Sandbag or go for it?

Sandbag is what wookie does when the outhouse floods cause he built it uphill from his single-wide. Taper is what he does when his coveralls get a rip - as in "I gotta tape 'er up, my *** is showing." @geek...hahahahahahahaha...stop...you are making me laugh so hard my stitches are coming out. that's what i get for tellin ya your sister she looks like you, only with more facial hair.

Fudge a little. I's what I did at Sr. State back in December. These kids put in their personal best times. But they are still improving at a tremendous rate year-over-year. I put in my best "in-season" time as I usually do in masters meets, about one to two seconds per 100 slower than my best. At the end of the day, the kids were improving their best times a ton year-over-year while I was improving a little. But since I used my best in-season time for seeding and they used their PBs, we improved our seed times at a similar rate. This made for great racing in my heats, which was what I was after.

What are you scared of? Looking bad?:afraid: Enter your best time and let the chips fall. Personally I'd want to be in a heat that is AT LEAST my best time (Masters time that is). I'd prefer to be in a fast heat to push me. 100 Fly doesn't exactly call for a strategy...sprint down, sprint back. If you are entering a USS meet with age groupers I should think you already made the decision to "go for it". Don't wuss out now.

Jim! My husband is on to our online relationship. In reading your latest post below, he asked me what I was giggling at this AM. I let him know that, "It's that Jim Thornton guy again." :rofl: But don't you worry, hubby is an artist/ crazy diretor and not a body builder. I will not hiddlebiddle. What a term. Today's he$$ fly practice almost made me cry. Not very terminator-like. This new term caused me to do some research in the results database. There is some pretty funny stuff in there.

Hiddlebiddle is the possibly misspelled last name of a Zonesman whose sandbagging ways were so unbelievably egregious that the term has come, in its own way, to be as emblematic of the sandbagging phenomenon as the Earl of Sandwich's favorite lunchtime snack has become for bread-enveloped foodstuffs. I signed up for the 100 freestyle at CZ SCY championships last spring with my fastest time to date of the year: a 53.35. I noted that I was seeded first in my heat, next to a Mr. Hiddlebiddle, who had signed up with a 53.8 or possibly even a low 54. Curious about the speed of Mr. Hiddlebiddle, I looked up his other entries and saw that he had entered a 23.05 in the 50 fly, and a 1:30 in the 100 I.M. It occurred to me that the poor man must have a seizure disorder, perhaps some odd variant on Sydenham's Chorea, AKA, St. Vitus's Dance, an offshoot of the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome, one that caused him to alternate incredibly fast swims with incredibly slow swims. But as I was to learn in that meet, as he kicked pints of water down my gullet within the first 12 yards of the race, as he was swimming en route to his 47 or 48 finish, he was not neurologically impaired, at least not in the sense I had imagined (palsies, narcolepsies, and whatnot.) Rather, he was merely Hiddlebiddling. The phenomenon is hardly new, but a new and memorable term for it was born right then and there, in the midst of my own choking, sputtering, humiliating, misery. Note: the lapped septuagenarians in the 100 IM were even more surprised than I was. Kristina, your husband is, in a way, correct: the verb "to Hiddlebiddle" is one that I am associated with. But I did not coin the term per se, only identified and extended its usage from noun to verb, much as William Shakespeare is credited with taking the noun "ruin" (which in his day only meant crumbling pillars and other such architectural relics) and used it metaphorically, and for the first time, as a way to describe what happens when a person is subjected to horrible misadventures and reversals of fortune, i.e., "ruined." If you have ever been gagged by water kicked down your gullet in the course of being Hiddlebiddled, you will, of course, recognize both these terms, the Thorntonic and the Shakespearic. I am considering adding yet another such extended use noun-to-verb term to the swimmer's lexicon: i.e., to Ulveling someone. For those of you who may have missed my recent vlog, "Is CreamPuff Using Me?", you can watch a very speedy woman swimmer named Eva Braun getting severely Ulvelinged by clicking here: forums.usms.org/blog.php It's enough to make poor Eva consider Hiddlebiddling at her next meet. Note: thanks to Mermaid for mentioning the term "hiddlebiddling" earlier in the thread and, like a medieval monk salvaging knowledge in his palimpsest for posterity, keeping the word from slipping away entirely from the human knowledge base. I am sure that Mr. Hiddlebiddle is delighted you were able to keep this from happening!

Enter a time that you will come close to swimming. If you don't disrupt other swimmers in your heat no one should have a beef. The problems are those scallaywags that enter a much slower time to gain an advantage. As said in court, "Swim your time, and you'll be fine." Or something like that.

So my husband just said, "Hiddlebiddle? Sounds like something Jim Thornton made up." Along with, "You don't sandbag your times ever. You enter your best and then go them or beat them." Problem solved!

It is too bad that Jimmy Stewart has passed away, because I think he would have been a fantastic choice for the role of CreamPuff in the Frank Capra movie, "From the Soggy Ashes: The Kristina Ulveling Story." As a long time Ulvelingologist, I must say that this thread is a treasure trove of psychiatric insight into the underpinnings of what some in the K.U. literature have termed "drive" while others prefer to call traditional "obsessionality." Regardless of terminology, we all wish you luck in your attempts to redo the past, with a more emotionally emancipating conclusion. As far as sandbagging goes, as long as you don't Hiddlebiddle your times, I think you will be safe from reproach. However, as your recent race against Eva Braun showed, perhaps your greatest strength as a swimmer is your indominability. I would recommend the first option in your poll, then let your inner Terminator do what it does best: crush your enemies, see them lying before you, and hearing der lamentations of dere vomen.

"I always tell the truth. That way I can never be blackmailed, either physically or emotionally." - Harlan Ellison Enter the time you think you will do. That way, you can only be accused of bad, but honest, judgement. - LBJ

I think there are 2 levels of sandbagging: the first is as Wolfie suggested the second was what Jimby was calling "Hiddlebitteling" (sp?) = a more severe case of sandbagging