Ban the tech suits?

Confession: I have been a bit cranky of late. ... Against this backdrop, I see a suit that allows Karen to drop 11 seconds in the 200 ***, despite being sick (I know, there are all other kinds of fudge factors that could partially explain this drop, too, but the suit absolutely counted for a significant portion), and I know I would love to be able to enjoy similar drops myself, but the question of affordability and fairness both do seem to enter the picture against the dispiriting backdrop of my other sources of whining lately. For all this, I apologize to one and all! Really sorry about your troubles, Jim! Good luck dealing with them. But I have to say...no way in the world does the B70 allow someone to drop 11 seconds (or even a significant portion thereof) in the 200. If so, please point me to the 200 world record that was broken by close to this amount in the summer games, or any other time post-LZR/B70. Today at the end of a 2800-yard set, I pushed a 200 free in 1:54. I was pretty tired before this swim, and wearing Speedo Endurance briefs -- yet it was only 10 seconds slower than I did the 200 free in a meet one week ago while wearing a B70. I rested/tapered for the meet, too, and it was my first event so I was fresh. My experience doesn't come close to matching Karen's. I looked at the analysis of the predicted vs actual times for the 8th place time at the 2008 US Trials, and the difference was about 1.0-1.5% (on the lower end of the scale for women, on the upper scale for men). For a 60-second 100, that comes out to somewhere on the order of 0.5-1.0 sec per hundred. Now, that is for elite swimmers in LCM (and mostly for the LZR), so it might be different for masters swimmers swimming short course...but still. It also jibes pretty well with my own experience, pre/post-B70 racing and expectations based on improving times in practice. 0.5-1.0 sec/100 is pretty darn significant at the top level, and can certainly account for the pace of WRs being broken. But I also haven't really seen Beamon-esque performances being commonplace -- most WRs are being broken by incremental amounts, not astonishing chunks. So maybe, in an odd way, it can make you feel better that you haven't been paying several hundred dollars for what is, at the masters level, really a relatively small improvement. I was intrigued by your musings on the potential psychological effects of a B70 ban, the fact that this might burst a bubble that would lead to post-B70 blues. The plain fact is that, as masters swimmers, in many ways we are pretty much fighting a losing battle against time. Though I'll struggle mightily against it, I have little doubt that in 10 years I'll be swimming more slowly than now. The B70 does little to change this fact...except possibly momentarily delude us users into thinking that we are swimming younger than we actually are. B70 or no, I think part of (competitive) masters swimming is setting year-to-year goals that are challenging but realistic/reasonable. If the goal is to get faster in every event, year after year, that's fine...but you need to be prepared psychologically to live with the inevitable disappointment. But as they say, getting older sure beats the alternative. :) Good luck with your trials & tribulations.

Confession: I have been a bit cranky of late. ... Against this backdrop, I see a suit that allows Karen to drop 11 seconds in the 200 ***, despite being sick (I know, there are all other kinds of fudge factors that could partially explain this drop, too, but the suit absolutely counted for a significant portion), and I know I would love to be able to enjoy similar drops myself, but the question of affordability and fairness both do seem to enter the picture against the dispiriting backdrop of my other sources of whining lately. For all this, I apologize to one and all! Really sorry about your troubles, Jim! Good luck dealing with them. But I have to say...no way in the world does the B70 allow someone to drop 11 seconds (or even a significant portion thereof) in the 200. If so, please point me to the 200 world record that was broken by close to this amount in the summer games, or any other time post-LZR/B70. Today at the end of a 2800-yard set, I pushed a 200 free in 1:54. I was pretty tired before this swim, and wearing Speedo Endurance briefs -- yet it was only 10 seconds slower than I did the 200 free in a meet one week ago while wearing a B70. I rested/tapered for the meet, too, and it was my first event so I was fresh. My experience doesn't come close to matching Karen's. I looked at the analysis of the predicted vs actual times for the 8th place time at the 2008 US Trials, and the difference was about 1.0-1.5% (on the lower end of the scale for women, on the upper scale for men). For a 60-second 100, that comes out to somewhere on the order of 0.5-1.0 sec per hundred. Now, that is for elite swimmers in LCM (and mostly for the LZR), so it might be different for masters swimmers swimming short course...but still. It also jibes pretty well with my own experience, pre/post-B70 racing and expectations based on improving times in practice. 0.5-1.0 sec/100 is pretty darn significant at the top level, and can certainly account for the pace of WRs being broken. But I also haven't really seen Beamon-esque performances being commonplace -- most WRs are being broken by incremental amounts, not astonishing chunks. So maybe, in an odd way, it can make you feel better that you haven't been paying several hundred dollars for what is, at the masters level, really a relatively small improvement. I was intrigued by your musings on the potential psychological effects of a B70 ban, the fact that this might burst a bubble that would lead to post-B70 blues. The plain fact is that, as masters swimmers, in many ways we are pretty much fighting a losing battle against time. Though I'll struggle mightily against it, I have little doubt that in 10 years I'll be swimming more slowly than now. The B70 does little to change this fact...except possibly momentarily delude us users into thinking that we are swimming younger than we actually are. B70 or no, I think part of (competitive) masters swimming is setting year-to-year goals that are challenging but realistic/reasonable. If the goal is to get faster in every event, year after year, that's fine...but you need to be prepared psychologically to live with the inevitable disappointment. But as they say, getting older sure beats the alternative. :) Good luck with your trials & tribulations.