Swim meets for a clueless newbie

I am thinking of participating a swim meet, just to experience it once in my life. I had a lot of reservations about signing up for a meet. But after reading some of the threads in the forums, my fears have subsided. 1. I can't do flip turns very well. It seems I can do open turns instead. 2. I fear my goggles will pop off during my dive. Looks like I can start in the water which I am more comfortable with anyways. But there are a few things that I'm still wondering about. 1. I'm pretty slow. I've read somewhere that most meets have a "slow heat"? What does that mean really? So you could have multiple people being #1 for the same age group? And how can you tell if a meet has several heats? 2. Why is it when I view some of the past event results, some events have rankings for the top 3 swimmers and some have only 1? I am attaching a screenshot of what I am talking about. Does that mean there was only 1 person swimming in that event? 3. How does one finish off for freestyle? Do you have to press a buzzer?
Parents
  • I've been reviewing past event results and I see there are some events where there is only 1 swimmer. Do they still continue the event even if it's 1 swimmer? I feel so embarrassed about ending up in an event by myself while everybody else is waiting for me to just finish this lonely event so they can watch something more exciting.
Reply
  • I've been reviewing past event results and I see there are some events where there is only 1 swimmer. Do they still continue the event even if it's 1 swimmer? I feel so embarrassed about ending up in an event by myself while everybody else is waiting for me to just finish this lonely event so they can watch something more exciting.
Children
No Data