Am I to assume, with the last hurrah for this generation of tech suits, that Nationals will be huge, and therefore no 6th event?
Is it even worth it to enter 6?
it's just swimming
do the best you can at the meet and party it up with your buddies
ande
Apparently the new way of taking your swimming seriously is to be a teetotaler until the meet is over.
The rest of us will be gathering at the local watering hole...
(True story: my first swimming day at Clovis was fine, but I was slightly disappointed in my times. Had a couple beers with a friend over dinner...PRESTO: next day I had one of my best ever at a nationals. It does a body good.)
SwimStud wroteMaybe folks don't care about long days when they are "vacationing" I feel for the folks that work the meet but that's why they get paid, and maybe the answer is 2 shifts.
I hope you are joking. If not, talk about being elitist! Do you realize how much these people are getting paid? Don't forget to take into account the number of hours they are working, too. I now have you signed up with Fortress to time for a session in Atlanta - we'll try to at least get you in the same lane...:applaud: After they pay you for the session, you can go out to dinner and buy anything you want off the McD menu:banana: You might even have enough leftover to get an ice cream cone for dessert.
Well maybe it is lost in translation. There is a few beers at day's end and there is going drinking. Hook up with me Friday night and again on Sunday and I'll show you the difference...
We can always post the pic of Hulk falling off the bench Sunday in Austin to show the difference ... :angel:
It's also worth reminding people just how critical timers are for a meet. They are easy to forget, but they are some of the most important staffers at a meet. Most people also have no idea how hard it is to find competent timers.
For example, at our NE meet, we had somewhere around 5500 or so individual swims, not including relays. We ran two timers per lane. So that's 11,000 stopwatch times recorded. 11,000 button-pushes at the end of the race. 11,000 opportunities for a timer to miss a finish, or write down the time in the wrong lane, etc.
Timers are especially important at a Masters meet, and especially in, shall I say, the "early heats", where we have a higher percentage of swimmers who are not experienced with touchpads, and frankly don't have great finishes. It's the human timers in each lane that make it all work.
Out of 5500+ swims, the only way I know that the touchpad time was valid in any particular lane of any particular heat, is because I had two timers there who pushed their backup buttons, which confirmed that the touchpad time was accurate. Or confirmed that it wasn't.
I'm guessing that Nationals runs heats a touch slower than at our NE meet... we ran heats with about 5-6 seconds between. So as a timer, you have to finish your stopwatch, push the backup button, record the stopwatch time on the clipboard, and reset your stopwatch and be ready for the next heat... all within 5 seconds.
I encourage any of you to try doing that... for 8 continuous hours.
-Rick
I now have you signed up with Fortress to time for a session in Atlanta - we'll try to at least get you in the same lane...:applaud:
It would be difficult to count the vast number of hours I have spent timing over the years in USA-S swimming and the NVSL. And officiating. It would be staggering. No McDs either. And that's just swimming volunteer hours ...
Like 99% of the other masters swimmers, I will not be timing in Atlanta though.
WHAT?!?! Not drinking until Sunday ... what's that about?
Well maybe it is lost in translation. There is a few beers at day's end and there is going drinking. Hook up with me Friday night and again on Sunday and I'll show you the difference...
Well maybe it is lost in translation. There is a few beers at day's end and there is going drinking. Hook up with me Friday night and again on Sunday and I'll show you the difference...
We can always post the pic of Hulk falling off the bench Sunday in Austin to show the difference ... :angel:
:lmao:
but to be fair to hulk, flyqueen fell off the bench too ;)
Maybe folks don't care about long days when they are "vacationing" I feel for the folks that work the meet but that's why they get paid, and maybe the answer is 2 shifts.
.
My dad is volunteering at Nationals. You know what his "payment" is? A t-shirt and hospitality.
The shifts for timing are 7:30-11:30, 11:00-3, 2:30-7:30. I guess they are preparing to go late, if needed.
:lmao:
but to be fair to hulk, flyqueen fell off the bench too ;)
Well, I might have had a really good grip on her as I fell into the evil clutches of gravity (I was going to say 'as I went down' but with this crew......)
