When a new masters swimmer asked on a different thread for a meters to yard conversion utility, I referred her to the following site:
www.swiminfo.com/.../conversions.asp
Unfortunately, as another poster quickly pointed out, this site will soon be available only to those who pay for it.
I am wondering if someone with some computer savvy could recreate this very useful utility for us masters, then post it in an area of the USMS web site where we could access it for free.
This same area could also include some other useful tools for swimmers. There is, for example, a fun (though perhaps somewhat suspect) "future times predictor" for aging swimmers at:
http://n3times.com/swimtimes/
In addition, my friend and teammate Bill White wrote an Excel spreadsheet (so far not posted on the web) that allows you to easily calculate your 100 pace for distance swims. You can either input the total distance and total time and it will give you your average 100; or you can input the average 100 you hope to swim and the total distance, and it will crank out what your overall time will be if you can hold that pace.
Anyhow, I propose the USMS web site add a new section called something like "Swimmers Tool Box" that collects, in one place, all these useful and/or just fun-to-play-around-with utilities we can come up with. I know many of the posters here are brilliant amateur mathematicians, who enjoy inventing these things; maybe we could even have an annual award for whatever new calculator we users vote as the most interesting! Kind of like a Touring Prize (is that the right name) for swimming math esoterica!
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lefty - Certainly that 200 back race was unusual - it is not often that four swimmers swim under the existing world record!
But all your 4-years of data show is that the cohort that includes Fritz and Bill and a few others is faster than the next older cohort. Perhaps these swimmers are all outliers, but that was also Jim's point. I have no doubt that for several events in the Rutgers meet the men's 45 - 49 age group was faster than the men's 40 - 44, or that the 45 - 49 age group is faster than it was last year. Whether this remains the case for the next several years remains to be seen.
The top ten lists may not be a big enough sample for the needed statistics, as talented outlier swimmers go in and out of the lists.
And no, I don't agree that age accounts for a 6 second difference between the two age groups. That is not the evidence I have seen for me or for other individuals that have been in both age groups.
finally, the aging formula that Jim pointed to was a fun exercise but not scientific at all. I consider it to have slightly more value than astrology, but not much. Still, reading horoscopes can be fun, and I put value on that.
lefty - Certainly that 200 back race was unusual - it is not often that four swimmers swim under the existing world record!
But all your 4-years of data show is that the cohort that includes Fritz and Bill and a few others is faster than the next older cohort. Perhaps these swimmers are all outliers, but that was also Jim's point. I have no doubt that for several events in the Rutgers meet the men's 45 - 49 age group was faster than the men's 40 - 44, or that the 45 - 49 age group is faster than it was last year. Whether this remains the case for the next several years remains to be seen.
The top ten lists may not be a big enough sample for the needed statistics, as talented outlier swimmers go in and out of the lists.
And no, I don't agree that age accounts for a 6 second difference between the two age groups. That is not the evidence I have seen for me or for other individuals that have been in both age groups.
finally, the aging formula that Jim pointed to was a fun exercise but not scientific at all. I consider it to have slightly more value than astrology, but not much. Still, reading horoscopes can be fun, and I put value on that.
