Last year (summer) I participated in my first two swim meets (ever!). I went to Summer Nationals in Omaha and also swam in the Iowa Games, here in Iowa. I really enjoyed both. The latter was much more laid back and super fun and made me want to do more meets! The problem is, we don't have many around here.
Iowa is part of the breadbasket zone. There are a handful of meets in MN, KS, MO, etc... and the zone meet (lucky for me) is just east of Des Moines (where I live). But I find that most of the meets I'm able to find that are within 4hrs drive of me are in the Great Lakes zone. Does anyone have to swim out of their zone in order to attend more meets? With 5 kids (who are also all swimmers) and only one vehicle, it's quite challenging to have to travel to get to meets. Is it weird to attend more meets in another zone (I'm assuming it's not against the rules?)?
Just random questions as I'm still quite new to all of this. I'm excited to be a Masters member and really enjoy competing, but it's a lot of work in my particular area. My local Masters group decided last year to go summer only, leaving me only about 6-7wks of swimming with a Masters group. The rest of the year I'm on my own. Luckily my kids' coach is nice enough to let me join their practices and I've been swimming with them for their whole fall/winter season - they're not a USA team though but just a local age group team.
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?
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 $$$$$. :) But the racing is fun, and that's why I do it.
This is certainly an option and really only depends on your comfort level swimming with (and against) kids rather than adults. I train with a USAS team and swim USAS meets from time to time, but I prefer to swim masters meets. If there were very few masters meets in the area I would definitely swim more USAS meets.
I train with a USAS team like Kirk does, and I swim both USAS meets and masters meets. While the majority of my meets are masters meets, I do attend my fair share of USAS meets as well, though I may only hit one day of those meets, unless they're local. I travel 3 hours on average to my meets. My town is located on the border of the Inland NW, and the PNA LMSCs so I kind of have a nice shot of going either way, plus it's not far to the Portland area for other Oregon LMSC meets, and I have family in that area too. The worst part of all these meets, is the $$$$$. :) But the racing is fun, and that's why I do it.
