and would make a nice duet. Matt complains about the difficulty of his age group - 40 - 44 men, and I was happy to leave it for new pastures this year. 45 - 59 men looked easier.
BUT NOT ANY MORE!!
In this little table I have in the first column the event, in the second column is my seed(number of entrants) in the 45 - 49 age group, and in the third column is my seed(number of entrants) if I were still in the 40 - 44 age group.
50back 7(21) 4(14)
100fly 4(17) 6(16)
50 fly 9(34) 5(23)
200bck 10(22) 3(9)
100bck 7(21) 2(8)
200fly 8(9) 6(8)
In only one event am I seeded better than I would have been if I could have remained in the 40 - 44 group. the 200 and 100 back are particularly egregious. Note the much larger number of entrants, and thus depth, in the older age group. I did know that at least a couple of world-class swimmers were born the same year I was, and would be at the meet, but this is sad!
Phil,
Yup, you've confirmed my deep, dark speculation. There is a cadre of super-fast swimmers right about your age that "louse up" the age group and NQT's for all the rest of us. All this time I hear people popping off about "aging up and kicking butt" and it seems to make sense in the abstract, but I always seem to do better on ages numbered 4 or 9 rather than 0 or 5. Now I have proof as to the cause! I have a new training slogan:
Cut through the jive
In 2005!
The bad part is that since we changed the rules on calculating NQT's, these same jamokes are still screwing-up the cut times I have to make, even though THEY are no longer in my age group. Just like the evil New York Yankees, they manage to mess with one set of people in the preseason, another group in the regular season, and a third in the playoffs.
Matt
