Road races should have prizes for weight categories and not age NO?

I think I just invented a new word... Celluliteful

Look up Clydesdale/Athena categories running.

I know it's a troll but ....

you can do something about your weight. You can't do anything about your age.

5'2" 160 is different than 6'5" 160.

well...... wrote:

I know it's a troll but ....

you can do something about your weight. You can't do anything about your age.

This

And weight doesn't matter too much as long as your your body fat/BMI is low - 181 lb Andrew Wheating and 125 lb Leo Manzano can compete against each other just fine, unlike in boxing where they must be separated by weight. Now a 6' / 180 lb hobbyjogger is going to have a bunch of extra fat and slow down. But that's their fault, they don't need a separate weight class.

1/10, could've thought of a better thread

They should have categories like cycling. By performing well in races you can move up to higher categories. Races would be started in 5 minute increments or whatever with people of similar abilities competing against each other.

well...... wrote:

I know it's a troll but ....

you can do something about your weight. You can't do anything about your age.

You can do something about your weight in wrestling and boxing too. But you can't do anything about your age.

So why can't people diet to make a certain running weight categorie or gain weight to get into a different running weight class?

We can have weight classes like 149lbs to 160lbs and 161lbs to 180lbs etc...

The wotld marathon majord prize money would be split between the winners of each weight class.

See what I mean?

Guess guess wrote:

They should have categories like cycling. By performing well in races you can move up to higher categories. Races would be started in 5 minute increments or whatever with people of similar abilities competing against each other.

Categories are necessary in bike racing for safety reasons. You can't assume a Cat 2 is fitter or faster than a Cat 4. You can assume they're more skilled at handling, maintaining or changing position in a pack, better able to handle routine bumps and contact, and less likely to make stupid "Cat 4" moves. In a running race you're not going to cause 50 people to go down because of a dumb move. It's pretty easy to do in a bike race.

Running road races require very little skill and drafting/pack benefits are negligible. Faster runners are naturally going to separate from slower runners. Ordering the starting line by seed time makes a lot of sense. Having 5 minute increments between starts doesn't make much sense at all.I know Boston has 20 minute wave start intervals, but because of the wave size the difference in start time between the back of wave N and the start of wave N+1 isn't anywhere near that long. It really just keeps the streets of Hopkinton from being needlessly full of runners waiting for others ahead of them to get moving.

Celluliteful Hobby Jogger wrote:

We can have weight classes like 149lbs to 160lbs and 161lbs to 180lbs etc...

The wotld marathon majord prize money would be split between the winners of each weight class.

God please no.