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.
It's just my opinion - and I understand the math, but for the Men - all the strokes are valued way way too high compared to Freestyle. Have not looked at the women's records.
What you are basically saying is that the masters freestyle records are harder than the others.
I think you may be underestimating Mike's 100 SCY backstroke swim a little. At age 41 he swam the fastest masters 100 backstroke ever -- at any age -- by over half a second (0.63 sec to be exact). In 100 freestyle, on the other hand, the fastest record is 42.91; 0.63 sec faster than that is 42.28.
It may well be that the sprint records are generally pretty hard: a lot of people train for them and swim them in meets.
There may be another factor too: in her book, Dara Torres also comments on the fact -- and cites research to support her statement -- that aging affects sprinting the least. Certainly her own achievements seem to support that (and I keep meaning to chase down her references).
So I don't know that it is a good idea to compare masters times to (say) college times. Aging -- and training volumes for typical masters swimmers -- will affect events differently.
In the freestyle events I swim (mid-D and occasionally distance), I don't find the ratings to be downgraded; perhaps the opposite. My freestyle times are often rated pretty comparably to my butterfly times, but at USA-S meets I almost always do significantly better in the fly events. I don't believe the records for the free events at distances of 200 on up are any tougher than in the non-free events.
Maybe the take-home message is pretty simple: take the road less traveled. Or, equivalently: it sucks to be a sprinter. But I didn't need any fancy statistics to tell me that. :)
It's just my opinion - and I understand the math, but for the Men - all the strokes are valued way way too high compared to Freestyle. Have not looked at the women's records.
What you are basically saying is that the masters freestyle records are harder than the others.
I think you may be underestimating Mike's 100 SCY backstroke swim a little. At age 41 he swam the fastest masters 100 backstroke ever -- at any age -- by over half a second (0.63 sec to be exact). In 100 freestyle, on the other hand, the fastest record is 42.91; 0.63 sec faster than that is 42.28.
It may well be that the sprint records are generally pretty hard: a lot of people train for them and swim them in meets.
There may be another factor too: in her book, Dara Torres also comments on the fact -- and cites research to support her statement -- that aging affects sprinting the least. Certainly her own achievements seem to support that (and I keep meaning to chase down her references).
So I don't know that it is a good idea to compare masters times to (say) college times. Aging -- and training volumes for typical masters swimmers -- will affect events differently.
In the freestyle events I swim (mid-D and occasionally distance), I don't find the ratings to be downgraded; perhaps the opposite. My freestyle times are often rated pretty comparably to my butterfly times, but at USA-S meets I almost always do significantly better in the fly events. I don't believe the records for the free events at distances of 200 on up are any tougher than in the non-free events.
Maybe the take-home message is pretty simple: take the road less traveled. Or, equivalently: it sucks to be a sprinter. But I didn't need any fancy statistics to tell me that. :)
