I was just wondering if anyone out there knows of masters swimmers who don’t compete and that have achieved Top Ten Times, American Records, World Records, etc. in practice. I know that stories have circulated around about swimmers like Mark Spitz who have done this (although I think he did compete :)). I was just wondering if there are similar stories in the masters ranks. It seems to me that it would be highly probable in masters swimming because so many of its members do not actually swim at meets. Therefore, I would think there are people out there who achieve these (unofficial) times during a practice session and are relatively unknown. If you’ve got a story to share, please do.
Does anyone swim with a team that does this? Do more people participate (voluntarily) than go to meets?
I don't understand what you mean by time trials. Almost every workout my team does is timed to some extent, everything is either on a total time interval (like 100's on 1:30) or a rest interval (such as 10 sec between sets). At least once a week we do more of a sprint day, such 200's on 6 min in the more distance lanes. Regardless of what we're doing, the clock is always on deck so you can get your time, and quite often (70%+) there's a coach also yelling out times as you come in.
We never have pads in the pool to get official times, no times are recorded for any records, or anything like that. I guess if you wanted, the coach would write down your times for you and give it to you afterwards, but I've never done that, and don't know anyone who has. We typically have 35-40 people at our workouts, and many days when we do fast sets it is quite easy to find someone to swim against, if that's what you're looking for.
From what it sounds, the people who do meets are usually the same all the time. From our morning group, there's about 8-10 people who always do meets, with little variation.
Does anyone swim with a team that does this? Do more people participate (voluntarily) than go to meets?
I don't understand what you mean by time trials. Almost every workout my team does is timed to some extent, everything is either on a total time interval (like 100's on 1:30) or a rest interval (such as 10 sec between sets). At least once a week we do more of a sprint day, such 200's on 6 min in the more distance lanes. Regardless of what we're doing, the clock is always on deck so you can get your time, and quite often (70%+) there's a coach also yelling out times as you come in.
We never have pads in the pool to get official times, no times are recorded for any records, or anything like that. I guess if you wanted, the coach would write down your times for you and give it to you afterwards, but I've never done that, and don't know anyone who has. We typically have 35-40 people at our workouts, and many days when we do fast sets it is quite easy to find someone to swim against, if that's what you're looking for.
From what it sounds, the people who do meets are usually the same all the time. From our morning group, there's about 8-10 people who always do meets, with little variation.
