OK...Here comes a thread for all of you wannabe odds-makers.
Post your thoughts for establishing handicaps for personal challenge races.
Here are a couple of mine:
1. Age credit: basic idea.....the older of the two gets a handicap. (as in chaos vs. muppet) the handicap goes to yours truly.
2. Wetsuit penalty: self explanatory....I heard 10% is a good rule of thumb for this one.
3. Personal bests (within 2 years).....swimmers are handicapped based on their best recent performances. (this could make geek vs. gull II a real nail-biter)
For the age component of this, we had a huge discussion of this a number of years back, which resulted in one swimmer--maybe the great Phil Arcuni--putting the following on the Internet.
http://n3times.com/swimtimes/
Check it out--it has come in handy for me many, many times. When I was 50, one of my nemeses was 41. On the rare occasions I beat him, I would plug our respective times in here and publicly luxuriate in how much more soundly I would have beaten him had we been the same age.
And when he beat me, well, thanks to the Finnish formula, he NEVER truly beat me, because the age adjustment fudge factor invariably gave me the edge!
You never want to pick nemeses that are too good. But with the Finish formula and age on your side, you might just find yourself increasing the talent pool of nemeses that are much younger and better than you, but not nearly good enough to vanquish the age-adjusted you!
For the age component of this, we had a huge discussion of this a number of years back, which resulted in one swimmer--maybe the great Phil Arcuni--putting the following on the Internet.
http://n3times.com/swimtimes/
Check it out--it has come in handy for me many, many times. When I was 50, one of my nemeses was 41. On the rare occasions I beat him, I would plug our respective times in here and publicly luxuriate in how much more soundly I would have beaten him had we been the same age.
And when he beat me, well, thanks to the Finnish formula, he NEVER truly beat me, because the age adjustment fudge factor invariably gave me the edge!
You never want to pick nemeses that are too good. But with the Finish formula and age on your side, you might just find yourself increasing the talent pool of nemeses that are much younger and better than you, but not nearly good enough to vanquish the age-adjusted you!
