How long is a meet?

Lack of entries. Lack of volunteer participation. Conflicts with pool time. The meet director would surely know what the reasons are if you are determined to find out.

Not determined to find out - just wanted to see a meet for the first time in my neck of the woods.

One thing that is worth pointing out... one of the major reasons that many masters meets are longer than they should be us because masters swimmers are terrible with seed times. Most masters swimmers enter meets with very rough estimate seed times, and that affects the length of the meet. It doesn't matter which direction your seed times are bad. In a 100 freestyle... if you're last in your heat by 30 seconds, then you should have been in an earlier (slower) heat. (Unless you're in the first heat...) If you're first in your heat by 30 seconds, then you should have been in a later (faster) heat. Many people tell me "But since I beat everyone in my heat, I didn't slow anything down!". Nonsense. You should bump up a heat (or more), so that others bump down a heat (or more) and swim with the people the same speed. I have to do some further numerical analysis, but looking at our New England MAsters SCY champs, which has sessions as long as 9+ hours, we could have saved as much as 2 hours a day with better seed times. -Rick

It doesn't matter which direction your seed times are bad. In a 100 freestyle... if you're last in your heat by 30 seconds, then you should have been in an earlier (slower) heat. (Unless you're in the first heat...) If you're first in your heat by 30 seconds, then you should have been in a later (faster) heat. Many people tell me "But since I beat everyone in my heat, I didn't slow anything down!". Nonsense. You should bump up a heat (or more), so that others bump down a heat (or more) and swim with the people the same speed. Rick, some great observations, and as a meet director, we are certainly looking for these things, especially when we've got to be out of the pool by a certain time. As for the "first in your heat by 30 seconds," there are people out there who know better and purposely sandbag their times just so they will come in first and look good.

The thing that makes master meets too long are the non interesting slow strokes eg. backstroke and breaststroke. The other is there should only be 50s and 100s.

Not to defend the sandbaggers out there, but there are times when I've entred a slower time due to the event schedule. For example, when two events I want to swim are back-to-back (or on either side of events with low participation like the 200 fly or 400 IM). In those cases I will enter a slower seed time for the first event in order to have some rest before the second. It has nothing to do with blowing people away and everything to do with not blowing up myself! Dana, I've done that a few times myself - I certainly see no harm in that! :groovy:

Not to defend the sandbaggers out there, but there are times when I've entred a slower time due to the event schedule. For example, when two events I want to swim are back-to-back (or on either side of events with low participation like the 200 fly or 400 IM). In those cases I will enter a slower seed time for the first event in order to have some rest before the second. It has nothing to do with blowing people away and everything to do with not blowing up myself! But you're still blowing out your heat, right? Am I understanding you in that you're not actually swimming slower in the first event - you just put yourself into a slower heat so you'd have more heats/time before your next event? Even if your motivation is different, the result is the same; there's a vast difference between your time and the rest of the heat. Personally, I think this is an obnoxious tactic to take. :confused:

We're going to start doing some time reconciliation for entry times for our biggest meets. We're building up enough data in various times databases to be able to electronically detect bad seed times. If you've gone 1:26, 1:28, and 1:27 in the 100 IM for the past three years, you should not be entered at 1:10, and you should not be entered at 1:50. -Rick Not to defend the sandbaggers out there, but there are times when I've entred a slower time due to the event schedule. For example, when two events I want to swim are back-to-back (or on either side of events with low participation like the 200 fly or 400 IM). In those cases I will enter a slower seed time for the first event in order to have some rest before the second. It has nothing to do with blowing people away and everything to do with not blowing up myself!

Rick, note that article 104.5.5.A.11 of the rule book (page 34) states:"If a swimmer enters a deck-seeded event with a time significantly slower than his/her recently recorded time, the meet director may, after notifying the swimmer, change the seeded time to a realistic time." This is the anti-sandbagging rule that was added for national championships a few years ago. It is in the section that only applies to nationals, and I'm not sure why it only applies to deck seeded events. However, I can't see any reason why you couldn't publish a similar statement on your meet entry form and follow it to change the seed times for the real sandbaggers. Ahh Jim see they're on to you and your tricks ;)

Not to defend the sandbaggers out there, but there are times when I've entred a slower time due to the event schedule. For example, when two events I want to swim are back-to-back (or on either side of events with low participation like the 200 fly or 400 IM). In those cases I will enter a slower seed time for the first event in order to have some rest before the second. It has nothing to do with blowing people away and everything to do with not blowing up myself! I think that's kind of the deal too though Dana, part of the risk that we should assume. I'm not saying I haven't marginally adjusted but this has been my first year. I guess next year will tell.