With no Nationals this year, USMS said they will have virtual events. I'm not sure how this will work. VR headsets are expensive enough, how much is a VR tech suit? Do they have them at Swimoutlet?
Well... I got a chance to get off the blocks at the very end of this morning's practice and did a 100 fly.]
Your butterfly looks great! It's been about 40 years since I had a good butterfly 🦋
Well... I got a chance to get off the blocks at the very end of this morning's practice and did a 100 fly. Not the worst race I've ever done but definitely feeling only 4 weeks consistently back in the water. My goal was to beat my 57.7 100 *** best time and I went 56.7.Sweet.
That's a 51.8 in not-a-summer-league-pool ;):applaud:
Seriously ... sweet to see fast swimming on video!
So I entered and swam:
The good:I found an open pool less than an hours drive away. My BR felt like I was actually swimming breaststroke and 2 people complimented me on my form(from over 6 ft away). I felt like I had some power in my kick.
the bad: this was my first time in a pool since March and my first time to swim BR without a wetsuit. Kick was good, but pull was my first really hard, sprint type pulls since March and I tweaked my shoulder. Not too badly, but I have no plans to try the virtual events again lest I really hurt it. My DPS was poor owing to lack of practice and lack of the flexibility that comes from working on flexibility in the pool. I had limited time in the pool so I swam the 100 BR first after what I thought was sufficient warm up. They would not let me start from the blocks. I should have warmed up longer. I thought my time was slow, but at least I did it. Slight shoulder pain but I thought I'd be fine after a warm down. 10 min later swam the 50 BR. I thought that was enough recovery, it wasn't. Also the shoulder pain was more noticeable. Warmed down for 20 min before the 200 and my shoulder seemed mostly OK, so I swam the 200 BR. taking it out slow and being a little careful with my pulls. Not fast, but any 200 BR you can walk away from is a success.
the ugly: I found entering the virtual meet anything but intuitive. I had perviously enrolled in swim.com and integrated it with MY USMS. This did nothing as I had to down load the app to my phone, integrate it with USMS 2 more times(why did it take 2 more times, turns out if you exit swim.com to go to USMS and don't click "remember me" it doesn't. Once that was done it was only an hour and a half of getting into one endless loop after another before I finally could enter my times. Times to the second, by the way, not to the .01 sec. The placings are listed by time, not by gender and age, just by time.
I'm glad I did it as at least it had some of the verisimilitude of a meet and I really like meets. Also I found a pool I can get to when I can plan out a big chunk of time in my schedule for 45 min in the water.
i entered 3 events
but i swam it lcm and put in my lcm times ... and im leaving it lcm times
yet swim.com is so poor it only has full seconds.
56.11, 2:07.28, 1:03.42
Thanks to my son I have gotten involved in D&D. There are several sites one can go to for information about it, but there is one really good forum I frequent. It went down for a couple of months as it had just gotten too busy and they needed to upgrade. They posted about the problem on the main page. They apologized for the inconvenience. They updated followers about their progress. They announced on the home page when the forum was working. Their forum participation just keeps growing.
I point this out to show that the forum format can continue to be popular if a site values it.
200M FR from today after a short practice. Figured since I tapered and all, might as well not waste it on just one 200 yard FL.
Nice swim, Calvin! I heard the videographer say, "Don't tell him his time and see if he can figure it out." Did you guess it accurately? :D
So I entered and swam:
The good:I found an open pool less than an hours drive away. My BR felt like I was actually swimming breaststroke and 2 people complimented me on my form(from over 6 ft away). I felt like I had some power in my kick.
the bad: this was my first time in a pool since March and my first time to swim BR without a wetsuit. Kick was good, but pull was my first really hard, sprint type pulls since March and I tweaked my shoulder. Not too badly, but I have no plans to try the virtual events again lest I really hurt it. My DPS was poor owing to lack of practice and lack of the flexibility that comes from working on flexibility in the pool. I had limited time in the pool so I swam the 100 BR first after what I thought was sufficient warm up. They would not let me start from the blocks. I should have warmed up longer. I thought my time was slow, but at least I did it. Slight shoulder pain but I thought I'd be fine after a warm down. 10 min later swam the 50 BR. I thought that was enough recovery, it wasn't. Also the shoulder pain was more noticeable. Warmed down for 20 min before the 200 and my shoulder seemed mostly OK, so I swam the 200 BR. taking it out slow and being a little careful with my pulls. Not fast, but any 200 BR you can walk away from is a success.
Way to go on your swims, King Frog! I'm glad you were able to locate a pool and get in your races. I'm sorry to hear about tweaking your shoulder, though. I hope after some rest it will recover successfully. :agree: Good luck!
As for the Forums, I agree with everything all of you said! :badday:
I guessed 2:10.1. Off by nearly a second, but, and I'm not going to crunch the numbers right now, I think that shows a pretty high degree of accuracy and small margin of error.
...
the ugly: I found entering the virtual meet anything but intuitive. I had perviously enrolled in swim.com and integrated it with MY USMS. This did nothing as I had to down load the app to my phone, integrate it with USMS 2 more times(why did it take 2 more times, turns out if you exit swim.com to go to USMS and don't click "remember me" it doesn't. Once that was done it was only an hour and a half of getting into one endless loop after another before I finally could enter my times. Times to the second, by the way, not to the .01 sec. The placings are listed by time, not by gender and age, just by time.
...One has to scratch their head and wonder why USMS would not use an existing platform. Hello, swimphone anyone? What about what we always use to enter Nationals meets?
I was going to go through the rigmarole to enter this for one of the OW distances this weekend, but am thinking twice. There are so many great virtual open water events already out there, so I'm not sure what this faux Nationals really offers.
Heck, there's not even a forum thread about this event ... but I don't imagine USMS leadership would know that since they apparently don't want social engagement from their membership online.
Heck, there's not even a forum thread about this event ... but I don't imagine USMS leadership would know that since they apparently don't want social engagement from their membership online.
BINGO! It's like the forum community argues that USMS doesn't do enough anymore to promote the forums, and that is why they are becoming a ghost town. Meanwhile USMS argues that because the forums are becoming a ghost town, they do not need to bother promoting them...
