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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I'm fairly confident that even with a 20 year break, if I were to train with the same intensity and quantity that I did as a youth I could now swim almost as fast (butterfly) or faster (freestyle and backstroke) than I did then. The difference is 10,000 yards a week now and 50,000/wk then.
I think that is true for anyone under 50 that is still healthy. But we have other things to be involved in - work, family, other sports, . . .
Swimming is a smaller and I think more appropriate part of my life now. Like the other Phil, I'm pretty happy with the way I am swimming, and look for improvement from that.
I'm fairly confident that even with a 20 year break, if I were to train with the same intensity and quantity that I did as a youth I could now swim almost as fast (butterfly) or faster (freestyle and backstroke) than I did then. The difference is 10,000 yards a week now and 50,000/wk then.
I think that is true for anyone under 50 that is still healthy. But we have other things to be involved in - work, family, other sports, . . .
Swimming is a smaller and I think more appropriate part of my life now. Like the other Phil, I'm pretty happy with the way I am swimming, and look for improvement from that.
