choosing meets

In western New England, there are not a lot of opportunities nearby for competition. Add in work and family commitments, and the window is narrowed further. I will travel up to 5 hours (Portland, ME) for a meet, only due to my best friends living in the city and offering a great weekend away to meet up with my swimming buddies there. Most meets are 2-3 hours away (Boston), so that is standard travel time for me. I have been successful so far in creating meets closer to home: this will be the second year that I will be "director" for a recognized meet in my hometown pool (can't get closer than that!), and I have worked with some coaches in this neck of the woods to create a Western New England meet in a few weeks at a pool about 90 minutes away. Another great local thing that I put on twice a year is a squad meet; entry fee is a donation to the local food shelf (our team gets active in the community this way) and we swim 25's, 50's and 100's in what equates to a great lactate workout! In December we even took on the local age group team and had a nearby team join us. A fun way to change up practice and get some experience with racing for folks that have never competed before. I asked around to folks within the forums when setting up the recognized meet last year and had great feedback. I can help you if that is something that you might want to do. Hint: I have the local age group (USAS) team run the meet and our entry fees serve as a fundraiser for them, so the biggest pain I had was measuring the darn pool so that times count for USMS (even that was not a big deal, and now I don't have to worry about it again, especially if any Men's Health reporters come up for a splash!) :wiggle:

This is certainly an option and really only depends on your comfort level swimming with (and against) kids rather than adults. I train with a USAS team and swim USAS meets from time to time, but I prefer to swim masters meets. If there were very few masters meets in the area I would definitely swim more USAS meets. I train with a USAS team like Kirk does, and I swim both USAS meets and masters meets. While the majority of my meets are masters meets, I do attend my fair share of USAS meets as well, though I may only hit one day of those meets, unless they're local. I travel 3 hours on average to my meets. My town is located on the border of the Inland NW, and the PNA LMSCs so I kind of have a nice shot of going either way, plus it's not far to the Portland area for other Oregon LMSC meets, and I have family in that area too. The worst part of all these meets, is the $$$$$. :) But the racing is fun, and that's why I do it.

I train with just one other person; we're lucky in that there are one or two local meets every year, but, for the majority, we drive at least an hour. Our max for a non-National meet is about 2 1/2 hrs. We use competitions as a gauge for our training, etc.

or if there aren't any, do you just swim the USAS meets? This is certainly an option and really only depends on your comfort level swimming with (and against) kids rather than adults. I train with a USAS team and swim USAS meets from time to time, but I prefer to swim masters meets. If there were very few masters meets in the area I would definitely swim more USAS meets.

Is it weird to attend more meets in another zone (I'm assuming it's not against the rules?)? Anyway... What do you all do? How far do you travel to compete? Do you drive a bit farther to get to Masters meet? or if there aren't any, do you just swim the USAS meets? IDK about others, but in El Paso (south central zone), we have plenty of swimmers show up for meets from new mexico (Southwest), especially Las Cruces. It is only about 45 miles from El Paso, where Tuscon, AZ is about 275 miles. If it makes sense, do it. I don't think we need a permit to compete in another zone yet. I typically travel 1 to 3 hours for competition, so am luckier than some, lol.

This is certainly an option and really only depends on your comfort level swimming with (and against) kids rather than adults. I train with a USAS team and swim USAS meets from time to time, but I prefer to swim masters meets. If there were very few masters meets in the area I would definitely swim more USAS meets. I train with a USAS team like Kirk does, and I swim both USAS meets and masters meets. While the majority of my meets are masters meets, I do attend my fair share of USAS meets as well, though I may only hit one day of those meets, unless they're local. I travel 3 hours on average to my meets. My town is located on the border of the Inland NW, and the PNA LMSCs so I kind of have a nice shot of going either way, plus it's not far to the Portland area for other Oregon LMSC meets, and I have family in that area too. The worst part of all these meets, is the $$$$$. :) But the racing is fun, and that's why I do it. I do enjoy training with the kids a lot. I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy swimming against them. lol... I might look into doing some of the USAS meets, I think we have a couple local and a couple more that are withing a couple hours of here that the team my Masters group is with participates in. Do you have to also be a member of USAS to participate? Part of what's frustrating about meets being so far from home is the travel expenses. I guess if I have to pay more to be in the meets but save on travel money, then it might at least even out. I have been successful so far in creating meets closer to home: this will be the second year that I will be "director" for a recognized meet in my hometown pool (can't get closer than that!), and I have worked with some coaches in this neck of the woods to create a Western New England meet in a few weeks at a pool about 90 minutes away. Another great local thing that I put on twice a year is a squad meet; entry fee is a donation to the local food shelf (our team gets active in the community this way) and we swim 25's, 50's and 100's in what equates to a great lactate workout! In December we even took on the local age group team and had a nearby team join us. A fun way to change up practice and get some experience with racing for folks that have never competed before. That's a great idea. I might look into doing that next year. Maybe I can put some feelers out at the Iowa Games this summer (I met swimmers from some of the other Iowa Masters groups there last year) and see if there's enough interest. There seems to be so few locals who would be interested. Most people I come across (even a couple of my kids' coaches) have never even heard of Masters Swimming.

Thanks! I figure if it makes sense, distance wise, then why not? I suppose I might be the only one from my zone there, but whatever. I'm also generally the only one from my Masters group that ever competes.

Just putting this out there... Milwaukee is only about 5-5.5 hours drive from Des Moines, and WI masters has several meets in the Milwaukee or Madison (actually an hour closer to you) areas. Yes, it's a bit of a drive, but if you make a weekend of it... Also, I'm sure you'll find meets in the Chicago area too, which should be about the same distance from you. If your zone doesn't have the meets come on over to ours!

Postal Swims come in all shapes and sizes. The Sprint Pentathlon by the Minnesota Masters is: 50 Fly 50 Free 50 *** 50 Back 100 IM All are easily manageable. I learned of a 400 Kick last December too, however I did not particpate in that one. I am currently participating in the February Fitness Challenge, which is more about the number of times you workout rather than the distance you are swimming. www.barracudas.org/.../febfi...letter2012.pdf Have fun.

Check this out: www.timeanddate.com/.../distances.html You are really pretty close to Omaha, and Kansas City is only about three hours. I thought the Twin Cities might be pretty close, but there getting up into the four hour driving time. I also thought you'd be reasonably close to Indianapolis and Nationals--but I forgot about Illinois! Yikes! That's over 7 hours away! I live in an area that has lots of Y meets but few USMS meets, so I end up driving either to Cleveland (~2 hours) or the D.C. area (~4.5 hours) to swim USMS sanctioned meets. Sometimes, these even count! But I have learned not to count on it counting. I don't think that the residents of USMS hotbeds like southern California have any idea how lucky they have it.