his size was 6'5" and 250 pounds. That performance is pretty well unbelievable, smokin. To do this he needed to d a lot of training, lot of running, all the right things and he even needed to have some natural gifts. He is built as solid as a rock, not a fat guy at all.
Now, while an admirable performance low 18s won't even sniff the age group awards at a 5k with a decent number of runners in it. So Joe Law decided these type of performances should get an award. I think a lot of people agree that this is a reasonable thing to do.
However, at a lot of small races, it;s not only the big strongly built guys you see getting an award, occasionally you get the guy who is kinda bug but mostly just needs to lose weight. Sometimes he sneaks in there and takes an award, the problem with this is that when others see it, it changes the perception of what clydesdale racing is about. It makes people think it is about a bunch of out of shape guys giving each other awards, and that's not really what it is about. It is EXACTKLY about the guys built like the fellows at the race you saw.
Here's more on how it got started, notice that times follow weight, not BMI but weight.
The concept of weight division competition and the moniker “Clydesdale”, can be traced back to a Baltimore area statistician name Joe Law who founded the Clydesdale Runners Association in the mid-1980s. Joe Law convinced the race director of the Marine Corps Marathon and several other local races to include a field on race applications for competitors to record their weight. This data provided the basis for Joe’s statistical analysis of running performance vs. weight, and he determined with mathematical precision, that a runner’s weight and speed in road races are inversely proportional. Above 160 or 170 pounds there is a sharp drop off in times. This observation provided the basis for concept of weight division competition, so that big runners could compete amongst their peers, on a more level playing field. The concept is analogous to offering age-division competition in road races and has gained grudging support through the years. Joe coined the term “Clydesdale” to identify big athletes. Clydesdales are big and strong horses—perhaps not the fastest, but certainly amongst the most determined of the workhorses. Weight division competitors relish being compared to their equine anima. Sadly, Joe Law passed away in 1991 and the national Clydesdale movement stalled.
One thing i do not agree with Kevin about is being termed a "fatty". I gained my weight kicking and screaming. I have always tried to eat healthfully, i don't drink often (in fact, rarely would be the accurate term), and for most of my adult life i have consistently worked out three-six days a week. How dare he assume that someone like me is a couch potato when i am unable to lose weight when on a strict regimen such as this and when i work out less than three times a week will randomly gain fifteen-fifty pounds? Yes fifty, when i was about to turn eighteen i jumped from ~180 to ~230 while we were moving to Colorado. I attribute my weight gain to stress but have no idea why i cannot lose weight. There are others whose weight gain is medical, perhaps because of medication they have to take.
I'm sorry if i'm being a broken record. Three years ago i thought i was on track. Only losing ten-fifteen pounds after training for over three months, part of it six days a week and two workouts a day, was discouraging, but i kept at it. Even six months later, after a painful injury, i kept working out about four-five days a week. My body was different back then, i was a lot more muscular and down a pant size. You want to know why i stopped training? Because i wanted to graduate from college. I reached a point where i couldn't get all my homework done even when i wasn't training. I quit work, i quit training, and i worked my butt off in a new way. And in the process i have lost muscle and gained fat. I reached my goal, i graduated from college and even managed to bring my GPA back up to a 3.0.
People assumed that i was proud of this accomplishment. I'm not. It was surreal at the time and i have long felt that i was duped into going to college. I allowed myself to be sucked into the lie that one has to go to college to be intelligent and that if one has a degree a comfortable middle-class life is guaranteed. Such things are not true, there are no guarantees, and there are people i know who are much better educated than i am who are in the same place without as much support, who work two jobs or barely make ends meet. College is a scam. It was more of the high school machine where you are required to read and temporarily master certain artificial definitions of "knowledge" and when the love of true learning is squashed and the time to do so is restricted. Now don't get me wrong, i really enjoyed being in college to a certain extent, and i even miss parts of it. There were teachers who greatly influenced me and that i was glad to have as a part of my life. But the system is flawed, just as public school is, just as there an alternative in homeschooling, i feel there needs to be an alternative for higher learning to college. I am in so much debt and have little to show for my very considerable efforts.
What i was proud of was finishing that triathlon. It was only a sprint, and i was one of the slowest people out there, but i finished the race. I am a Clydesdale in that way, i believe in perseverance, strength, and willpower. So to the naysayers to the Clydesdale/Athena divisions can i just say that you are being elitest jerks. Not everyone has the body of a runner, and do you know what, that is not anyone's fault, it's genetics. We can't control who our parents, grandparents, ancestors were. We can't control what bone structure we have or if we bulk up or if our muscles lengthen. We can't control that because we can't engineer better athletic bodies before they are even born and even if we could there is no gene for the human spirit.
But finishing that triathlon seems to be the pinnacle of my achievement and it's all downhill again. I did finish my mountain biking class, but i certainly did not master the activity or keep up with the pack. I was only competing against my former self, but of course there was very strong peer pressure to be something that God did not design me to be, that i never will be. That isn't fair. So you people who consider yourself to be the true athletes, are you so special because you just happened to have the right body type? I bet you would be pissed off at me if i believed that. You put in the training, too, you've sacrificed just as i have. I don't think any less of you because you haven't had my struggles, why do you think less of me because of mine? But if you were required to strap on a fat suit on race day, would you even compete? I've been required to strap on a fat suit every day for the past twelve years and was treated as if i was fat for the ten years before that.
Okay, so i admit it...i am the one who chose to go to college, so it's my own fault that i'm in debt and chained to a future i don't really want (that is to say, working to pay off my debt rather than working to thrive). And i chose college over training for more triathlons. So why do i continue to not train? Number 1 reason is exhaustion and not wanting to be injured again. Number 2 is that i need to get my act together. Number 3 is i feel like i have less time now than i did while doing school and working simultaneously. Part of this is structure: while i was in school i had the same classes five days a week and my work schedule changed very little. I had my day of "rest" fall on Saturday because i worked all day and was able to schedule my workouts around my classes even with the campus pool closed because it was being rebuilt. Now i am working more and my schedule changes every week. I need to make room in my life for training and very tentatively. I'm not sure that i can handle training and working 7-9 hour days. Before i was only working 4-6 hour days (except Saturdays) and sitting on my butt in class the rest of the time. Now i stand all day long and it hurts. This is going to be a process, i can't dive into this thoughtlessly, i need to make sure i do it right. Because i'm not as young as i used to be and slow and steady wins the race.
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