One of the very last posts of 2001 was from me on New Year's Eve. I don't remember whether the title was mine or the administrator who decided that it was a sub topic of something remotely connected with the subject that I was proposing. But, no matter.
Since the change of format this week to the new system, I don't know how to check it out or whether or not it makes any difference. However, after two weeks of no response of any kind and since it was my prerogative, being my birthday, the rare one that is divisable by both sevenses and elevenses, I went back to the subject to give it a boost, hoping that someone would give it some kind of notice. But, alas...
With Ground Hog's (or is it s'?) Day looming around the next corner I'm very much determined to thrust the subject forward a third time in the hope that it will get some serious attention. And it is about time whatever way you choose to take the title.
I don't remember everything I wrote the first two times but I'll simply make the proposal without any but the barest essential elaboration.
As soon as possible post all swimming times in seconds only!
Eliminate the use of minutes, or hours entirely. Having just yesterday having competed in the National Championship Event, The Hour Swim, (a Mail-in Event) I could consent to keeping the title. But for all listing and taking of times it would be 100% beneficial to use seconds only.
The only reason to oppose the notion that I can think of would be related to the existing hardware. But transpositions would be easily done until the mass of the hardware is ready to conform on its own. My guess being that the computer timing systems would need only a nudge to adapt.
Sprinters, of course, wouldn't understand what I'm talking about. But all swimmers who have a use for splits in their calculations run into stumbling blocks, not to mention common errors, that are bound to creep in whenever minutes become part of the results.
I have one other helpful suggestion to make on the subject, and because of the opportunity, why not... If Splits, for example, of a 200 or a 1500 were listed in reverse order, it would be infinitely easier and more instructive to see their value and significance.
Doug,
Our coach Bill White wrote an Excel spread sheet program that works great. It allows you to enter a 100 time and then cranks out what this pace would translate to in any event you want to figure--1000, 1650, 3000, you name it.
It also works in reverse. You enter your final time for the 1650, 3000, what have you, and it will automatically calculate your 100 pace.
If you would like, I can ask Bill to e-mail this to you. If someone out there is web-savvy, they may be able to post it somewhere on the web so that anyone who wants to can take advantage of this.
I don't know if you ever saw the discussion I started a year or two ago on "age-related decline in swimming times", but one guy eventually posted a great idiot proof formula that has proven, to me at least, very fun to play around with. Check this out:
http://n3times.com/swimtimes/
I think it would be great if USMS came up with a one-stop "conversion utitility" address that would add this age conversion program, the 100 pace/distance conversion program, the meters to yards conversion, plus any other formulae the math wizzards in our ranks could think up.
Anyhow, let me know if you want Bill's spreadsheet.
Doug,
I'm not necessarily against your proposal, but does the convenience of calculating split times justify effort and expense of reverse engineering all the software packages we use to post times, or (shudder) manually recalculating them and fat-fingering the converted times into a big word processed document?
I see your point that if we were starting from scratch, it would make more sense to list times in seconds (exclusively base 10 mathematical calculations), rather than our more traditional methods which mix base 10 and base 6 calculations. About all we would lose would be the cache of swimming a 100 under a minute, or a 200 under 2 minutes, or...
However, I keep coming back to the fact that USMS is a volunteer organization, and volunteers run every USMS meet I have ever attended. Yes we could do what you suggest, but given that we do not have a limitless labor pool, is this the best use of our volunteers efforts? I missed your previous posts. Could you review the bidding on the other benefits you see in addition to more easily calculated split times?
Matt
hey, matt and jim
thanx for paying attention. My subject is not really about converting anything. It is simply about adapting the simple answer to all our timing problems. If we were to adapt the "seconds only" system we would eliminate forever the various complications and their concomitant mistakes. As it is, all of our calculations are suspect when we try to discover what relevancy one time has to another.
As I mentioned before this applies to splits figuring at any stage or intention. How do I study splits? For simplicity's sake the 1650: I want to compare the times in the different segments of the swim, early laps, middle laps, and later, leading up to closing laps and the "sprint to the finish". I want to study them in relation not only to my times but to my peers, to my realistic asperations.
The record setters in my age group are out of sight, but I can aspire to match those of some great and glorious swimmers in the next group up, or the women in my own and younger age group.
They all differ in significant ways, ways that are on the public (but now obscure, and often incorrectly stated) record. The seconds only system would put and end to all the nonsensical need to recalculate.
When a sprinter swims a race he checks out his time against everyone's else and he sees what happened. When I swim a hundred, 200, 400, 800, 1500, 3K, 5K, etc. I have hours ahead of me trying to figure out what happened.
