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.
Former Member
Fortress, I feel your pain, but on a totally different level. For people who enjoy swimming a variety of strokes things are just as frustrating.
Take, for example, our recent Colonies Zone meet (yes, it is the Colonies zone, not the Colony zone). On Sunday the meet ended with back-to-back 50 yd events. Why were the 50s not more evenly distributed?
On a side note, why can sprinters swim up to six sprint events at nationals (three on the same day if they so choose), but swimmers who like both the 1000 & the 1650 (or 800 & 1500) can only swim one of these events even though they have them on a separate day as to not bore the sprinters? Talk about unfair!
Clearly, meet directors are biased against distance swimmers, or sprinters, or fly-backers, or whatever it is we as individuals want to swim but can't due to the order of events. I agree with your point and changing the order from year to year could help the situation. Unfortunately, what's a great line-up for you (or me), will certainly stink for someone else.
You want a really bad order of events, try this one:
50 back
50 fly
50 free
50 ***
200 IM
100 back
100 fly
100 free
100 ***
200 back
200 fly
200 free
200 ***
That's the approximate line up (the stroke order may be different, but all the same distances are grouped together) for the only LCM meet held in my local area. After complaining to the meet director the first time they did it this way, my solution to hating the line up is to skip the meet. Maybe poor attendance will cause them to shake things up in the future.
In my opinion you should never do anything to intentionally slow down the meet. OK, maybe in extreme situations where the entire thing would take an hour or something, but for the most part I'm happy to swim my events quickly then get out of there. You don't always have to swim the same events, after all. If two events you're good at happen to fall back-to-back, just swim a different event instead.
Of course Fortress would never dream of swimming anything over 100 yards or meters!:bolt:
It's pretty much a fact of life in swimming that you don't get to swim everything you want in one meet.....you just can't please all of the people all of the time!!!!!!!!!!:notworking:
In some of the smaller meets around here they have "choice" events so that you have two slots in which you can swim a given event, you could swim the 50 fly in the 50 fly or the 50 choice for example. Having multiple slots in which to swim a race means you may not get to race against someone in an event, but in smaller meets you can't count on racing someone of your own speed anyway. These have been a life saver this year as many of the meets seem to have put their free and fly events back to back and those are the only two strokes I seriously swim in meets.
One thing I've been discussing with people lately is encouraging clubs to put on time trials within their regular workout schedules. The intent is to allow people who would not normally participate in meets due to time constraints to get official times. With luck some of these people might get addicted and start going to meets, and even if not they are getting better value for their membership. An option would be to have a schedule for these time trials and combine the results into a virtual meet sort of like the postal events but purely online. Again, you don't get the head to head racing unless you have someone in your club to race, but you get a chance to swim your events without travel time, without suboptimal event ordering, without endless heats, etc.. Developing the infrastructure for officials for these might also add to the general pool of officials for meets and experience gained might encourage more clubs to hold meets.
This thread just confirms that Masters swimmers whine a lot.
Texas high school swimming's order of events never changes. It clearly discriminates against the few that swim back and ***. It must be an unwritten law. :D
One of my sons likes 200 free and 200 IM but that is a killer combo back to back.
Some meets have so few heats that there is less than 10 minutes rest.
200 medley relay
200 free
200 IM
50 free
100 fly
100 free
500 free
200 free relay
100 back
100 ***
400 free relay
I learned long ago that I don't recover very quickly. So I have to choose my events accordingly. I whine all the time about how slow I am or how tired I am but not the event order. Volunteers do that stuff and I'm reasonably certain they didn't single me out for misery.
That's the standard high school order of events.
In my opinion you should never do anything to intentionally slow down the meet. OK, maybe in extreme situations where the entire thing would take an hour or something, but for the most part I'm happy to swim my events quickly then get out of there. You don't always have to swim the same events, after all. If two events you're good at happen to fall back-to-back, just swim a different event instead.
Of course Fortress would never dream of swimming anything over 100 yards or meters!:bolt:
Hahaha. Too true! I was actually thinking of doing my first masters 200 IM at this meet for sh*ts and giggles (even though it would be a dreaded back to back event):
www.igla2008.org/swiming.php
That is a pretty good order of events and schedule with breaks where appropriate.
That's the standard high school order of events.
Yeah, that high school dual meet format is great. Of course there's usually diving in there, too, and that's usually about the only break you get. I remember those meets not taking much more than an hour. We didn't have the 200 free relay when I swam, though. Are you now allowed to swim two events and two relays?
The best way is, for a given meet, to come up with one or two "alternate" orders of events. Then submit those to the meet director, with a request to rotate among them in future years.
For your Colonies Zone meet, I would assume that you could ask someone to submit them at the next Zone meeting.
Here is the order of events from the most recent Colonies Zone meet. What would be your preferred order of events?
Friday
1000 Free
1650 Free
Saturday
400 Mixed Free Relay
200 Mixed Medley Relay
100 Free
200 Back
50 Fly
200 IM
500 Free
100 ***
200 Fly
50 Back
800 Free Relay
400 Medley Relay
200 Free Relay
Sunday
800 Mixed Free Relay
400 Mixed Medley Relay
200 Mixed Free Relay
200 Free
100 IM
200 ***
100 Fly
400 IM
100 Back
50 ***
50 Free
400 Free Relay
200 Medley Relay
I'm sure there are others here on this forum who could offer some proposals, too.
Well, in PVS (age group kids), 2 day meets have one basic premise. 50s and 200s on 1 day, 100s and 400/500s on the 2nd day. I like that set up as I am a 50/100 person so I would rarely end up with back to back events.
But, Masters meets on the whole are much, much, much smaller so I think that changing event order every year would be a very good thing for the local meets.
Paul
That was probably the largest problem with our event order this year. What I can say is -- it won't happen again next year. Having those two events back-to-back (note - there was a 30-minute warmup period between them) was the only place we had two of the same strokes in a row. (But again - there was a 30-minute warmup between.) I guess I chalk it up to every meet has to make a compromise here or there.
Oh, definitely. I was mostly pointing it out for Fort's sake. In general, your meet is the best run and most fun of any around here, so despite the little annoyances, I am a fan.
Will you be doing the distance events on Thursday again next year? That was a big hit with my team.
