Ques on seed times

It's Masters. Have fun. And bacon!

My college roommate did that in his first master's meet. He was a good college swimmer, took a couple of years off, and started competing masters around age 25. He trained a bit, but really had no idea how fast he would go, so entered with NT. He ended up in heats with 70 to 90 year old swimmers who he beat by quite a bit. Some of the other folks in his heats were a little ticked off at him. My advice would be to swim your event all out in practice before registering for a meet to at least get a ball park idea of what seed time to use. Darn, this is exactly my story for a meet upcoming on Sunday. Except I am 10 years out of college and only back in training for about a month. I put No Time because I read in the Master's regulations that mirepresenting seed times can get you in trouble. I didn't really know what misrepresenting meant, I thought maybe I could only put a time from another Master's meet, so I put No Time. How grievous an offense is this to etiquette? I will see if I can get them changed.

That's what I did. I thought you could only put times from meets which led to some confusion about how you can ever enter a 400 or 800 free when they all say "No NT Entries". I hadn't even been swimming for a month, so I did what I thought I was supposed to do. If someone gets pissed at me for trying to follow the rules, I don't have any control over that. Now that I know you are just supposed to estimate your times, it shouldn't come up again.

If you're the kind of swimmer who can swim close to personal bests at any time of the season then perhaps that strategy makes sense. I guess I was always kind of weird in that I would break personal bests at the most unimportant and unexpected meets. So any day was as good as any other for me. I figure that I might as well swim with the fastest group I can hang with.

How grievous an offense is this to etiquette? I will see if I can get them changed. In my roommates case, he got a few dirty looks, and one snide comment like, "you may want to enter faster times in your next meet". My roommate is a really nice guy, and stopped to explain what happened, which circulated amongst the older competitor's pretty quickly. He didn't get any comments for the rest of his events, but still got a few dirty looks. It wasn't that big of a deal looking back on it now....and I agree that the letter of the law is a little hard to interpret. My buddy swam all 200's that day. He swam the 200 IM in around 2:15 that day while the rest of his heat finished in, like, 6 - 8 minutes. There was a REALLY big difference. If you're only doing 50's, the difference won't be as pronounced.

In my roommates case, he got a few dirty looks, and one snide comment like, "you may want to enter faster times in your next meet". My roommate is a really nice guy, and stopped to explain what happened, which circulated amongst the older competitor's pretty quickly. He didn't get any comments for the rest of his events, but still got a few dirty looks. It wasn't that big of a deal looking back on it now....and I agree that the letter of the law is a little hard to interpret. My buddy swam all 200's that day. He swam the 200 IM in around 2:15 that day while the rest of his heat finished in, like, 6 - 8 minutes. There was a REALLY big difference. If you're only doing 50's, the difference won't be as pronounced. Ok, well, I am in 50's and 100's, I will ask the coach and see if there is enough time to change it. (Meet is hosted in the facility where I swim).

I'm in 50s and 100s too, so hopefully I won't look like a d-bag.

It's masters--it shouldn't matter and people that make a big deal about it suck. I, like others, usually sandbag a little (like a 1-2 seconds on a 100-200 and 3-4 seconds on a 500) in case I have a stroke or don't train as much as I thought I was going to. I've been to a few Arizona meets where the best heat in distance events is the first one because everyone puts no time, which is kind of annoying if you are waiting around for a race. I've been accused of sandbagging in the past. My question: if you enter a time that is still number one seed--does that make you a sandbagger?

C is the best answer.

Just put a time that you know that you can do at this point.