Time comparison

Since I began racing as an adult, I'll chime in here. First, I agree with the other people who have said that you should just go ahead and start racing. You may not be ready to win at this point, but there's a whole process of learning how to race, and if you wait until you're ready to do winning times before you start racing, you still won't be able to win, because you won't have learned how to race. At the same time, you need to realize that most of the people you are racing against won't by any stretch of the imagination be your peers. Age groups in kids' swimming are officially supposed to level the playing field, the argument being that a 9-year-old kid is mature enough physically to be able to compete fairly with a 16-year-old. But my experience suggests that that's about half the story. The other half is that the 16-year-old will swim better because (usually) he/she has been swimming competitively for a longer time. But you are likely to be be up against swimmers in you age group who have been racing literally for decades. So it isn't reasonable to compare your performance to theirs. I should also warn you that, in my experience, what cinc310 says isn't true. I've never turned in as good a time in competition in any stroke as I've done in practice. One of the problems, undoubtedly, is that I've done a lot more practice sets than competition sets, so there's been a lot more opportunity to excell in practice. But there are also a lot of other factors that come into play: racing in an unfamiliar pool, 25y vs. 25m vs. 50m pools, nervousness, having to perform at a particular time on a particular day, only having one shot to get it right, etc. The gap between what I've done in practice and what I've done in competition has been narrowing as I've gained experience, but you shouldn't expect to do better in competition right off the bat. If you do, consider yourself lucky. In my book, there are a number of different ways to "win" a race. One is to come in first, but another is to place higher than you've ever placed before and/or to do a better time than you've ever done before. If you think about things this way, it will give you a tremendous advantage at your first race, since every time you set and every placing you get will be better than you've ever done before. Even if you get DQed, that will still be better than you've ever done before. So you are guaranteed to win! And that's not entirely fictitious. Just by racing, you are already ahead of the vast majority of people, who have never raced. And don't be concerned about what other people are going to think of you. The worst you can do is to take last place or get DQed, and if that happens, there will be at least one person who will be very glad you were there - the person who comes in next-to-last! Consider each race to be a learning experience, and analyze it afterward. What went wrong? What could you have done to have prevented it? What should you do differently next time? Bob

Since I began racing as an adult, I'll chime in here. First, I agree with the other people who have said that you should just go ahead and start racing. You may not be ready to win at this point, but there's a whole process of learning how to race, and if you wait until you're ready to do winning times before you start racing, you still won't be able to win, because you won't have learned how to race. At the same time, you need to realize that most of the people you are racing against won't by any stretch of the imagination be your peers. Age groups in kids' swimming are officially supposed to level the playing field, the argument being that a 9-year-old kid is mature enough physically to be able to compete fairly with a 16-year-old. But my experience suggests that that's about half the story. The other half is that the 16-year-old will swim better because (usually) he/she has been swimming competitively for a longer time. But you are likely to be be up against swimmers in you age group who have been racing literally for decades. So it isn't reasonable to compare your performance to theirs. I should also warn you that, in my experience, what cinc310 says isn't true. I've never turned in as good a time in competition in any stroke as I've done in practice. One of the problems, undoubtedly, is that I've done a lot more practice sets than competition sets, so there's been a lot more opportunity to excell in practice. But there are also a lot of other factors that come into play: racing in an unfamiliar pool, 25y vs. 25m vs. 50m pools, nervousness, having to perform at a particular time on a particular day, only having one shot to get it right, etc. The gap between what I've done in practice and what I've done in competition has been narrowing as I've gained experience, but you shouldn't expect to do better in competition right off the bat. If you do, consider yourself lucky. In my book, there are a number of different ways to "win" a race. One is to come in first, but another is to place higher than you've ever placed before and/or to do a better time than you've ever done before. If you think about things this way, it will give you a tremendous advantage at your first race, since every time you set and every placing you get will be better than you've ever done before. Even if you get DQed, that will still be better than you've ever done before. So you are guaranteed to win! And that's not entirely fictitious. Just by racing, you are already ahead of the vast majority of people, who have never raced. And don't be concerned about what other people are going to think of you. The worst you can do is to take last place or get DQed, and if that happens, there will be at least one person who will be very glad you were there - the person who comes in next-to-last! Consider each race to be a learning experience, and analyze it afterward. What went wrong? What could you have done to have prevented it? What should you do differently next time? Bob