Colonies Zone SCY Championships - Fairfax VA

I found this thread from the beginner triathlete website (I have a google alert that searches on championships Masters and swimming). I agree with notsofast - yes it sucks and from 2,500 miles away I dont know the many of the parties involved. But lets look at it a little different way. Are the other 1650 / 1000 events that can be swum in the area? Perhaps the coach of Team Z is trying to support the meet and knew there are limited slots available - we can have a team event, cheer our lane mates and support our LMSC. The meet director is faced with limitations. Pool time costs money and it costs volunteer time - I dont know when the pool is available, but she is going to have a meet that ends at 10 pm and then has to turn around for an early morning opening and you want your meet officials to get a good night sleep before the next day - look what happens when you limit entries. We struggle in our zone for how do you run a championships that will have the distance events. At the last LCM championships, the 1500 started at 9:30 am and finished at almost 6pm (thank goodness for positive check-ins or else it would have finished at almost 8pm (after the 1500 we still had the 800 Free relay and the 400IM). Do you run 2 per lane, then you need 6 timers per lane - you cannot use automatic timing (no splits). I noticed that the 1650 and the 1000 are run at the same time - one being in a deep course and the other in a shallow course - I liked Skip's idea of running the 1000 on a different day, However, there could be a problem as you usually do not want to run two unequal courses together - so what do you do? Run the men in one course and the women in the other? If you do that the first heat of the women and the first heat of the men are going to be very slow which drags the time line (perhaps you say there will be one mixed slow heat). The 1hr 45min 1000 sounds wrong on the face of it - a 10 minute one hundred is almost unbelievable - it could have been a 14:50 1000 where the decimal place got moved - mistakes are made. I once saw a swimmer with a Jewish last name sign up for worlds as a member of the Algerian Swimming federation (the swimmer checked the wrong box) We want to grow Masters swimming, triathletes have told me that they do not get respect from "regular" masters swimmers - look at the blog on beginnertriathlete. We we have a team of Masters swimmers who are also triathletes who abided by the rules, signed up according to the rules and now hear the complaints from "real" Masters swimmers that they are taking "their" spots at the meet (my words not yours). Didn't those Z Team members that "real" Masters swimmers wait until the last couple of days (preferably the last day) to register for the meet? :-) A few years ago, for SCM championships we wanted to limit the length of the meet. In the previous year, we had about 35 people sign up for the 800 free. Ok, lets just limit the 800 to the first 48 (six heats) of swimmers who enter. We had over 100 swimmers enter the 800. In the era of limits, with only 48 swimmers you were sure to score points for your team and maybe score a medal. I think this event is evidence of the rule of unintended consequences. I wish everyone who swims in the colonies meet good swimming and thank you to the meet director and all the volunteers who put on the meet.

I found this thread from the beginner triathlete website (I have a google alert that searches on championships Masters and swimming). I agree with notsofast - yes it sucks and from 2,500 miles away I dont know the many of the parties involved. But lets look at it a little different way. Are the other 1650 / 1000 events that can be swum in the area? Perhaps the coach of Team Z is trying to support the meet and knew there are limited slots available - we can have a team event, cheer our lane mates and support our LMSC. The meet director is faced with limitations. Pool time costs money and it costs volunteer time - I dont know when the pool is available, but she is going to have a meet that ends at 10 pm and then has to turn around for an early morning opening and you want your meet officials to get a good night sleep before the next day - look what happens when you limit entries. We struggle in our zone for how do you run a championships that will have the distance events. At the last LCM championships, the 1500 started at 9:30 am and finished at almost 6pm (thank goodness for positive check-ins or else it would have finished at almost 8pm (after the 1500 we still had the 800 Free relay and the 400IM). Do you run 2 per lane, then you need 6 timers per lane - you cannot use automatic timing (no splits). I noticed that the 1650 and the 1000 are run at the same time - one being in a deep course and the other in a shallow course - I liked Skip's idea of running the 1000 on a different day, However, there could be a problem as you usually do not want to run two unequal courses together - so what do you do? Run the men in one course and the women in the other? If you do that the first heat of the women and the first heat of the men are going to be very slow which drags the time line (perhaps you say there will be one mixed slow heat). The 1hr 45min 1000 sounds wrong on the face of it - a 10 minute one hundred is almost unbelievable - it could have been a 14:50 1000 where the decimal place got moved - mistakes are made. I once saw a swimmer with a Jewish last name sign up for worlds as a member of the Algerian Swimming federation (the swimmer checked the wrong box) We want to grow Masters swimming, triathletes have told me that they do not get respect from "regular" masters swimmers - look at the blog on beginnertriathlete. We we have a team of Masters swimmers who are also triathletes who abided by the rules, signed up according to the rules and now hear the complaints from "real" Masters swimmers that they are taking "their" spots at the meet (my words not yours). Didn't those Z Team members that "real" Masters swimmers wait until the last couple of days (preferably the last day) to register for the meet? :-) A few years ago, for SCM championships we wanted to limit the length of the meet. In the previous year, we had about 35 people sign up for the 800 free. Ok, lets just limit the 800 to the first 48 (six heats) of swimmers who enter. We had over 100 swimmers enter the 800. In the era of limits, with only 48 swimmers you were sure to score points for your team and maybe score a medal. I think this event is evidence of the rule of unintended consequences. I wish everyone who swims in the colonies meet good swimming and thank you to the meet director and all the volunteers who put on the meet.