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.
Yes - absolutely - use any point measurement system, FINA or I think US swimming has one as well and compare times.
This is probably an ideological impasse since ultimately it is about a choice of what is the appropriate yardstick to evaluate masters times. (I prefer to use masters records, you prefer elite records or presumably other elite standards like US OT qualifying times.)
But it occurs to me that possibly one way to check your assertion that the VA rating system undervalues freestyle times would be to rate all the TT times in freestyle -- or maybe just the top times -- and compare them to the other strokes. If the freestyle times are systematically lower then that would lend credence to your argument. I will do this over the weekend (it wouldn't take long but I can't do it now) and report back.
Yes - absolutely - use any point measurement system, FINA or I think US swimming has one as well and compare times.
This is probably an ideological impasse since ultimately it is about a choice of what is the appropriate yardstick to evaluate masters times. (I prefer to use masters records, you prefer elite records or presumably other elite standards like US OT qualifying times.)
But it occurs to me that possibly one way to check your assertion that the VA rating system undervalues freestyle times would be to rate all the TT times in freestyle -- or maybe just the top times -- and compare them to the other strokes. If the freestyle times are systematically lower then that would lend credence to your argument. I will do this over the weekend (it wouldn't take long but I can't do it now) and report back.
