1000/1650 seeding; slow to fast or fast to slow?

Important operative term here: single session. Last year the Illinois State Meet (which usually has 100+ distance free swimmers) used a three day format with the distance event run in three sessions, all slow to fast, starting Friday mid-day. This accomodates both those who want to get it over with early and those with family/work obligations who prefer to swim later. In other years event hosts have offered slow to fast seeding on both Thursday and Friday evenings; for those who live close enough the Thursday option is wildly popular with those wanting more recovery time, the Friday option being an excellent alternative for those coming in from out of town.

Later today I'm off to the Colorado State Masters Swim Championships and will be swimming the 1650. Positive check is at 12:30 pm, meets starts at 1 pm, the pool will be set up for 10 lanes of competition, however in the standard masters slow to fast seeding, I'll be lucky to be racing by 3:30 pm. Colorado doesn't allow No Time entries, although we have no rules for fibbing your seed time. Anyway the poll question is for championship format masters swim meets should seeding be slow to fast or fast to slow for 1000/1650 races? Damn! I thought it was fast to slow this year :(. I just re-checked the meet entry sheet and it is indeed slow->fast. So much for getting out of DU early this year. The seeding should be fast to slow... or, at least, they should alternate by year (which is what I'd assumed would happen).

It should be fast to slow but then again, I doubt that I will EVER swim either of these distances by choice so my opinion is pretty much worth what you paid for it.

I think in a championship format that is a single-session timed finals, it should swim slow-to-fast. It's frankly better for the competitive environment. If you go fast-to-slow, then by the end of the session, it's, bluntly, just the slow people left. Not terribly exciting. If the fast people swim last, then you've still got some excitement at the end of the session. -Rick

I think in a championship format that is a single-session timed finals, it should swim slow-to-fast. It's frankly better for the competitive environment. If you go fast-to-slow, then by the end of the session, it's, bluntly, just the slow people left. Not terribly exciting. If the fast people swim last, then you've still got some excitement at the end of the session. -Rick Generally the only spectators left at the last heat of the 1650 are the counters and timers, regardless of the speed of swimmers in that last heat.

I agree, slow to fast puts more of a thrill to the event. Those of us who are not in the fast look forward to see the really good swimmers!!:bow:

Why seed it differently than any other event? Since it is a "timed final" in most cases, wouldn't the fastest folks want to know if someone in the slower heats put a burner on?

Why seed it differently than any other event? Since it is a "timed final" in most cases, wouldn't the fastest folks want to know if someone in the slower heats put a burner on? Because the faster seeds would occasionally like to get home before 9pm and not suffer through 50 minute miles. I don't personally care what somebody swims before me. As far as leaving the excitement until the last heat, I'm not seeing it...I thought I could hear crickets chirping at the time of the first heat and the last heat when I shoved off a few weeks ago at the AZ state meet (nobody but a few swimmers were present). I wouldn't mind going slowest to fastest if you were allowed to check in by phone or online. You end up checking in before warm-up is done and sitting around for a few hours.

I wouldn't mind going slowest to fastest if you were allowed to check in by phone or online. You end up checking in before warm-up is done and sitting around for a few hours. I'm with you Kurt. "A few hours", if not many...

I think most swimmers of the 1650 want to get it over with as soon as possible and get back to the hotel to rest up for the next day's events. A really competitive 80 year old might take quite a long time to finish but still need the rest more than a really competitive 20 year old, assuming they are both racing similar events the next day. However, and perhaps this is unfair, I would suggest that MOST people who swim fairly slow in the 1650 do so because they are not expending as much effort as MOST people who swim fairly fast in the 1650. I could be wrong here, and I am more than open to being argued out of my position. However, if times are a rough proxy for effort, then I would say that the most fair thing for most swimmers would be to let the fast heats go first and get home to rest. This is especially true if, for instance, somebody really slow decides without even practicing that they want to swim the 1650 for time and ends up taking forever to finish just to prove to themselves they can. Again, I acknowledge the very real possibility I am being unfair here, but to complete my argument, I say let the faster people get it over with and hightail it home to rest. If the work of getting into good shape earns a swimmer nothing else, we should at least afford them this much. I mean even the top seeds in the NCAA Bball tournament earn the right by their year's performance to have easier seeds in the beginning. The desire to be totally egalitarian here ignores the fact that some people do work harder than others to get in optimum shape, and they deserve some kind of reward for this. All this said, masters is different than the NCAAs. I guess if I had to pick a one size fits all solution, it would be what McTrusty in his Solomonic Wisdom suggested: alternate year to year. Alas, this was not a poll option, though I suspect it may have been the favorite one were it offered.