This is going to sound stupid, but I've been looking up the answer and that should settle it, but it goes against everything I've ever known about this sport. I grew up thinking that yards were shorter than meters. One day recently I looked it up so I could convert my meters into yards and I did more yards than actual meters. Looking at a conversion chart right now says a yard is .9144 meters. Yet I foud a time converter online and all yards times are faster. Uhhhh, what am I missing here?
You just said yards are shorter than meters, yet, again 1 yard equals 0.9144 meters. Shouldn't that number be over 1.0 for meters to be more? Am I looking at it backwards?
Yes, you're looking at it backwards. Think of it as a yard only comes to the 0.9144 meter mark on a meter stick (91.44 cm).
Same idea with a kilometer compared to a mile. You know a km is shorter than a mile. One km equals about 0.62 miles. If you're driving and you go 0.62 miles you've already gone one kilometer.
Yet I foud a time converter online and all yards times are faster. Uhhhh, what am I missing here?
Yes, yards are shorter than meters, hence the time to swim the distance is also shorter. I'm not seeing what you're missing here?
Thinking about it another way if you wanted to convert a short course meters time to short course yards you could multiply by 0.9144. This won't be exactly correct because it's only accounting for the distance difference (and not things like fatigue due to the longer distance), but it will be close.
I think you're looking at it backwards. If you took a yard stick and a meter stick and laid them side by side, the meter stick would be longer than the yard stick. In order to to make the meter stick the same length as the yard stick, you would have to cut off 0.0856 meters. I think you're just making it hard on yourself by trying to overthink it. Visualize the yard stick and the meter stick. That should help you. If you think about that, you will realize that since a yard is shorter than a meter, it should take you less time to travel a yard than a meter if you're going the same speed.
I'm a first grade teacher, so I happen to own both a yard stick and a meter stick (each made out of very low-grade pine).
The yard stick is obviously shorter. Visualize each stick side by side. Now visualize an ant crawling the distance of each stick. If both ants are going the same speed, the ant on the yard stick will reach the end of her stick before the ant on the meter stick reaches the end of hers.
USMS swimmers in a pool are just like the ants on the stick.
Thanks for the explanations. It was a serious question. I was just looking at it backwards. I was thinking that the meter would had to have been over 1 for it to be longer. Now I understand. Thanks.
You mail in your results; it's the honor system. Usually they involve a counter who records your splits and signs for honesty (one-hour swim, 3000, 10K, 5000 (?), a few others I'm not thinking of).
e- or snail ?????
