Clydesdale or age group?

I am a clydesdale myself. I am 5'7" 190 lbs. played football in high school. I am 54 years old. This is only my second year of triathlon. I have been in the age group bracket for races, And I have been in the clydesdale division also. I do not think it matters what you register for, just go out and have fun with it. that is what I do. Being your first race you do not need to put more pressure on yourself by worrying about your place in the stats.

my 2 cents

Kurt

Simply put the class is called clydsdale for a reason its for large muscular men (like the Horse). Its not the fat guys class. I am 6' 4" and will never see the under side of 200. We have different challenges and advantages that the 5'8" 160 guy does not.  

 If you qualify enter if you want. For more info check out the Cldes/Athena forum on here as we answer this question about once a week.

really not all of us are 150 lbs.  I'am a fricking rail under 200, 210 is my perfect give or take a few is my size.

I race Age group instead of clydesdale, (I'm about 220) because there are more people in it and so it's more competition for me. Also if you do the Ironman events you don't get a clydesdale division.

One triathlon here had a Clydesdale division that started at 185.  I weighed 187.  They laughed when I said I wanted to compete in the Clydesdale division.  The swimming and biking probably don't make much of a difference, but running does.  You may be big and muscular but your heart probably doesn't pump a whole lot more than the guy who weighs 150.  He's going to have a major advantage on the run.

If you're competitive enough to finish in the top 10% in your age group, I wouldn't do the Clydesdale.  We had a soccer league here.  We were in the C division.  One game we played I recognized a player on the other team.  He played for the local college on a scholarship.  Certainly was not a C division player.

Such as when we die in the swim our bodies are easy to recover since they float.

The 200lb class is not slow by any means.  I race in that class and come in towards the back when infact I would have placed higher overall in the 25-29 class.

Now my buddy comes in at 195lbs and has to enter the 20-24 class.  If he did the clydesdale he would have placed 6th from last (while I did 4th from last) in the clydesdale.  In the 20-24 class he placed 4 out of 5.  The benefit to the 20-24 class is that most guys that age are hungover Saturday morning.

Simply put, that is wrong. The division is for men who weigh 200 pounds or more. It's just as much for the fat guys as it is for large muscular men.

I'm definitely NOT clydesdale, but I've run with a strong runner who usually easily won the Clyde division - he runs a 3:00hr marathon.

I'd say go for it if you can go for the win, but don't imagine that it's necessarily equivalent to a the open AG win. In running, this is especially true, and I'd bet it would be for triathlons. I'm lighter (150ish), but I had to run over 80 miles a week to consistently place in local running races in SoCal. The Clydes guys were winning with substantially less training than that, meaning it was definitely a substantially less competitive field.

My fast Clyde friend I mentioned above never bothered to enter Clyde divisions because it was too easy to win. He trained as hard as I did, hitting 100 mile weeks even more than I did.

I think a lot of Clydes assume that if they were 150 lbs, with the same training they're doing, they'd be as fast as us lighter AG winners on the run in pure running races. Odds are, unless you're running 70-90 miles per week, probably not.

Edited by agarose2000 2009-06-21 1:08 AM

How do you enter races as a clyde if you only weigh 190?

THE Spirit of Racine 1/2 Iron distance race had a clydesdale division starting at 185-200 lbs. then 201-225, 226-250

Kurt

Check out this thread:

This is not a Clydesdale

I agree with Craig002, after awhile you meet the other clydesdales in your area and develop friendships with a group that shares the same challenges.  Clydesdale knees struggle to support the run pounding so mileage is difficult to realize in training without injuries. 
good luck