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.
Specifically: average times 6-10 in an age group, for the last 3 years. Then:
AAAA = 5% slower
AAA = 10% slower
AA = 15% slower
A = 20% slower
BB = 30% slower
B = 40% slower
There's nothing sacred in these details, of course. They were chosen to mirror the USAS time standards. You may want to change them.
Hi Steve,
I recently decided to undertake the development of a motivational times list too -- without knowing about your good work on it already. Since it's an awful lot of work, I'll stop my effort and use your charts instead.
I do have a few comments, if you're interested.
- Your percentages do correctly follow the USS calculations, but nut not your seeding methodology. USS uses the fastest ever 16th place annual ranking as their seed time.
www.usaswimming.org/.../ViewMiscArticle.aspx
This has the benefit of making the updating of your tables easy. When each year's top list comes out, compare your current seeds with the new 16th places, and keep the faster of the two. No averaging, no rolling windows.
- USS has a huge number of kids, so using the 16th fastest time as a seed is a reasonable way of excluding the freakishly fast, but still getting a very fast and relatively stable time base. Masters, however, is much smaller, so going as deep as 16 might not have the same result. I found that using the fastest sixth (or eighth) place in the USMS top ten database as my seed time would work pretty well.
- Non-textile technical suits screw everything up. They've been banned. They had a big effect on 2008 and (more so on) 2009, and will continue to do so in 2010 until their ban takes hold. For example, in my age group, 13 out of a possible 18 seed times would come from 2009 if I didn't exclude that year. It looks to me like these suits result in a 1-2% speed increase. I was going to ignore 2008-2010 lists.
Again, thanks for the charts. You've done a nice job.
-Ted
Specifically: average times 6-10 in an age group, for the last 3 years. Then:
AAAA = 5% slower
AAA = 10% slower
AA = 15% slower
A = 20% slower
BB = 30% slower
B = 40% slower
There's nothing sacred in these details, of course. They were chosen to mirror the USAS time standards. You may want to change them.
Hi Steve,
I recently decided to undertake the development of a motivational times list too -- without knowing about your good work on it already. Since it's an awful lot of work, I'll stop my effort and use your charts instead.
I do have a few comments, if you're interested.
- Your percentages do correctly follow the USS calculations, but nut not your seeding methodology. USS uses the fastest ever 16th place annual ranking as their seed time.
www.usaswimming.org/.../ViewMiscArticle.aspx
This has the benefit of making the updating of your tables easy. When each year's top list comes out, compare your current seeds with the new 16th places, and keep the faster of the two. No averaging, no rolling windows.
- USS has a huge number of kids, so using the 16th fastest time as a seed is a reasonable way of excluding the freakishly fast, but still getting a very fast and relatively stable time base. Masters, however, is much smaller, so going as deep as 16 might not have the same result. I found that using the fastest sixth (or eighth) place in the USMS top ten database as my seed time would work pretty well.
- Non-textile technical suits screw everything up. They've been banned. They had a big effect on 2008 and (more so on) 2009, and will continue to do so in 2010 until their ban takes hold. For example, in my age group, 13 out of a possible 18 seed times would come from 2009 if I didn't exclude that year. It looks to me like these suits result in a 1-2% speed increase. I was going to ignore 2008-2010 lists.
Again, thanks for the charts. You've done a nice job.
-Ted
