Not a Fan of Short Course Meters Season

How exactly would I be ruining it for the rest of you? I am only soliciting opinions for discussion purposes and to get an idea of what the Masters community feels about the SCM Season. It has nothing to do with actually swimming the distance. It's the lack of meets and general apathy in the US towards the standard that turns me off about the season. HAHAHA!!! SCM is the adjective and SEASON is the noun! Reminds me of hot buttered flavored topping on my popcorn. Topping is the noun, and butter is an adjective. YUCK! Or rather, YUM! I train year round SCM so horray for me, but really, who cares about you chowmi, which is what everyone is thinking whilst reading this post. I am not so concerned about any SEASON, but rather if I am free that weekend, the order of events, and ample free and up close parking. Hopefully i'm not bloating which seems to be a nearly constant steady-state, but as meatloaf says, 2 out of 3 ain't bad! I like SCM SEASON because there will be some opportunity to swim in the "1st half" of the long stretch during traditional SCY season, with an extra opportunity for top tens given it's another course. Plus if you plan to swim some meets, it keeps you from going to the dark side of getting completely out of shape or not squelching into your fast suit over the Halloween/Thanksgiving/Winter Holiday continuous 3 month feeding frenzy.

we don't have SCY over here, so getting rid of SCM would mean only LCM.....no thanks ;) :applaud:

We've had a SCM meet in our LMSC for three years in a row now. It's a walled pool, so they wouldn't be able to host the meet otherwise (or well, it wouldn't really count for anything). Added competitive opportunities are always a good thing. We've had our difficulties getting people to show up though; I don't know if that's because it's SCM or due to being "early" in the season (October) and the fact that it's an older 6 lane pool.

In case you are interested, there is a SCM meet in Georgia called the St. Nick's meet on December 14th this year at GA Tech.

I like swimming SCM meets, but have a slightly different observation than some. When USMS added the SCM season in the late 1980s, there was a significant downtime in training after LCM nationals (usually early Aug) and SCY Nationals (historically around Memorial day, but much earlier lately). People had some time off and made use of their lives outside of swimming. The trend now is a 24 hour news cycle, so why not have a constant swimming cycle? I am not sure getting rid of the SCM season is at any level possible or even reasonable to imagine. Doesn't matter much anyway, since no one knows who is standing next to them. Everyone has their faces buried in smart phones. Training in SCM has little to do with performance in meets. I train LCM extensively (80+%) and have found that it does not harm my SCY meet times. I miss practicing turns, so I make the most of the LC turns. Many new pools are made oversquare, 25Mx25yds, unless they are waterparks. Then it is usually 50Mx25Y.

Maybe 30 years ago, when the USA was "trying" to enter in metrics ,pools would have been built, but now that we have said "kiss off" to the rest of the world, pools will remain without change in the USA!

This thread is a blast from the past! I may have weighed in back in the day but I'll weigh in again as my views have probably changed over the years. As an age grouper, most of my High School meets were in SCM and I was indifferent as between SCY and SCM. As an adult, I definitely prefer SCY and perform better in SCY on a relative basis (relative to how I performed as an age grouper, which is still what I primarily compare my current times to). I think this is because I'm not nearly in the shape I was as a kid. So the extra distance in those 200's (and sadly even 100's) is not welcome (especially if I still have to make the same amount of turns (which I'm not great at)). On the other hand, I like LCM because you cut down on the turns. But SCM seems like the worst of both worlds. Also, I'm not an elite swimmer and have no business comparing myself against the rest of the world. I'm happy to compare myself against just other Americans and there's no better course to do that than SCY since that's the most prevalent. Of course, I voted (way back in 2008) to keep the SCM season and I stick by that for all the reasons people are articulating. No reason to jettison the season. I think the more interesting poll question would have been: If there were 2 meets on a given weekend, equally distant from where you live, and one was SCY and the other SCM, all other factors being equal which would you choose? I have to think most competitive masters swimmers in the US would pick SCY, even if some of our more outspoken elite swimmers on this board might choose otherwise. All things being equal,I'd rather go to the SCM meet.Selfishly,that's because I'm better comparatively at SCM.

This thread is a blast from the past! I may have weighed in back in the day but I'll weigh in again as my views have probably changed over the years. As an age grouper, most of my High School meets were in SCM and I was indifferent as between SCY and SCM. As an adult, I definitely prefer SCY and perform better in SCY on a relative basis (relative to how I performed as an age grouper, which is still what I primarily compare my current times to). I think this is because I'm not nearly in the shape I was as a kid. So the extra distance in those 200's (and sadly even 100's) is not welcome (especially if I still have to make the same amount of turns (which I'm not great at)). On the other hand, I like LCM because you cut down on the turns. But SCM seems like the worst of both worlds. Also, I'm not an elite swimmer and have no business comparing myself against the rest of the world. I'm happy to compare myself against just other Americans and there's no better course to do that than SCY since that's the most prevalent. Of course, I voted (way back in 2008) to keep the SCM season and I stick by that for all the reasons people are articulating. No reason to jettison the season. I think the more interesting poll question would have been: If there were 2 meets on a given weekend, equally distant from where you live, and one was SCY and the other SCM, all other factors being equal which would you choose? I have to think most competitive masters swimmers in the US would pick SCY, even if some of our more outspoken elite swimmers on this board might choose otherwise.

I would pick the meet with the distance event. And if they both had distance events, then I'd pick the one with the longer distance. I just like to swim and I like to compete. I don't care whether the pool is SCY, SCM, LCM or a lake - I just want to swim and I want to win!

If there were 2 meets on a given weekend, equally distant from where you live, and one was SCY and the other SCM, all other factors being equal which would you choose?If all other factors truly were equal (e.g., pool quality, depth of competition, order of events, etc.), I'd choose SCM because even though I mostly train SCM, it's still a bit of a novelty to me after all those years of SCY and still has that 'new car' smell vs. the musty, old odor of SCY.