This is somewhat related to another post I just started (Top Ten conerns). I noticed in the top ten list a number of swimmers (generally very fast swimmers) who swam their first nationals (or any other masters meet) in 5 years due to being in a new age group. I state this by looking at the past few years top ten lists and not seeing their names. Is this a good thing for masters swimming? Swimmers whose only affiliation with masters swimming is showing up to one meet every 5 years to break a record. These records should be owned by people that are true masters swimmers.
What is a true masters swimmers?- Perhaps doing a few meets a year might work. When I swam on an age group team as a child, I know in order to qualify for our championship meet, we had to swim at least 3 regular meets. Perhaps a rule like that for Nationals could begin to fix this problem-
If not, many of our national records will be held by "ringers"
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Former Member
Possibly........... or maybe just someone not happy with their performance.........or maybe a legitimate concern.
No one has mentioned another possibility for the five year occurance : I find it impossible to maintain what I call "competitive intensity" for more than a couple of years. I can (and do) train every year-all year-but the grind of readying, tapering and competing gets me down after a few years in an age-group. So should I concentrate my efforts on the last years of each age-group ? That wouldn't make a whole lot of sense !
What I do, as a flyer, is to concentrate my efforts in fly over the first several years and then try other strokes and distances to keep my mind in the sport. This has been my last year in this age-group and I have been victimized by nearly everyone at nearly every event ! That's OK......
Each person must find the routine that answers the needs they have for competing, training and just having fun.
~~~~^o^~~~~
Possibly........... or maybe just someone not happy with their performance.........or maybe a legitimate concern.
No one has mentioned another possibility for the five year occurance : I find it impossible to maintain what I call "competitive intensity" for more than a couple of years. I can (and do) train every year-all year-but the grind of readying, tapering and competing gets me down after a few years in an age-group. So should I concentrate my efforts on the last years of each age-group ? That wouldn't make a whole lot of sense !
What I do, as a flyer, is to concentrate my efforts in fly over the first several years and then try other strokes and distances to keep my mind in the sport. This has been my last year in this age-group and I have been victimized by nearly everyone at nearly every event ! That's OK......
Each person must find the routine that answers the needs they have for competing, training and just having fun.
~~~~^o^~~~~
