Independence Day challenge

Here in the DVLMSC we area a little thin on meets this time of year. I imagine that this is true in many other places as well. Therefore, for fun, and to help sustain the motivation to train, I set forth this Independence Day challenge: Swim an 800 IM, time yourself and report your result here. To kick off this challenge, (and since I know that someone would call my bluff on this if I didn’t do it myself) I did my 800 IM today (SCY) and swam it in 11:50. Splits were: 2:55 (fly in 2:55) 5:44 (back in 2:49) 8:13 (*** in 3:29) 11:50 (free in 2:37) (Next stop, :bed:) To compare swimmers of different ages and genders, compute your rating as follows: 1) Go to the Australian Masters Swimming records and find the record for the SCM 800 IM for your age group and gender. www.portal.aussi.org.au/.../records.php For example, for my age group, M45-49, the record is 10:53.34, held by someone named Mark Smedley. (What a great name for an IMer!) 2) Convert the Australian SCM record to SCY with the swimming world time converter. www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/.../conversions.asp (Just use the 400 IM conversion. Hey, this is for fun, we don’t have to be precise here.) For example, Mr. Smedley’s time converts to 9:45.39 SCY. 3) Convert both your time and the record time to a total number of seconds, and take the ratio of the record time to your time. For example, Mr. Smedley’s record time is 585s and my time was 710s, so my rating is 585/710 = 0.82. In other words my speed is 82% of that of the record swim for my age group and gender. 4) If you swim it SCM you won’t have to convert. If you swim it LCM, you can use the Austrailian LCM record and you will also not need to convert. Anyone who completes this challenge gets a :banana: . The highest overall rating gets a :bow: . If you complete this challenge LCM, you are :weightlifter: . So are there any takers? tjrpatt, That Guy, pwb, jaadams1, gdanner, couldbebetterfly? I know that there are some distance fly/IM types out there just itching to do this, so find a pool and celebrate the holiday! Any non-US swimmers, here is your chance to show that your motherland outshines the ‘States.