Subject: RE: "Dude- you need to eat a bagel" Originally posted by Dnn Originally posted by brigby1Originally posted by Dnn Originally posted by Hot Runner Ummm...I believe OP was a "Dude"?! And for anyone who believes that lighter is better for tri success, I should post a pic of my last race where I was 3rd in my AG. The women who kicked my a$$ on the bike clearly have plenty of pounds of muscle on me. Being a (healthy, adequately fueled) lightweight might confer some advantage on the run; on the bike, it's a disadvantage on flats and downhills and probably somewhat of a liability on the swim as well (more likely to get hypothermia and cramp in cold conditions, possibly less natural buoyancy, which means one has to have really strong technique). Unfortunately many people of both genders in endurance sports do get caught up in the "lighter is always better" fallacy. How do you explain that the two fastest guys to ever complete the ironman distances are very light weight guys? (Raelert and Vanhoenacker ). Chrissie was also very light. Lighter being better is no fallacy at all I'd say. There is merit to being lighter, but the point was that it's not ALWAYS better. It can become detrimental. Well yeah, but I'd like to think that everyone knows that. I'd love to put on some weight You've been on here enough to know better. But really, some don't really know where that point is. Are they just tired from the workload, dropping too far, or just need to HTFU about it? Can be tough to tell when in the middle of it. There is also dropping too fast. Losing the weight more rapidly than the body can handle while keeping performance up. Trying to lose another few pounds (or kilos) in the last weeks before the race could very well end up hurting the energy levels more than the performance gained from the lighter weight. |