When I started swimming masters a few years ago, I soon found myself wanting some time standards to compare myself against. Sure, tracking my own PRs is motivating, but I also wanted some sort of objective mark to measure myself against.
There is the Top 10 list, of course, but I'm not close enough to those times for them to serve as realistic motivation. Nationals qualifying times provide a slightly lower bar, but these are still out of many masters' reach. It seems like there should be some sort of time standards that are more widely applicable -- like the A, AA, ... motivational times in kids' age group swimming.
I did use those USA Swimming motivational times for a while, but I got tired of comparing myself to 12-year-olds. Eventually I decided to create my own masters' motivational time standards, using the same method that is used for the kids.
I have really enjoyed using these motivational times over the past couple of years, and I'm guessing they might be useful to others as well. Especially for those, like me, who are competitive enough to be motivated by a quantitative benchmark, but not fast enough to aspire to the Top 10 list.
I have just updated the SCY list, and figured I would post it here for others to use.
Please enjoy. I'd also love to hear any feedback.
Kind of motivates me to take up another sport. I hate to be negative, but my personal lifetime goal would only make your table if you ran it out through about the letter 'G'.
Please don't take it personally, as it is not anything you have done, it is just my frustration. I find a lot of advice on this forum for people a whole lot faster than me and a whole lot of people at my pool who are slower than me. I had hoped your very meticulously constructed table would address that gap. Maybe next time.
I certainly don't take it personally, and am happy for the feedback. But it makes me feel awful if the chart had the opposite of its intended motivational effect.
I just used the same formula as is used for the USA Swimming times. It may be that the spread of times for meet-going masters swimmers is bigger than it is for kids. Maybe the formulas would have to be adjusted to do a better job of covering the gap.
Kind of motivates me to take up another sport. I hate to be negative, but my personal lifetime goal would only make your table if you ran it out through about the letter 'G'.
Please don't take it personally, as it is not anything you have done, it is just my frustration. I find a lot of advice on this forum for people a whole lot faster than me and a whole lot of people at my pool who are slower than me. I had hoped your very meticulously constructed table would address that gap. Maybe next time.
I certainly don't take it personally, and am happy for the feedback. But it makes me feel awful if the chart had the opposite of its intended motivational effect.
I just used the same formula as is used for the USA Swimming times. It may be that the spread of times for meet-going masters swimmers is bigger than it is for kids. Maybe the formulas would have to be adjusted to do a better job of covering the gap.
