AM – easy jogging with the dogs. 7.5 miles. AHR =139. Don’t feel any adverse effects from yesterday. The workouts I am doing right now are not real gut busters, but I think are better preparing me to be able to do that in the spring of next year. The workouts are challenging, and are hard, but not over the top or killer where I am reeling for days afterwards. I can feel their benefit.
PM – easy, into the sunset. 6.5 miles on Lac Amora trail.
An age grading calculator went up over at Younger Legs for Older Runners. Little rant here: age grading performances for award recognition is total BS. If you want to do it for some hypothetical consideration – fine. Don’t give awards, or even list formal results based on it. In Lexington, I was dumbfounded by seeing guys who ran slower get put on the same podium as guys who ran faster – but ahead of them. Uh, of course the older guy at 60 ran slower than Simon. That guy kicked ass in the 60 age group. He did NOT beat Simon. Stating that he did beat Simon based on some crazy table is voodoo at best.
Don’t get me wrong – I am all in favor of recognizing age group competition, but to say a 72 year old ran better than a 42 year based on some weird conversion charts is a crap. Yeah, I know – easy for me to say when I am forty and the test will be to see if I say it when I am 65. I believe I will.
Nice. Like the runs in "Once a Runner," that is exactly how it should be -- no one run by itself should kill you but the accumulation of runs should be the challenge and generate the real benefits.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I was robbed in the clydesdale category at Route 66 by a dude I crushed by 15 minutes.
ReplyDeleteMissed the rant earlier. Completely agree, plus those tables/calculators are flawed in that they tend to favor older runners and age groups over younger ones. AG WRs for ages 20-39 tend to be set by pros (or former pros) and the same tends to be true for the younger masters age groups. Not so for the older masters/veterans age groups. Not long ago I posted a poll/discussion on this very topic on a forum where I moderate:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hillrunner.com/forums/index.php/topic,7304.0.html
AA - good thread over there.
ReplyDeleteI have no issue with age group awards, and even age group incentives to push competition there. By incentives, that could mean relaxing standards for races as someone gets older, or prize money for the age groups.
To the point of relaxing standards, I can see how this could go either way. A wave at Bolder Boulder is agnostic of age. That is fine. Boston has entry standards based on age. I think that is fine as well.
Prize money ... hey, great if it is there by age group but it should never be based on some numerical table (unless it is finishing order).