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.
Looks like the AA times are basically the national qualifying times.
One thing worth mentioning is that the national qualifying times have been steadily getting faster the past four years. For me it's been kinda like chasing the dangling bananna.
Track has All American Standards, so it would be cool to have the same for swimming. Here's the track standards. They are fairly tough.
www.nationalmastersnews.com/.../aa_tf_m.htm
good job. looks like the 65-69 AG fall off the cliff compared to the 60-64 AG, which are only a little slower than 55-59. must be medicare and SS
Sixty five laps around the sun takes a toll.
The good side is you get in the movies cheaper.
Yeah, there definitely seems to be a mistake somewhere. For example, the 55-59 men 500 free BB time is 7:07.09 while the corresponding 60-64 time is 5:18.79. I doubt I'll be swimming that fast in four years unless I stumble upon the forgotten set of Cocoon in some abandoned condo complex in Florida.
I think it's great, especially since it makes me feel a lot faster than I really am in some of my events. It's already motivated me to get some faster times. Thanks for putting this together!
gigi said it all for me. All of my times proved to be a little better than I thought they would be. I love things like this!! Thanks for posting this. Looks like I have got some work to do.
I've wondered about this as well -- thanks so much for putting this together! Like others, I was surprised to see that I fared much better than I thought. Nice to see that (age-adjusted) I AM faster than my 16 year old (at least in freestyle)! :)
