This is a motivation question, not a reprise of an old debate.
I'm wondering if there are any swimmers posting Top 10's in the ultra-competitive middle age ranges who did NOT swim in college, or were not standout HS or age group swimmers.
I swam age group as a kid, then took a break for HS because we had no pool until my senior year. I swam my senior year, and was supposed to swim at my Div. III college, but bailed because I thought it would take too much time away from my chosen major of beer drinking, guitar playing, and chasing (invariably unsuccessfully) women.
After swimming off and on over the years, I joined masters in September, and swam my first meet in November. I'm in the 45-49 age group.
So I'm currently in those heady early days when my times are dropping, I've lost some weight, and I'm feeling stronger. My meet times suck, but at least they are all PB's because I can't even remember what strokes I swam in HS, much less any times (it was the 70's. Hmm)
I understand setting personal, achievable goals. I have those and am working toward them.
But like any red-blooded competitor, I look at the Top 10's and records to see just how high the bar is set. Pretty damn high is the answer. "Who are these guys," I wonder, and so I read the bios. "Former NCAA record holder" or "standout swimmer for Texas/Stanford/fill in blank here" jump out at me.
So are there any swimmers at the elite levels who are certified late bloomers? Or are we latecomers to the game doomed to be mid-level cannon fodder for the fast crowd?
I somewhat agree with Geek and Gull but it purely depends on the age group. In the Women, I find a big drop in times in the 45-49 age group and for sure in the 40-44 age groups. My take on this is that if you were to survey the women in those age groups you would find that more of them competed in collegiate swimming than the older groups above them. Say you did a study with the 4 age groups (55-59, 50-54, 45-49, and 40-44) I would bet that you would see more active participation in swimming in college and even at the club level when they were younger as you go down in the age groups. Title 9 changed a lot of this.
I am not sure if this would be true for the men but maybe a bigger % of men that swam in college swim in the younger age groups. Gull might be in the most populated age group competiting and thus his statement could be true.
For both Men and Women, I believe there is a trend in the younger age groups of swimming activity that has always taken place in more of there lifes. Another words, the older you go in Masters age groups the more there was a time break from swimming competition in your younger years. It could be as much as 30 years and for some it could be 0 years. More people in the younger age groups never became inactive because they could go right from High School/College/Club to competiting in USMS.
When masters swimming started it was for people 25 and up. Plus it didn't start to take off until 1972 so all of the people that could have swam in the 1950's and 1960's could not. I believe that if you were to do a survey, you would find more years of inactivity in competitve swimming as you moved up to the older age groups.
The result of all of this is to say that aging up has no real significance any more for the age groups of 25-29 and 30-34. Has you go up in age groups, aging up becomes more important. One only needs to study the Top Ten to see that this is an accurate statement.
I somewhat agree with Geek and Gull but it purely depends on the age group. In the Women, I find a big drop in times in the 45-49 age group and for sure in the 40-44 age groups. My take on this is that if you were to survey the women in those age groups you would find that more of them competed in collegiate swimming than the older groups above them. Say you did a study with the 4 age groups (55-59, 50-54, 45-49, and 40-44) I would bet that you would see more active participation in swimming in college and even at the club level when they were younger as you go down in the age groups. Title 9 changed a lot of this.
I am not sure if this would be true for the men but maybe a bigger % of men that swam in college swim in the younger age groups. Gull might be in the most populated age group competiting and thus his statement could be true.
For both Men and Women, I believe there is a trend in the younger age groups of swimming activity that has always taken place in more of there lifes. Another words, the older you go in Masters age groups the more there was a time break from swimming competition in your younger years. It could be as much as 30 years and for some it could be 0 years. More people in the younger age groups never became inactive because they could go right from High School/College/Club to competiting in USMS.
When masters swimming started it was for people 25 and up. Plus it didn't start to take off until 1972 so all of the people that could have swam in the 1950's and 1960's could not. I believe that if you were to do a survey, you would find more years of inactivity in competitve swimming as you moved up to the older age groups.
The result of all of this is to say that aging up has no real significance any more for the age groups of 25-29 and 30-34. Has you go up in age groups, aging up becomes more important. One only needs to study the Top Ten to see that this is an accurate statement.
