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.
Bob Strand was noting that after 55 people don't seem to come out of the woodwork and swim fast at a big meet.Folks who come back after 40 usually need at least a year to get up to speed.Given a fair start for me I'd be lucky to get within 5 sec of my meet time for the 100 BR in practice.Some good workout swimmers could be closer,especially at longer distances,but given a fair start you still must be much faster to beat the record in practice.All this is moot anyway,as they say about medical records"if it isn't written down it didn't happen":if you don't do it in a meet it's like the proverbial tree falling in the forest(how is that for most metaphors in one sentence.)
Bob Strand was noting that after 55 people don't seem to come out of the woodwork and swim fast at a big meet.Folks who come back after 40 usually need at least a year to get up to speed.Given a fair start for me I'd be lucky to get within 5 sec of my meet time for the 100 BR in practice.Some good workout swimmers could be closer,especially at longer distances,but given a fair start you still must be much faster to beat the record in practice.All this is moot anyway,as they say about medical records"if it isn't written down it didn't happen":if you don't do it in a meet it's like the proverbial tree falling in the forest(how is that for most metaphors in one sentence.)
