Masters Motivational Times

Thanks for the chart (forgot to include that in my first reply). I wonder if this could form the basis for more-or-less objective handicaps for gridges? S

I agree, these are great to have! Helps to see sets of times that are relevant to a broad range of swimmers. National qualifying times are out of reach for now, but these tables provide a graduated set of goals. Between this and the masters rating calculator (mentioned on a recent thread, developed by Chris Stevenson) I feel like I've been handed some pretty useful tools for self-assessment. Thanks so much for your effort, Steve.

Wow, this was quite encouraging to see where i fall in on the list. It seems everyone is in agreement on how accurate this is. Thank you for making these .pdf's.

This is fantastic. I'm getting back in the pool after 15 yrs and the 35-39 yr old times are exactly what I was looking for. There are some FAST people in this age group out there! I'm surprised the times don't come down more from 18-24. Guess thats a testament to a heck of a lot of hard work and dedication. I'll see where I am 6 months from now.

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.

To Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Stuart, What do you think the odds are that the two best and most active, mathematically proficient, swim-data curve fitters would both be from the south and have surnames beginning with St? Let me quickly reference yet another swim-math motivator I have personally found useful, especially before discovering St. Chris's formula. St. Chris, for his part, knows of this other formula, but it is possible that St. Steve does not. It's an age regression swimming time calculator that Phil Arcuni posted a number of years back on this forum, that is, in the pre-speed suit era. Phil included the ability to also check the "Finnish formula" option, which is basically the same thing as the American version, but invented by a race of people who live on reindeer milk and cell phone dividends much of the year, and thus arguably more accurate. http://n3times.com/swimtimes/ One thing the Phil Arcuni and Chris Stevenson approaches have in common is that they are adjustable by each year of a swimmer's age, not just the 5 year age group. Hence, a fellow such as myself, in the dotage of his 57th year, can still "improve" over his 55 year old performances despite the absolute times getting worse. I do think that the next major need for motivation, at least for me, will be coming to grips with what I suspect will be a relatively huge uptick in times in the coming post-speed-suit era. Would either of your fellows care to turn your keen mathematical minds to the job of predicting "equivalent times" with and without such suits--and do so before we need to wait several years for new data to filter in upon which your new curves can be fitted and hung? Or, barring that, what do you predict, generally speaking, will be an average time change before and after B70s go to jammers? Obviously, for St. Chris and his hairless ilk, the differences have not been too great. But for us lumpkin types, what seems reasonable? Would 2 seconds per 100 be too much of an expected increase in times--or too little? At last year's Colony Zones championships, for instance, I swam a B70 aided 52.86 in the 100 free. At this year's meet, all other things being equal, should I be delighted if I can break 55--or should I lapse into catatonia?

I found both the motivational times chart and Chris's calculator to be interesting and helpful. In both I end up strongest in fly, *** and IM's, 100 to 200 best distance. I don't train the mega yardage I did in college (thank goodness!) and I am weaker now in the long free stuff compared to some of the women I swim against. And I'm not a drop dead sprinter - just not quite enough speed. It's all food for thought and I appreciate the work that went into creating the charts and the calculator. --mj

Would either of your fellows care to turn your keen mathematical minds to the job of predicting "equivalent times" with and without such suits--and do so before we need to wait several years for new data to filter in upon which your new curves can be fitted and hung? Or, barring that, what do you predict, generally speaking, will be an average time change before and after B70s go to jammers? Obviously, for St. Chris and his hairless ilk, the differences have not been too great. But for us lumpkin types, what seems reasonable? Would 2 seconds per 100 be too much of an expected increase in times--or too little? At last year's Colony Zones championships, for instance, I swam a B70 aided 52.86 in the 100 free. At this year's meet, all other things being equal, should I be delighted if I can break 55--or should I lapse into catatonia? If you haven't already seen it, I recommend going here to get an idea of the suits effects on elite athletes: www.floswimming.org/.../6033-part-iii-predictive-modeling-of-swim-performances-at-the-us-olympic-trials For the men's 100 free, for example, the actual time was 0.7 sec faster (with the suit) than predicted; for men's 100 fly it was 1.0 sec. But keep in mind that this analysis lumps the effects of all the suits of that time (B70s, LZRs, etc). Also this is for elite athletes who, um, have a different body profile and stroke efficiency than the typical masters swimmer. It is also for LCM and the effects might be different on the shorter courses. Any predictions that I or someone else can come up with will, at best, be good on the average. But I have heard too many stories of drastic time drops to dismiss them entirely, so the effects may also be spectacularly individual. One (skinny) woman I know had more or less hit a recent plateau in an event, donned a B70 and promptly dropped about 6 seconds in a 100, to set a new national record. How to account for such a drastic difference? At the Boston meet, Mike Ross theorized that the suit could reposition the body in a way that greatly increased efficiency for some people (but maybe not have much effect on others). In that scenario, it is even possible that with proper training the improvement could be maintained even after the suits become less buoyant or less compressing. George Parks mentioned something similar in a recent post. All this hand waving mostly means is that you're on your own. Right now the swim ratings are based on 2007 records (ie, pre-LZR). I'll add one based on the most recent records, so you can use them to get a ballpark estimate of the effect (eg, determine the post-LZR rating of 52.86 and then use it to calculate an equivalent time with the pre-LZR rating curves).

Out of curiosity, I once plotted a rough graph of 50SCM record times (from USMS rulebook) correlating to age. I just wanted to see the typical sprinting speed decline with age. Haven't compared it to a distance event yet but I assume the curve would shift right.

If you haven't already seen it, I recommend going here to get an idea of the suits effects on elite athletes: www.floswimming.org/.../6033-part-iii-predictive-modeling-of-swim-performances-at-the-us-olympic-trials Thanks for the reference, Chris. One question: is it correct to assume these predictions were based on improvements from earlier generation body suits--like the Fastskin Pro, FSII, etc.? If so, then finding that the 100 LCM freestyle times improved by .7 seconds more than anticipated does not really tell the story of how these guys would have swum in jammers, right? It only says the top 8 improved, on average, by .7 seconds more than historical time drop norms would have predicted, with these historical norms based, at least in recent years, on swims done in all the textile body suits in wide use since the Aquablade made its debut in 1996. According to Speedo, this same year, at the Atlanta Olympics, 76% of all swimming medals were won in SPEEDO, most wearing SPEEDO Aquablade." I guess my basic question is probably unanswerable for now--how much of a time increase is likely to occur when going from B70 to jammers, not going from B70 to something very much like a zipper-less Fastskin Pro (as the women are probably going to be allowed to use). As far as it being very individualized, I agree with this supposition but only so far. I would think that for the outliers on either end, the suit change could make either drastic or negligible differences in individual performance. But I still maintain that for the bulk of swimmers, there has got to be a reasonably accurate conversion factor--even if this is not likely to be discovered till enough actual times start filtering in to fit curves to the new data. PS my friend and swimming coach Bill White, who is 39, and I both swam the 400 SCY IM at a local Y meet a few weeks back. I just used your grading formula and found--to my delight--that Bill's 4:34.12 at age 39 scored exactly the same as my 5:06.45 at age 57. We both scored 89.3. I don't think this is necessarily very motivating for Bill, but it certainly is for me!