Everyone's a Winner

Actually that does happen, from what I hear.  I read an article somewhere... can't remember where, about parents calling colleges and places of employment.  There are some schools that won't allow parents to call anymore.  

I agree that this is annoying. The thing that bugs me the most is how someone not "competing" (rather, participating) can get in the way of the competitors.  I am happy for anyone who wants to be involved, and is new to the sport, etc., and I am certainly glad for everyone who gets off the couch and stretches themselves.  However, please don't get in my way.  I have a love/hate relationship with newbie events now.  I don't mind so much if you are slow and aren't taking this as seriously as I am, but please at least learn the rules and be respectful of us out there trying to improve our times or win. 

Gaarryy - 2009-08-24 8:52 AM

Marvarnett - 2009-08-24 7:21 AM Came across this blog entry from Joe Friel

http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2009/08/everyones-winner.html

An interesting quotes: "Overall, the times for age groupers have gotten slower, it seems.  The slower age group times reflect a changed attitude among those who run marathons.  The sport for most age groupers has become a social activity rather than a performance challenge.  Finishing times are not an issue any more; finishing is the whole thing.  "Everyone is a winner," permeates the sport."

 actually I dont' care if I'm a winner... I do it to meet the ladies...

X2, I do it for the chicks.

I agree with Gary that it's more of a social thing than a performance thing....but so what.  Why do we have to judge people's motives for doing triathlons? 

What is wrong with 'everyone is a winner' thinking?  If you show up and participate in the event, you are a winner in my book.  The only people who 'lost' are those that stayed in bed and missed the opportunity to get out and have some fun swimming, biking and running.

25,000 people run a marathon and technically only one person won the race.  Period.  But we can't accept that in our society.  So the first thing we do is say we have to have a male winner and a female winner.  And then we say, well that's not fair becuase you have guys are 24 years old and people that are 75 years old....so let's aribitarily say every 5 years puts someone is different bucket and then we can have multiple 'winners'.  But wait, in triathlons, some people are bigger than other people....so we should have a clyde/athena divison so we can have even more winners.  And let's seperate the pros from the non-pros becuase that's not 'fair' that the pros get paid money if they win.

The other end of this focus on 'who won' is to say that participation = winning.  I'm and all-or-nothing kind of guy and so either we have 1 winner (the first guy to cross the line) or we say everyone is a weinner.  I vote for the latter.  :-)

~Mike

If you are shooting to be a top gun in the sport, why does it matter if the average is getting slower?  Guess what?  It doesnt! Cuz there are still going to be fasties out there trying to win the whole thing at the pointy end of the curve.  However- by having more people attaining the completion of these events, it waters down the mystique of doing a mary or finishing a tri or whatever to the general masses.  So someone is basically upset that someone isnt taking their hobby as seriously as they do?  Cripes, when I played golf I played it as another excuse for a few beers, but I suppose golf forums have subjects on beer swilling slow players who mess up their rounds.  I do have a problem with folks wanting to go long so early IF they are full of ideals of romanticism as to what training for long events is.  Yeah, its fun to thump your chest and say you are doing a HIM or IM or mary or whatever, but where I have trouble is when folks sign up for these events and dont put in the time.  Thats subjective, but at least put yourself in a position to be able to do the event.  Overall, more people in the sport means more events, more products, but less punch to your bragging rights.  In the end, time is still ticking away on race day, so if ya need something to thump your chest about to your buddies, get faster and feel good about that. 

I understand what you are saying, but to the average person who doesn't know anything about endurance sports, a marathon or an Ironman IS impressive. I think the goals of "winning" change as you become an adult. For kids, I agree - making "everyone a winner" does not teach them about the real world and sets them up for disappointment later on in life. But for most of us, we've already been there, done that a thousand times - we've been rejected from sports teams and other competitive school activities (student government, music ensembles, etc), colleges and grad programs, jobs, committees, etc. (And if you have never experienced rejection, don't take that for granted, just consider yourself INCREDIBLY blessed) I think most of us are pretty aware of whether or not we're fast, or good at swim/bike/run. And as others said, I think we all know that the finisher's medal we get at races is just for "participation", not for winning. I have one finisher's medal from my first official half marathon and I know I wasn't the winner. But I'm still pretty dang proud of what I did. It wasn't as if I didn't know that I could finish it - I could. But still, I look at it and think "Yeah, I did that - can YOU do that?" There are a lot of people out there who think merely finishing a 10K is impressive, because it's beyond what they'd bother to attempt to do. Which is fine for them, if that's not a goal. But the finisher's medal is just a nice little reminder of one of the goals I've met. I think there's something special about that, anyway. It's not about winning or losing or being "special", but the acknowledgement of working toward a goal and achieving it. And I think this is especially important these days, where hard work is not something most people respect anymore.

When I told my mother I was doing a race last spring the first thing she said was "do you even have a chance to win?"  Not very supportive and really not the reason I bet most people do triathlons - certainly not why I'm doing them. I did my first tri back in June my goal was to finish but I didn't want to finish BOP.  I ended up firmly MOP and I was beyond pleased - I won my race but not the race.  I'm coming up to my next race in a couple of weeks and I've upped my goal and that is what I am competeing for.  For me it is about setting goals for myself and improving my times not winning.

That being said I do think that part of competing is working hard and challenging yourself.  I'm in a group of about 20 moms that have been training all summer.  In that group there are several women like me that work their butts off training and are really goal-oriented.  But most of them I've found really just want to finish the race and don't challenge themselves all that much in their training.  Both outlooks are okay but I know who will still be doing triathlons next year . . .