I know that I have seen others talk about "how good am I if I swim the 200 in this time", or "if my mile is 17min".
and then the responses are typically, look at results from previous meets, or last years top 10 time.
But does anyone try to take into account how many actually swim that event/distance? Is one a good swimmer merely because only 12 people swim the 400 IM.
I looked at the 2007 top 10 SCM for Men 30-34. for *** and IM I would have been top 10 in 3 of 6 events/distances.
50 br 33.37 outside of top 10
100br 1:14.08 (10)
200br 2:42.20 (7)
400 IM 5:19.71 (7)
but how many 30-34 competed in those events in 2007? I would guess that more people competed in 2006 at the World Championships in Cali.
In Sweden I have top 10 times in nearly everything but 50-100 free, but that is only because it's not too often that there are more than 10-12 swimmers in my age grupp. I know of 4-6 swimmers that will be 35-39 in 2010 and all of them are significanly faster than me, just not sure swimming at the Worlds is something they plan on doing.
I recently looked at a German time standard, since they had one for every year 11-18 and then an open I used the open table. The table was scaled to 1-20. 20 being the fastest. something simliar to the US AAAA standards but with more divisions. I was at best 6 of a possible 20 in Breaststroke. and not even 1 in Back and Fly. and between 1-2 for Free and IM. to me that seems more like a realistic measurement of my ability.
No doubt about it rankings have to be taken with a grain of salt, but they are still quite meaningful. Yes, if all the people who kicked my *** as a kid were still swimming, I might not even be in the top 100. But they aren't and I am. Of those still swimming, I feel justifiably proud of my rankings. I think this gets even more significant the older one gets.
One thing USMS swimmers can do if they want to increase the competition against whom they are ranked is to use "Event Rankings" feature under the "Competition" tab of usms.org and set a broad range of ages. For example, I'm 35 and if I select everyone aged 30-64 in the 100 *** LCM, my ranking goes down by 10 places (relative to my ranking within in my age group). Impressively, 5 of these additional 10 people not in my age group who swam faster than me are OLDER (40+). My goal is to break into the top 10 of the 30-64 "age group". While this is a goal that will only get harder as I age, there are plenty of examples of super-fast 40 and even 50 year olds out there--a trend I think will continue and expand.
No doubt about it rankings have to be taken with a grain of salt, but they are still quite meaningful. Yes, if all the people who kicked my *** as a kid were still swimming, I might not even be in the top 100. But they aren't and I am. Of those still swimming, I feel justifiably proud of my rankings. I think this gets even more significant the older one gets.
One thing USMS swimmers can do if they want to increase the competition against whom they are ranked is to use "Event Rankings" feature under the "Competition" tab of usms.org and set a broad range of ages. For example, I'm 35 and if I select everyone aged 30-64 in the 100 *** LCM, my ranking goes down by 10 places (relative to my ranking within in my age group). Impressively, 5 of these additional 10 people not in my age group who swam faster than me are OLDER (40+). My goal is to break into the top 10 of the 30-64 "age group". While this is a goal that will only get harder as I age, there are plenty of examples of super-fast 40 and even 50 year olds out there--a trend I think will continue and expand.
