Should I worry or just be embarrassed?

Gerdrick, I will be at the meet and will try to watch your swim. Don't worry about your seed time. You'll do great!

Go have some fun! The great thing about competing as a Masters is the support - whether your first or last. I am far from fast but everyone is still encouraging and helpful. I agree... the heat, pardon the pun, of the moment may spur you to faster times. Good Luck and let us - how you did.:applaud:

Thank you al so very much!!! :notworthy: Now I can't wait to jump in the pool with all the great people I keep hearing about! I'll keep you posted on how it goes! :banana:

There is not alot of difference there. Have fun! you don't want to seed wrong in distance events where people need to wait minutes for you to finish.

You will have a blast. I don't think I have heard of anyone having a bad experience at a Masters Event as related to how your fellow swimmers treat you. My goal is always to finish the race. One of my biggest pre-race anxiety is the fear that I will need to stop in the middle of the race because I can't catch my breath or I am choking on water or don't have the strength to continue. So far - so good. :) I guess the whole thing comes from my very first meet at the tender age of 6. I was swimming a leg in a 100 yard medley relay and didn't understand the concept of a relay, i.e., one person swimming at a time. When the gun went off, so did I - even though I was swimming breaststroke. The parents thought it was about the funniest thing they had ever seen - especially when I past the backstroker in the middle of the pool (no we did not collide - we where quite small). Now that I'm older, I too laugh when I think of it. You'll do great! Just entering the meet and swimming is a wonderful accomplishment by itself. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

In addition to what everyone else has said here Gerdrick, I just want to re-emphasize the point that there is NO way anyone is going to think badly of you in any way if you don't go any faster than what you have been going lately....even if it is a few seconds slower than your seed time...First of all, no one will even notice such a minor thing in the first place. I wish you the best of luck Gerdrick! I'm sure you're going to have a blast at the meet! Newmastersswimmer

Relax. You will be fine. Everybody applauds efford and the one you are really competing with is yourself. Good luck

Don't worry, at worst you'll be 5 seconds slower than the others, or you may surprise yourself and win your heat. That's really not a big deal in a race of that length. I've had plenty of races where my seed time was way off from my actual time - usually my seed time has been too slow, but sometimes, it's been way too fast. Swim your best, and don't worry about the other swimmers.

Don't sweat it. Your seed time is just supposed to get you into a heat with swimmers who are of similar speed. Some people will go slower than their seed time, some will go faster. Especially in masters meets there tends to be a decent spread between the swimmers in a heat. If you are swimming a little slower these days it might actually help you to swim with a heat that's a little faster. Maybe you'll be able to keep up with them and surprise yourself. Good luck!

You're fine. Even if you tell them now, they have done the seeding so look at it as an opportunity to keep up and swim a fast time :) Since coming back to swimming after a loooooonnngg layoff, I had to guess on a lot of times and I wasn't very accurate in a few events. Not a big deal, you just learn and have a time to enter the next meet with. Good luck on Sunday! I have a meet tomorrow that I'm anxious for!