How long is a meet?

As a fellow NEM swimmer I appreciate that you value appropriate seed times as much as I do. There have been many, many meets where I had to choose between two favorite events (usually 200 free and a breaststroke) because they were back to back. I spent my entire high school career unable to swim my second favorite event at the time (100 back) because my better and favorite event always came right afterwards (100 ***). To me, order of events is part of the sport. Otherwise, high point awards and heat winner awards can become meaningless. I have found however, that since I am getting back into things I am improving faster than expected. So for the NEM SCY meet that you have been using as an example, I truthfully seeded myself with best times from my most recent swims in January & February. That meet though, I had a truly awesome meet. 200 *** dropped 1.99 200 IM I created a very realistic seed time and dropped 2.3 seconds. 50 *** I dropped 0.37 (should have been more based on my 100 later that meet) 200 Free dropped 2.28 100 *** dropped a whopping 3.65! (I did a little dance!) I would hate to think that when someone truly has a breakthrough meet they were being labeled as a poor seeder. At the same time, in every heat, even though I had remarkable best times, I was absolutely crushed by at least a couple other swimmers. When they look up and are ambivalent about a 6 second time drop, you know something's up. I know in at least one event it made me seriously doubt my performance during my swim. Now on the reverse end of the spectrum, I did my first LCM meet a few weeks ago. I took times from the March meet, dropped them by about 2 seconds because I figured I had improved myself that much in 3-1/2 months and converted them to LCM. I thought I had darn good, realistic seed times. Now, at that meet I was anywhere between 6 seconds and over 1 MINUTE slower than my seed times even though I worked my butt off. It came down to not having enough turnless practice. At that meet it wasn't so bad since there was always only one heat of women. Even still, it was humiliating even with my seed times being honest to the best I could know. I would hate to have people think the reverse that I had false representation of how fast I was. Granted, I'll get it right next time. But I think people are HONESTLY wrong a little more than people think. When you don't go to meets every weekend like as an age grouper (or have a coach to time you) it's much harder to anticipate how you'll do at any given meet.

As a fellow NEM swimmer I appreciate that you value appropriate seed times as much as I do. There have been many, many meets where I had to choose between two favorite events (usually 200 free and a breaststroke) because they were back to back. I spent my entire high school career unable to swim my second favorite event at the time (100 back) because my better and favorite event always came right afterwards (100 ***). To me, order of events is part of the sport. Otherwise, high point awards and heat winner awards can become meaningless. I have found however, that since I am getting back into things I am improving faster than expected. So for the NEM SCY meet that you have been using as an example, I truthfully seeded myself with best times from my most recent swims in January & February. That meet though, I had a truly awesome meet. 200 *** dropped 1.99 200 IM I created a very realistic seed time and dropped 2.3 seconds. 50 *** I dropped 0.37 (should have been more based on my 100 later that meet) 200 Free dropped 2.28 100 *** dropped a whopping 3.65! (I did a little dance!) I would hate to think that when someone truly has a breakthrough meet they were being labeled as a poor seeder. At the same time, in every heat, even though I had remarkable best times, I was absolutely crushed by at least a couple other swimmers. When they look up and are ambivalent about a 6 second time drop, you know something's up. I know in at least one event it made me seriously doubt my performance during my swim. Now on the reverse end of the spectrum, I did my first LCM meet a few weeks ago. I took times from the March meet, dropped them by about 2 seconds because I figured I had improved myself that much in 3-1/2 months and converted them to LCM. I thought I had darn good, realistic seed times. Now, at that meet I was anywhere between 6 seconds and over 1 MINUTE slower than my seed times even though I worked my butt off. It came down to not having enough turnless practice. At that meet it wasn't so bad since there was always only one heat of women. Even still, it was humiliating even with my seed times being honest to the best I could know. I would hate to have people think the reverse that I had false representation of how fast I was. Granted, I'll get it right next time. But I think people are HONESTLY wrong a little more than people think. When you don't go to meets every weekend like as an age grouper (or have a coach to time you) it's much harder to anticipate how you'll do at any given meet.