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.
That should be true for most people. SCY is a lot more popular than SCM. If some of the fast people don't race SCM, that slows down the Top 10 times, and your swims look better in comparison.
I was looking at the state records here in Michigan the other day and noticed that we have some comparatively weak SCM records for this very reason. There were only 2 SCM meets in 2009 compared to 9 SCY meets.
That should be true for most people. SCY is a lot more popular than SCM. If some of the fast people don't race SCM, that slows down the Top 10 times, and your swims look better in comparison.
I was looking at the state records here in Michigan the other day and noticed that we have some comparatively weak SCM records for this very reason. There were only 2 SCM meets in 2009 compared to 9 SCY meets.
