I just got back from the SPMS meet and I am in a funk. I have talked to several of my contemporaries who share my dysphoria at getting slower. From age 50-62 I slowed down very little. Ages 63 and 64 were one injury or illness after another, but at least there was a cause and I felt I would do better. Age 65 I aged up and for most of the year was healthy. That was a great year,but my times were all significantly slower than at 62. Since then it is very unusual to have one swim that is faster than I did the previous year.At 67(almost 68) I am notably slower than at 65. I have seen the graphs of how times slow with age, intellectually, if I am staying at the same rate of decline as my peers I should accept it, but I don't like it. I know most forumites are much younger and what I am saying may seem like something natural that I should just acknowledge and go on, that is what I thought until I was 63. I know that our having age groups every 5 years is a partial solution to the problem, but there is more difference between a 65 year old and a 68 year old than between a 40 year old and a 50 year old, in my experience. How do the other older swimmers out there cope and have a good attitude? The common saying in Masters Swimming is that "you are only competing against yourself",but my slightly younger self is kicking my butt and I am tired of it.
Personally, I would love to see ratings automatically added for each swim we do that winds up in the USMS database. If they decided on a single time standard--perhaps the records as of the end of each course in 2016--then used these as a baseline, you wouldn't have to update each year. New records would simply get increasingly higher 100+ scores, but an individual could look at his or her times at, say, age 44 and see how the ratings for these compare to the same events at, say, age 67. What say ye?
Not too sure why you would want to have a single time standard. I like the idea of each ranking always being compared with the 'best' at any one point in time. That to my mind is a current ranking. If some faster guys come on the scene then i have got to do something about it to maintain my ranking
This disagreement -- and there are good arguments for both sides -- is one of the frustrations of doing something like this. I guess personally I would like to see a single time, unchanging, standard but the trend seems to be the opposite: most "official" rating systems like FINA's update over time, even the age-group motivational time standards do so. But a changing standard is harder to understand, and you get the questions (or maybe complaints) that "my rating was X just last year, and now the same time/age gives me a rating of X - 10."
Updating infrequently (say, every five years) seems a reasonable compromise...but then you get a bigger delta with every update. Sigh.
Speaking of motivational standards, don't forget the unofficial masters version:
forums.usms.org/showthread.php
Unlike the case of adopting and using a rating system, it would not require as much IT work to just post and update such standards. Is there a preference for a rating or standards-based system? The rating system is more versatile but more complicated to implement and use.
Personally, I would love to see ratings automatically added for each swim we do that winds up in the USMS database. If they decided on a single time standard--perhaps the records as of the end of each course in 2016--then used these as a baseline, you wouldn't have to update each year. New records would simply get increasingly higher 100+ scores, but an individual could look at his or her times at, say, age 44 and see how the ratings for these compare to the same events at, say, age 67. What say ye?
Not too sure why you would want to have a single time standard. I like the idea of each ranking always being compared with the 'best' at any one point in time. That to my mind is a current ranking. If some faster guys come on the scene then i have got to do something about it to maintain my ranking
This disagreement -- and there are good arguments for both sides -- is one of the frustrations of doing something like this. I guess personally I would like to see a single time, unchanging, standard but the trend seems to be the opposite: most "official" rating systems like FINA's update over time, even the age-group motivational time standards do so. But a changing standard is harder to understand, and you get the questions (or maybe complaints) that "my rating was X just last year, and now the same time/age gives me a rating of X - 10."
Updating infrequently (say, every five years) seems a reasonable compromise...but then you get a bigger delta with every update. Sigh.
Speaking of motivational standards, don't forget the unofficial masters version:
forums.usms.org/showthread.php
Unlike the case of adopting and using a rating system, it would not require as much IT work to just post and update such standards. Is there a preference for a rating or standards-based system? The rating system is more versatile but more complicated to implement and use.
