Ques on seed times

I never sandbag... With all due respect to the meet directors, I don't think making the most of a meet you may pay well over $500 to attend by adding a second to a time is really that heinous. At least definitely not at my level. :2cents: Admittedly the mega meets which are usually over subscribed (like NE SCY) may have the luxury of being able to demand/enforce "accurate seeding" but I'd think that many others are not in such a position.

I don't care about 1 second. If everyone were within 1 second, we'd be great! I care about 10 seconds in a 100. If you're that far off in a 100 free, then you need to work on your seed times. I happen to run a meet that lots of people seem to want to come to. If I can get better seed times, I can squeeze more people into the meet. More people for you to socialize with on deck. More people for you to drink with after the meet. I don't like telling people that my meet is full. -Rick Yea 10 secs would be bad but I honestly blew off some large chunks of time this summer. There was no way I could have known. I am sure a few folks were giving me the hairy eyeball... Was no way criticising your meet Rick. That's a lot of people...even with 3 full days. I can understand your frustration there. Plus at NEM there are typically enough heats that you'll get your rest...

And I think that practice is a little silly. What's the purpose? Just to be sure you always beat your seed time? Who cares if you swim a little slower? I don't really know. I think it comes down to people not giving themselves enough credit perhaps. "I'm not in as good shape as I was when I swam my best time, so I'll need to enter a slower time," "I swam that time a year ago and now I'm a year older and slower", "I swam that time when I was shaved and tapered and I'm not for this meet," "I don't perform well in this pool," etc. Masters swimmers are good with the excuses!

That is because you are a great swimmer, don't you always swim faster every time you swim. I agree with Kurt (and Chowmi). I also think it is somewhat inaccurate to say people are at meets to "race." True, but many people are just swimming against themselves and trying to improve on their own times. Often, they don't care what other swimmers are doing, particularly if they're not in their age group. And, George, it is perfectly possible to swim fast with an NT. At my meet last weekend, the meet director lost my 50 fly entry (I was seeded at the exact time I did at the beginning of the season last year), and I had to swim in an NT heat. Not my choice, but it's not the end of the world.

Rich, you're still a fairly new competitor and you're going to improve at your taper meets. You can't always guess by how much. I though it was b/c of my sheer brilliance and hard work...jeez rain on my parade why doncha? :badday: :lmao:

I'm not sure how sandbagging is cheating unless you are using epo and pulling on the lane line at the same time. Masters is different than age-group swimming. You cannot expect to improve every time you drop in the water (in fact my improvement stopped 20 years ago). I put 1-2 seconds slower on a 200 because I feel I'm going to be a little slower every year. I guess I should just put my college times down each time and when I add 12-15 secs, I can make myself feel like a crappy, old swimmer --but at least I won't be accused of...oh the horror...sandbagger:drown:.

Honest mistakes are okey dokey. Also, if you haven't competed "in who knows how many years", your cool. It is the deliberate fabrication of a seed time for an advantage that gets my goat. Be that advantage still water for a good swim, or resting up because you're tired from your last event and you still blow away the heat, or it is the last event of a meet and you wanna go home. Swim close to your seed time. I don't have as big of a problem with the speedy chap who did a mid 40 for the first 100 of a 1650. I gather that he also hit his seed time. Part of me would have liked to have seen it from the water, but if I was going for a PR I would have been irked for about 18 minutes.

My views are rather well documented on this issue. :-) You should seed yourself with your best estimation of the time you will swim at the meet. In most cases, something along the lines of your best time over the past year or so is probably a good estimate. Sandbagging, IMHO, is bad sportsmanship. The point of having a meet is just that - to meet. The purpose of a meet is to swim against other people and race. You may be happy to swim in heat 1, and lap everyone in the 100 free. But if you belonged in the last heat, there are swimmers who are swimming in that heat who are counting on YOU to be in the last heat also, to race against them. They paid their entry fees on the expectation that they would get the opportunity to race against people of similar speed. If you take yourself out of the proper seeding, then you are hurting their swim. If you want to swim by yourself and sandbag and blow people out of the water... go find a lane in a pool somewhere and do it where you're only dealing with yourself. At a meet, other people expect to race against you. Otherwise, they'd all just keep swimming at practice. Also, those people in heat 1 that you're blowing away -- they don't like that. You're subjecting them to embarrassment for your own self interest. Not cool. At the Masters champs that I run, we explicitly reserve the right to adjust your seed time if it is obviously incorrect. Last year, we started a contest at our championship meet to see who could have the best seed times. Swimmers who matched their seed times exactly got a $10 Starbucks card on the spot. We had 8 winners. We posted lists on the web site about the seed time winners (exact match), honorable mentions (within 0.10 seconds), top 50 seeders, worst 50 seeders, and the full list of how every swimmer rated in their seeding ability. Our average "seed error" across almost 4500 swims was about 3.6 seconds per 100 yards, or about 4%. You can see our full analysis here (scroll down to the bottom): www.meetresults.com/.../results.shtml -Rick

When people put down obvious wrong times I consider it cheating. Why lie about your times?

Why let them know your real times at all? I always seed with times that are new event records! Or with times that are 200% slower than normal, to ensure swimming in the first heat.:thhbbb: