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"
Former Member
The same people that beat us as kids are also the same people that beat us as adults. The times aren't going to get slower their going to get faster. A women doing a 1:30 in a 100 meter breastroke this year will make the top ten in the 45 to 49. But I bet as a younger group moves in that group, the same person is going to have to do a 1:27 in another 3 years to make the top ten. Matt, I only qualfied in the 50 meter breastroke. If I could swim the 100 meter better than I would have made that. My butterfly is even more off than my breastroke, so I was way far away from qualfying for that. Freestyle, while I have a fair style I don't have the speed I did as a teenager,so I would not make qualfying times there either. Backstroke is my worst stroke and I swim breastroke faster.
True Masters swimmers... huh. It never occurred to me. I kind of like that idea. Maybe we could implement that next year at the Nationals... When you show up in the morning... just head for the "True Masters Registration Table"
Just to get things rolling....
The criteria could be:
Q. Have you swam in a meet b4?
Q. Have you competed in the last five years?
Q. How many practices do you attend per week..
Q. Have you ever held any records outside of Masters Swimming? (Automatic Disqualification)
Q. Are you a U.S. Citizen?
Q. Do you have a Green Card... a MastersCard... a Visa and American Express?
Im down TB... I think the that idea would be totally sweet.
Shinob - Out
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.
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.
I agree that we are busy. But who knows if you can swim as well as when we were younger if we can do the same yardage. I think Laura Val who swims at 5000 x5 days a week and rarely gets sick is the best women swimmer over 50. But some of the other swimmers once they creep into the older age groups start to drop off no matter what they do. Age is a factor and the older we get the harder it is to do times like we did at 15 to 22 years old. I also swam at the level I did between 12 and 13 years old.
That's not true that we don't loose speed. The average master swimmer who took over a 20 year period off does. I swim the 100 meter breastroke about 23 seconds slower tha I did at age 18. The example that was use was Jeff F in the 50 yard free. Who was an ex-elite swimmer and who has been at masters for over 20 years in competition. If anyone notice, their is a gap when masters swimmers swim 200 swims outside of freestyle. Melinda Mann swam a 100 meter breastroke at 1:21 but a 200 meter breastroke in 3:02. Many age groupers that swim a 1:21 100 meter breastroke can swim a 200 meter breastroke around 2:52 or something like that. Lynn Bell who was an ex-elite swimmer and it was several years since she compete in masters swam last year ,swam the 200 meter butterfly about almost a mintue slower than she did at the olympics at 1972. Also, the 45 to 49 year old male qualifying for masters nationals is similar to A times for 13 to 14 year old boys and the women 45 to 49 is similar to 11 to 12 year old girls which means there is a decrease in speed and endurance taking place.
I agree with Cynthia. After not swimming for 22 years I find that I am as good as when I was 13. (the people at work get a real kick out of me telling them that)
The real problem is that I really improved a lot between 13 and 14. I don't know if I will ever make those 14 year old times.
Reasons: 50 lbs. reduced flexibility, only 10,000 a week (max), no practice competition, greatly reduced expectations, etc.
There is no doubt that I would have maintained most of my skills if I had continued swimming but when I was 22 I was ready to STOP! You have to give a lot of credit to those who have been disciplined enough to never call it quits. And they deserve to be the ones setting the records.
However, it is so much more fun now getting to construct my own workouts and just feeling the water. Improving from my current level is satisfying enough.
