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.
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Former Member
I agree with the OP's sentiment that the top 10 times are not a good guide to how you compare against other swimmers due to low levels of participation. There are definitely significant numbers of people swimming to keep fit who would be very fast indeed if they chose to compete. Breaking national records in practice is at the extreme end of the spectrum, but I certainly know one person who swam at my health club who has never competed in a masters meet in his entire life, and he would have been there or thereabouts for the number 1 ranking in GB in his age group if he had competed. I know this for a fact because he swam the time in a meet, just not a masters meet, so the time didn't go into the masters rankings. He had no interest in competing, he only did the non-masters meet to help out the club in an inter-club competition.
Another guy who I train with every week had only done one masters meet in the last decade or two when I joined the club. With my encouragement, he now holds 3 GB Masters Records.
I would guess that Mark Foster, for example, was able to swim at approx Masters WR pace in practice prior to actually breaking it in a meet. Or if Nick Gillingham decided to have a crack at the 40-44 200 *** WR, I would guess he could probably break the existing WR in practice.
I like our GB age-corrected rankings a lot as a reality check. In my age group, I am ranked 8th in GB for SCM 100 fly. In the age-corrected rankings I am ranked 80th, which I feel is a much more realistic assessment of how good a swimmer I am. The points basically give you a measure of how good a time is for any event at any age, though it breaks down a bit at really old ages.
If anyone wants to work out their age-corrected time in this way, just stick the following formula into cell A2 in an excel spreadsheet and put your age in A1:
=SQRT((98-A1)*(98+A1))/94.757585
Then you multiply your race time by the resulting adjustment factor to get the time the system thinks you would have done at your peak.
I agree with the OP's sentiment that the top 10 times are not a good guide to how you compare against other swimmers due to low levels of participation. There are definitely significant numbers of people swimming to keep fit who would be very fast indeed if they chose to compete. Breaking national records in practice is at the extreme end of the spectrum, but I certainly know one person who swam at my health club who has never competed in a masters meet in his entire life, and he would have been there or thereabouts for the number 1 ranking in GB in his age group if he had competed. I know this for a fact because he swam the time in a meet, just not a masters meet, so the time didn't go into the masters rankings. He had no interest in competing, he only did the non-masters meet to help out the club in an inter-club competition.
Another guy who I train with every week had only done one masters meet in the last decade or two when I joined the club. With my encouragement, he now holds 3 GB Masters Records.
I would guess that Mark Foster, for example, was able to swim at approx Masters WR pace in practice prior to actually breaking it in a meet. Or if Nick Gillingham decided to have a crack at the 40-44 200 *** WR, I would guess he could probably break the existing WR in practice.
I like our GB age-corrected rankings a lot as a reality check. In my age group, I am ranked 8th in GB for SCM 100 fly. In the age-corrected rankings I am ranked 80th, which I feel is a much more realistic assessment of how good a swimmer I am. The points basically give you a measure of how good a time is for any event at any age, though it breaks down a bit at really old ages.
If anyone wants to work out their age-corrected time in this way, just stick the following formula into cell A2 in an excel spreadsheet and put your age in A1:
=SQRT((98-A1)*(98+A1))/94.757585
Then you multiply your race time by the resulting adjustment factor to get the time the system thinks you would have done at your peak.
