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
OK, here's one alternate (but admittedly not very well-thought-out) proposal. Feel free to tear it apart....
CZ Meet, Proposal "A"
---------------------
Friday
1000 Free
1650 Free
Saturday
400 Mixed Free Relay
200 Mixed Medley Relay
100 Free
200 Back
50 Fly
400 IM
50 Back
200 Free
100 IM
200 ***
800 Free Relay
400 Medley Relay
200 Free Relay
Sunday
800 Mixed Free Relay
400 Mixed Medley Relay
200 Mixed Free Relay
100 Back
200 Fly
100 ***
50 Free
500 Free
200 IM
50 ***
100 Fly
400 Free Relay
200 Medley Relay
Personally, I'd put the relays in the middle and the end (as opposed to the beginning and end). That can help break up the session a bit. (And from a meet staff perspective... it's hard to start with a relay.)
I didn't mess with their relay order. I figured they had some reason for doing it that way (I agree with you). I only changed the order of the individual events, because I think that is what Leslie was unhappy with.
Anna Lea
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.
Will you be doing the distance events on Thursday again next year? That was a big hit with my team.
Probably not. The biggest reason we did distance on Thursday is that the week-end before, which would have traditionally been distance day, was Easter week-end. We thought lots of people would object to the distance day being on Easter week-end.
So we tried distance day on Thursday. We had heard from lots of out-of-towners that they would prefer that, since they could make it one big meet, and travel once.
However, in the end, we got lots of grumblings about the 4-days-in-a-row. What lots of people grumbled about was the recovery time from the 1000/1650. In years past, you had a full week to recover before swimming other events. This year, you had just overnight. In the end, our Thursday numbers were pretty low compared to distance days in the past. So it seems that people really didn't like Thursday distance, on the whole.
-Rick
Are the distance events ever put in the middle of the day to break up the shorter events? That way the distance swimmers would have an option not to have to come a day early, and sprinters would get more rest. I guess you would have to move some of the shorter events to the current distance day, but that would just let them spread out their events more. Or is having all heats of an event swum at the same time sacrosanct at all costs? The extreme form of this would be to run through all the events two or more times, which would certainly be ideal for allowing swimmers to space their events out as they pleased, but would not be good at all at ensuring the fastest swimmers are all in one heat.
Always? Swim meets can be quite lucrative, especially when you have high entry fees like CZ. If it's a for profit business, they can take consumer desires into consideration. Moreover, our meet director is paid for her coaching job. That's not to say there are not many, many volunteers, including all the timers and stroke and turn officials. There obviously are. That's why more thank yous from swimmers is probably a good idea too.
Don't mean to be argumentative but I doubt many meets are lucrative. How many swimmers were in this meet? 200? Entry fees $40 or so? That means $8,000. Their costs that day include all the staff for the weekend including lifeguards, the meet director, the electricity, the chemicals, the repayment of bonds to pay for the pool, etc.
If swim meets were lucrative they'd have them all the time. One of the reasons there are so few indoor 50M pools is that they cost ~$10M or more to build one that can host meets. They almost never get built with private funds because there is no return on the investment. That's why they are usually attached to universities or school districts and funded by bond money.
I know this is a tangent discussion. Sorry.
It does sometimes seem that the fly-back combination occurs together too much.
Try the back-*** combo. Every meet I go to has them together.
It's happening this year at nationals. It happens at every smaller meet.
I am surprised the fly-back combo occurs a lot these days. With the evolution of the underwater dolphin kick, both strokes increasingly are becoming the same, especially in short course.
I would imagine the Chris Stevensons and Mike Rosses of the masters community don't like it very much.
I couldn't offer any advice to meet directors. As a sprinter who does the strokes, my meet lineup would not favor freestylers.
I agree about not starting with relays.I also like the idea of distance in the middle of the meet to give us sprinters more rest,(we need it more as we generate more lactic acid.)
I am surprised the fly-back combo occurs a lot these days. With the evolution of the underwater dolphin kick, both strokes increasingly are becoming the same, especially in short course.
I would imagine the Chris Stevensons and Mike Rosses of the masters community don't like it very much.
I couldn't offer any advice to meet directors. As a sprinter who does the strokes, my meet lineup would not favor freestylers.
The 50 back and 100 fly are back to back Sunday at Nats. Not enough time to dry off your suit or change suits.
My lineup would not always favor pure freestylers either. If you only swim free, which is a LOT of people, you always have plenty of rest and never have to worry about juggling events, skipping an event you want to swim, attempting to plan adequate rest, or knowing you'll swim on inadequate rest. This is just not the case for strokers.
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?
There's a four-event maximum, and no more than two individual events. That usually means two individual and two relays. But sometimes swimmers do all three relays and one individual event. One of the star sprinters from Mercer Island did this at state in 2003.
