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<\/a>This is a photo of me at my first triathlon.\u00a0 I had no idea what I was doing.\u00a0 (I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m more experienced at it now.)\u00a0 I was probably somewhere at my heaviest, and I post this because it’s not a particularly flattering or unflattering picture.\u00a0 It’s just an action shot where you can see the shape of my body.\u00a0 Do I look like a triathlete?<\/p>\nThe answer is yes.\u00a0 Because I am doing a triathlon.\u00a0 That’s what triathletes look like.\u00a0 People who do triathlons.<\/p>\n
What’s awful is seeing how people cut each other down because of their size.\u00a0 In a fairly popular women’s triathlon group on Facebook, a woman recently posted a pic of an Athleta ad with two women on stand up paddleboards.\u00a0 One of the women was a bit bigger and wearing a bikini.\u00a0 She had a belly and some thighs, but was probably a size 10 or 12, judging only by comparing to how I would look in a similar outfit.\u00a0 And the comment, from someone who says she is a health professional, was how Athleta was promoting the wrong thing – specifically Type 2 Diabetes.<\/p>\n
Yes, because all chubby people have diabetes.<\/p>\n
Now, I’ve said before that I don’t love the way that the Health at Every Size movement has gone, because HAES proponents believe that you can eat what you want and do as much or as little physical activity as you want and whatever your body does is fine.\u00a0 I disagree – you should try to eat well as much as you can (but not all the time, because where’s the fun in that) and you should get some physical exercise, though that can be anything from walking your dog to dancing in your living room to participating in organized activities.<\/p>\n
But I do think there’s too much focus on weight when it comes to endurance sports.\u00a0 Is it harder to do a race the bigger you are?\u00a0 Probably, just because you’re moving more weight around.\u00a0 Doesn’t make a bigger athlete a lesser athlete.\u00a0 I’ve passed thin girls while going uphill on my bike – and then this weight makes me fly while going downhill.<\/p>\n
It’s unfortunate when I see it from groups that are designed to support the sport.\u00a0 “We support everyone, but not you, because you don’t fit our model.”\u00a0 No, that’s not how it’s supposed to work.\u00a0 Sadly, it wasn’t just this one person commenting about the Athleta ad.\u00a0 Others chimed in agreeing with her, talking about obesity-related diseases.\u00a0 Yes, those do exist, and I’m doing my best to avoid them.\u00a0 By doing things like eating well and participating in triathlon.\u00a0 If you want to help someone avoid obesity-related diseases, shouldn’t you be encouraging them in their active and healthy lifestyle?<\/p>\n
I don’t understand why anyone has a problem with the size of another racer.\u00a0 If there are runners or triathletes bigger or smaller than me in a race, why should I care?\u00a0 Is it because I don’t want to get passed by a “fat girl?”\u00a0 Personally, I don’t care, but I sometimes wonder if that’s it.\u00a0 Or maybe they don’t want people to think less of them because “Hey, fat people can do that too.”<\/p>\n
Either way, it’s high time we stop judging people based on appearances, and it’s definitely time to stop putting others down.\u00a0 If you don’t want to be welcoming of others, then just ignore them and stay in your own bubble.\u00a0 But if you venture out, you might just meet someone awesome.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the past few weeks, there has been a lot of talk of people cheating in races, be it cheating to get into Boston (a BIG DEAL) or cheating at the Tinker Bell Half (a less big deal).\u00a0 But one thing that I’ve noticed throughout a lot of the conversations is a lot of body […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[160,41,115],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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But it seems to be an ongoing problem. If you aren't already following Marathon Investigation, you should. Derek does an amazing job calling out cheaters at races. While his articles\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/cheat_1500155073.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3251,"url":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/16\/cheating-disney-marathon\/","url_meta":{"origin":4444,"position":1},"title":"Cheating at the Disney Marathon","date":"January 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I've had a couple of people find my blog recently with search terms along the lines of disney marathon cheating I guess people perhaps saw some of the things that I saw during marathon weekend. I went out to cheer during the marathon.\u00a0 I met up with Katie and Jenny\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disney"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":287,"url":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/is-it-cheating\/","url_meta":{"origin":4444,"position":2},"title":"Is it cheating?","date":"February 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"There has been a bit of talk among some of my friends as of late about people cheating races.\u00a0 Apparently, a couple of people saw runners cutting the course at the Tinker Bell Half.\u00a0 At one point, it was pretty easy, though I don't think it even cut off a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Running"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1331,"url":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/14\/a-runners-body\/","url_meta":{"origin":4444,"position":3},"title":"A Runner’s Body","date":"February 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"On a Facebook group I frequent, someone asked the question \"Why did you start running?\" Someone had responded with something along the lines about how people commented that she didn't have a runner's body and they were surprised she could run. I responded \"You run. You have a body. Therefore,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fitness"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2034,"url":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/19\/being-a-bigger-runner-or-triathlete\/","url_meta":{"origin":4444,"position":4},"title":"Being a Bigger Runner or Triathlete","date":"July 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In triathlons, we have these fun categories called Athena and Clydesdale.\u00a0 A lot of people think that means \"fat,\" but really, it just means heavier.\u00a0 It's a way to recognize that some people are lugging a lot more bulk. So what qualifies you as an Athena or a Clydesdale?\u00a0 Well,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body Image"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1720,"url":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/16\/there-are-no-words\/","url_meta":{"origin":4444,"position":5},"title":"There are no words","date":"April 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, during my lunch break, I wrote a post and scheduled it to post today.\u00a0 It was about being glued to the coverage of the elite runners at Boston and how they were so inspiring and so awesome. But clearly, everything changed yesterday afternoon. I can pull one thing from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Current Events"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/boston-tweets-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4445,"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions\/4445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"20130609-145706.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/elbowglitter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/20130609-145706.jpg\")
<\/a>This is a photo of me at my first triathlon.\u00a0 I had no idea what I was doing.\u00a0 (I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m more experienced at it now.)\u00a0 I was probably somewhere at my heaviest, and I post this because it’s not a particularly flattering or unflattering picture.\u00a0 It’s just an action shot where you can see the shape of my body.\u00a0 Do I look like a triathlete?<\/p>\n