Seeding - Seed Time vs Actual Time

One time, at a meet, someone other than me sandbagged a time, and it totally affected me so bad. Not. Aside from less-than-optimal seeding at large meets, what happens when someone, say, enters a seed time of 8 minutes for a 500 free and goes 4:40? Or when someone enters a 1:15 for the 100 free and goes :48? 1. The people in the heat with the sandbagger get smoked. Maybe it makes them look slow. But in Masters, there is always going to be someone who is going to blow you out of the water. You learn to deal with it. 2. The people in later heats say "o jeez that guy in heat one just went SO FAST wow!" and either a) have motivation to go faster or b) get smoked. And anyone who complains about getting beaten by someone in a slower heat "because they should have entered a faster time" is just a whiner. I can see a meet director facepalming because the meet goes overly long, and I can see people in the final events of a meet getting antsy because they have to wait a long time to swim. But really, there are many perfectly valid reasons to enter a slow time, and there are many perfectly valid reasons to go faster (or slower) than your seed time. Less-than-optimal meet timelines are another thing that happens in Masters. You learn to deal with it.

How do you folks feel about persons who misrepresent him/her self in this manner? What I think is that those sandbaggers are sorely lacking in creativity. Why should zeroes get all the love when there are 9 other perfectly good digits out there? If this trend escalates, heat sheet typesetters will risk running out of 0's.:)

search all you want, you will find no opinions on this esteemed forum about such trivial matters. for if there were any, the moderators might have to step in and have a word with some of us, or even hit us over the head with a sandbag. forsooth! That's why I am just reading this time!

"o jeez that guy in heat one just went SO FAST wow!" hey now... I just looked up my results to figure out the answer to this question: "when's the last time that I was in heat 1 of an event that had multiple heats?" answer: February 2006, at my first Masters meet. I had been out of the sport for so long that I had forgotten all about the concept of estimating times, and entered the meet with NT's. Smilies unrelated :carolers::frustrated::party2::thhbbb::whiteflag:

These particular swimmers did have a large discrepancy between their seed time vs actual swim time. I bring to light the following regarding these swimmers: Swimmer A - committe member of our LMSC Swimmer B - member of the Host Team Swimmer C - member of one of the elite teams in our area Swimmer D - member of Host Team for USMS Summer Nationals in 2013 I am expecting too much to expect the Host Team, Elite Team, and LMSC to set an example for others to follow. This behavior is flat out not acceptable. If the seed times were within a few minutes who cares, but as originally noted these seeds times exceed 10 minutes. I'm slow anyway, but improving, I was seeded to Heat 3 with the slowest seed time, and came in last in my Heat. On the flip side, I was 6th in my age group. I was also told that this would not be done in USAS and College swimming, because, unless a person has not swum an event at all, a prior swim time would be used. My Grandmother would wack these swimmers with her cane and tell them to be good, honest sportspersons.

This behavior is flat out not acceptable. So... trade sanctions? :dunno:

Unlike festival seating, there's an excellent chance that the cutie in the next lane is going to smoke me. Not quite like finding yourself next to a cutie at a concert. :D

My wife was in heat 1 lane 4 for the 1500 at the SPMS meet last weekend.This meant that if everyone had gone their seed time she would have won her heat.She has been swimming long enough to know there is likely to be someone in that heat who will crush their seed time so when 2 swimmers were way in front of her right away she knew to swim her own race and swam her age group PB , 2 min under seed time.The woman in lane 5 was one of the fast swimmers and her counter told me she had to leave early and probably should have been in heat 3.The woman in lane 8(as I recall) was even faster and lapped the woman in lane 5 so that they reached the end of the pool at the same time on lane 8's bell lap.I suppose the lane 5 woman thought it was her bell lap because she stopped when she finished that lap.Her counter and I yelled at her to continue and she finally did after losing a significant amount of time.I am sure some of you think there is a moral here,I am just reporting what I saw.:bolt:

My wife was in heat 1 lane 4 for the 1500 ...She has been swimming long enough to know there is likely to be someone in that heat who will crush their seed time so when 2 swimmers were way in front of her right away she knew to swim her own race and swam her age group PB , 2 min under seed time. This is an important swimming skill to learn. The best athletes are the ones who know how to swim their own races and stay competitive despite adverse circumstances. If sandbaggers completely throw you off your game, they may not be the only problem...:afraid: Let me amend a little. I would never intentionally sandbag because I do think it's kind of cheesy. That said, letting someone else's sandbagging sabotage your swim is your (mental) choice...

It is very easy to try to stay with another swimmer that should know what they swim BUT you need to know what you are able to swim !! These swimmers that put in a No time seed that go way fast bug me. Ask them & they say that they never swam that distance in "a meet"