Don't want to start a screamfest, but the controversial issue of "getting enough rest" between events led me to wonder --- how do you get an order of events that is somewhat uniformly fair?
Since I'm apparently challenging John Smith for most annoying masters swimmer, I'll just say that I have been aggravated by the order of events in most of my recent meets. As a fly-backer-er, somewhat odd, it seems that those events are always close together. I guess the fly-*** or fly-free or all free combos are much more common. I have basically given up swimming the 100 IM and haven't swum the 100 back in SCY in 2 years. My last meet, the 100 fly and 100 back were within minutes of each other, and unlike Chris Stevenson and Jeff Roddin, I admittedly didn't have the chops to do both. At my Dec. taper meet, all my best events were on Saturday. At anther meet, all the 200s were in the first half of the meet and all the sprints in the second half, annoying almost everyone and causing a lot of scratches. I have also noticed the inequity between rest for freestylers and strokers. Folks entering the 5 pack freestyle (50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 or 1650), very common set of entries, always have adequate rest because these events are always spaced out pretty well. So it's pretty easy for freestylers to think others are whiney, since they never experience the rest problem.
So how do you fix these inequities and get a fair lineup of events? At a minimum, can't meet directors change the order of events each year to attempt to provide some equity? Or have a 15 minute break scheduled somewhere? This would probably reduce whining and the apparently repugnant practice of sandbagging to get more rest. Since I only swim 5 meets a year or so, it'd be nice to attempt to swim reasonably well. Swimming more meets is just not an option. There's obviously no way to make everyone happy all the time, but it seems like the system could be improved.
My general rule is that I try to mix it up from one year to the next in the order of events. For my meets, with 700-800 swimmers, there are always going to be people who are unhappy with the order of events. My only hope is that if you don't like this year's order, that hopefully you will like next year's order better.
If you're a fly/back/im person, here's what you would have experienced at our NE SCY meet this year:
Friday:
W 100 fly (ran 11:46 - 11:59am)
(at least 45 minutes rest)
W 100 IM (ran 12:44 - 1:10pm)
(at least 30 minutes rest)
W 200 back (ran 1:40 - 2:11pm)
(at least 38 minutes rest)
W 400 medley relay
Saturday:
W 200 IM (ran 1:13pm - 2:01pm)
(2+ hours rest)
W 50 back (ran 4:12 - 4:30pm)
(at least 19 minutes rest)
W 200 fly (ran 4:49 - 5:10pm)
Sunday:
W 400 IM (ran 9:00 - 9:53am)
(3+ hours rest)
W 100 back (ran 12:57 - 1:19pm)
(at least 31 minutes rest)
W 200 medley relay (ran 1:50 - 2:04pm)
(at least 34 minutes rest)
W 50 fly (ran 2:38pm - 2:51pm)
Thing is... if you're comparing the rest obtained between the 5-pack of freestyle events to your events for fly, back and IM, you're comparing the rest pattern of 5 freestyle events to that of 9 stroke/IM events. There's just only so much rest you can get between 9 events.
If you look at the stoke order of our three days:
Friday: ***, fly, back
Saturday: ***, back, fly
Sunday: back, fly, ***
... we try to mix up the order. The only order that happens twice is back then fly, which happens on two days.
We're certainly not biased against anyone. Heck, our meet is one of the only meets around where we don't put a cap on distance event times. We had one swimmer complete the 1650 in I think 63 minutes this year (he was seeded at 68 minutes). Just like every other swimmer in the meet, we didn't start the next heat until his heat was finished, and he got splits on the touchpad and on the scoreboard for the entire race. That's frankly a lot of "wasted" lane space for a big meet. But we allow it, so that even our most senior distance swimmers can complete their race. (We did, however, allow the other swimmers to get out of their lane. :) )
-Rick
My general rule is that I try to mix it up from one year to the next in the order of events. For my meets, with 700-800 swimmers, there are always going to be people who are unhappy with the order of events. My only hope is that if you don't like this year's order, that hopefully you will like next year's order better.
If you're a fly/back/im person, here's what you would have experienced at our NE SCY meet this year:
Friday:
W 100 fly (ran 11:46 - 11:59am)
(at least 45 minutes rest)
W 100 IM (ran 12:44 - 1:10pm)
(at least 30 minutes rest)
W 200 back (ran 1:40 - 2:11pm)
(at least 38 minutes rest)
W 400 medley relay
Saturday:
W 200 IM (ran 1:13pm - 2:01pm)
(2+ hours rest)
W 50 back (ran 4:12 - 4:30pm)
(at least 19 minutes rest)
W 200 fly (ran 4:49 - 5:10pm)
Sunday:
W 400 IM (ran 9:00 - 9:53am)
(3+ hours rest)
W 100 back (ran 12:57 - 1:19pm)
(at least 31 minutes rest)
W 200 medley relay (ran 1:50 - 2:04pm)
(at least 34 minutes rest)
W 50 fly (ran 2:38pm - 2:51pm)
Thing is... if you're comparing the rest obtained between the 5-pack of freestyle events to your events for fly, back and IM, you're comparing the rest pattern of 5 freestyle events to that of 9 stroke/IM events. There's just only so much rest you can get between 9 events.
If you look at the stoke order of our three days:
Friday: ***, fly, back
Saturday: ***, back, fly
Sunday: back, fly, ***
... we try to mix up the order. The only order that happens twice is back then fly, which happens on two days.
We're certainly not biased against anyone. Heck, our meet is one of the only meets around where we don't put a cap on distance event times. We had one swimmer complete the 1650 in I think 63 minutes this year (he was seeded at 68 minutes). Just like every other swimmer in the meet, we didn't start the next heat until his heat was finished, and he got splits on the touchpad and on the scoreboard for the entire race. That's frankly a lot of "wasted" lane space for a big meet. But we allow it, so that even our most senior distance swimmers can complete their race. (We did, however, allow the other swimmers to get out of their lane. :) )
-Rick
