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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Shinob- I think that you need to have at least a gold card if not a platnium card- we need to have our standards)
"A true masters swimmer" I guess cannot exist according to 99% of the responses on this thread. The conclusion I draw from most responses is as long as you are registered as a USMS swimmer, you can break any records you want- I suppose I can live with that. I appreciated the feedback on my opinion- even though almost no one agreed with me, you helped me alter my opinion a bitl
One thing I was thinking of when reading the responses was how it is sad that some people really believe that their only good chance at doing a great time is the year they age up to a new age group. Is there that big of a difference being 35 compared to 39 and so on? I don't remember the article exactly, but "Swim" magazine did a story a couple years ago which showed how little we lose each year speed-wise. Hopefully someone can find the numbers on it, but I think I remember it being around 1 tenth of a second or so each year in 100 yard distances. It wasn't until around 60 years of age did this difference become much more over the years.
A tenth of a second a year is not that much. If you make stroke techinique improvements (everyone needs them) or more efficient workouts, there is no reason why you cannot be faster as a 39 year old than you were as a 35 year old. I think for those swimmers that only swim the "big" meet when they age up, many probably lack the faith that they could be faster.
While I'm still relatively young 32, and I swam four years of college, I hope to be faster each year I swim. In four years of masters swimming, so far so good. Obviously, my times will drop off but I honestly believe it will be due to more personal obligations in life interfering with my swimming than physical potential- I think that is probably true for almost everyone.
Shinob- I think that you need to have at least a gold card if not a platnium card- we need to have our standards)
"A true masters swimmer" I guess cannot exist according to 99% of the responses on this thread. The conclusion I draw from most responses is as long as you are registered as a USMS swimmer, you can break any records you want- I suppose I can live with that. I appreciated the feedback on my opinion- even though almost no one agreed with me, you helped me alter my opinion a bitl
One thing I was thinking of when reading the responses was how it is sad that some people really believe that their only good chance at doing a great time is the year they age up to a new age group. Is there that big of a difference being 35 compared to 39 and so on? I don't remember the article exactly, but "Swim" magazine did a story a couple years ago which showed how little we lose each year speed-wise. Hopefully someone can find the numbers on it, but I think I remember it being around 1 tenth of a second or so each year in 100 yard distances. It wasn't until around 60 years of age did this difference become much more over the years.
A tenth of a second a year is not that much. If you make stroke techinique improvements (everyone needs them) or more efficient workouts, there is no reason why you cannot be faster as a 39 year old than you were as a 35 year old. I think for those swimmers that only swim the "big" meet when they age up, many probably lack the faith that they could be faster.
While I'm still relatively young 32, and I swam four years of college, I hope to be faster each year I swim. In four years of masters swimming, so far so good. Obviously, my times will drop off but I honestly believe it will be due to more personal obligations in life interfering with my swimming than physical potential- I think that is probably true for almost everyone.