On the distance pool races I have to study what the timer has written and make corrections by interpolation to various mistakes that always happen before mailing in the results. There is always a reason for the mistakes, but they need to be found to be corrected. None of them would have happened if the system were seconds only. If it weren't for the electronic timing to keep some kind of control, it would be hopeless in many cases.
Enuf for now.
Hmmmmm....seems to me converting to seconds only would be something you'd need to do internationally to eliminate confusion with things like world records.
thanx emmett
You're right, as always. A one time conversion, and it's done.
All records, including the newly found YMCA Top Ten.
And speaking of conversions, how about this.
Fact I: In 2001 I swam the 200 meter free in five meets with the best time of 3:25,86.
Fact II: In 1942 at the age of 17 I swam the 220 yard free, virtually the same distance, in 2:37.5.
This earned me a second place in the Indiana state high school championship meet. (The first place swimmer was so far ahead of me that I never paid attention to his time).
Applying the "Finnish Formula" which is on the www a couple of posts ago, by jim thornton, at age 19 (the youngest in the list of those presented) my projected time should have been 2:09.80, or using an alternate formula without the Finnish insight I should have done a 2:00.78.
Working the facts the other way, that is with the reality of the timeI did swim in 1942, which was 2:37.5, I should now be doing the 200 meter free in a time of either 4:09.07 (Finnish formula) or 4:27.68, just plain vanilla, I guess you could call it.
Or, it seems to me an exercise in futility to be messing with such formulae.
Did I say enuf before?
Hey Doug; congratulations on your 3600 swim, And a Happy 40,471,140th Birthday to you. You didn't fool us sprinters with the 7 and 11 puzzle-just went right to the calculator as usual. Regards : Bert ;)
The problem is that remnant of Babylonian science, the base 60 number system. I'm surprised the French didn't go after our measurement of time like they did our measurements of everything else. Anyway, is 32 kilosecs a good triathlon time? It wouldn't take too long to get adjusted to it.
If Masters were to adopt the seconds-only concept we'd be entirely out of step with the rest of the world - or, rather, we'd be adding confusion every time a person wanted to compare their time to what's being done in other countries, by USA swimmers, in the Olympics etc.
If all of swimming, worldwide, were to change we'd eliminate the above problems but you'd still have the watches. Right now virtually any watch that claims stopwatch functions is a swimming stopwatch. But, in a seconds-only environment we'd have to find and buy special swimming watches (of course the triathletes in our programs would revel in the opportunity to purchase one more piece of equipment).
If all sports adopted seconds-only timing we'd eliminate all the above problems but we still have spectator appeal. Is 32,000 a good Ironman time? Not sure, better get out the calculator. Imagine John Madden verbally stepping all over the "120-second warning" in the SuperBowl - or, worse, MISSING the game due errors trying to figure out what time the game was really going to start in your time zone.
Mebbe if we got the whole world to switch over to seconds-only timing for everything....yeah.....THAT's the ticket!
thanx guys for giving the timing in seconds only your attention.
'Specially for being the serious proposal that it is. So far it seems to be pretty much ignored, or at least I haven't heard any one "second the motion".
On the other hand the negatives, of which there must be some, need to be put on the table so that they can be compared with the proposal. So far, I really appreciate the good humor with which the minor objections have been tendered.
I have a bunch of stuff to put out there to support the idea, but I don't want to take the extra time or effort if there is really something of substance that I haven't considered.
So far the objections mentioned seem to be minor and what I'm hoping for is for some expert to step in and say that the clocks already exist that know how to continue counting seconds without having to bother with minutes.
I'm not sure that volunteerism would be a problem or anything of the sort. And just think how great it would be to count yourselves as having been part of an eathshaking decision.
For instance it didn't just happen that the swimming events in my time as a masters swimmer (I used to blush when I said or wrote that I was a master) are what they are now. Added are the 50's of the three specialty strokes, the 1000 yard, and 800 meter free. As late as the sixties the 440 was changed to 500 for the NCAA, and the 220 to 200. It was done by vote and I knew of those who wanted the events be 250 and 400. (My list of my personal bests as a master shows a 400 freestyle of 6:11.004 in 1971 ).
But I digress. If there are objections to "seconds only", I want to see them.
I'll rephrase my (serious) objection - if we (US Masters) go to seconds-only, we'd be entirely out of step with:
A) the rest of the Masters Swimming world,
B) the rest of the swimmimg world,
C) the rest of the sporting world,
D) the rest of the world.
This would create confusion and conversion complications at every intersection point with A,B,C, or D above.
Frankly, I don't see where there is a problem using the system we have right now. Most modern software does time math quite handily - even generic apps like spreadsheets. And all the existing hardware seems well suited to the task.
