The anti-sandbag law:
"if a swimmer enters an event with a time significantly slower or faster than that swimmer's recorded time in the past two years, the meet director may, after a discussion with the swimmer, change the seeded time to a realistic time" (104.5.5.A(10)).
Concerning my Auburn nationals entry, I confess, when faced with a 7 hour 2 stop flight and 3:45 nonstop at an earlier time, I did what any warm-blooded middle-aged American swimmer with low self-esteem would do--sandbag my entry so I could catch the earlier flight, thus diminishing the possible time spent sitting next to a 400 pound Alabama slammer with sleep apnea wearing nothing but overalls and body odor. Of course, I was caught in my bold fabrication and my time was "fixed."
USMS seems to have an identity problem. Are we hard core with rigid qualifying times? It would seem not as 2 of my not-so-speedy family members were allowed to swim four events last year in Puerto Rico. If we are not hard core, why does anybody care that I sandbag? More to the point, why can one person enter a crappy time and another cannot? Just wondering.:)
Way to strike to the heart of the problem. If you look at it from a purely selfish perspective, you are driven to create the ideal environment for you at the expense of others selfish reasons. This would only work if all people had compatible selfish reasons. It is selfish for people to feel entitled to an ideal competitive seeding and selfish for people to sandbag for whatever reason.
WWARD?
Who is John Galt?
In a handicapped spot. I may have run over a puppy to get it, too.While blowing smoke into the face of the handicapped asthmatic who was waiting to get into said parking spot.
Your coach would shed a tear if they saw the idiocy you spawned by starting this thread.C'mon q ...
the idiocy spawned by this thread has been fun and amusing and way better than re-hashing tech suits (which, of course, we all know were handed down directly from the Creator and were banned by an evil cabal of satanists), AND
this is a dumb rule that Kurt highlighted (I'm serious on this one).
What is the difference between entering an inflated seed time vs. an "NT". It seems an NT is the most extreme case of sandbagging yet it is somehow viewed as more legitimate?
Thank you Geek! The editor does read the Forums-- and it is always a good place to find disagreements. We actually did sandbagging in the May-June 2010 issue, and Rick Osterberg wrote against the practice.
At the time, we couldn't find anyone to write in favor of it, so we pulled together a list of reasons why swimmers do it, including quotes from Forum posts, and attributed them to "The Unknown Sandbagger." (For the photo, we used a USMS staffer in a brown paper bag with eyeholes cut out.)
As always, we welcome any ideas for BSLL topics. Topics can be informative, entertaining or both. They also do not necessarily have to be an argument. In the upcoming Jul-Aug 2011 issue, guest authors are presenting two different types of tapers: The drop (dead) taper and the gradual (three-week) taper.
Thanks to all the Forum members who have contributed so far to BSLL. And if you have not, please consider doing so-- readers of SWIMMER can learn a lot from you. Topics I would like to explore include the ideal pool water temperature for practice and the use of smilies on the Forums.
(:)Just kidding on that last one)
Here is my question. If we are swimming in masters for ourselves, for our personal reasons(fun, health, friends, etc) why should it matter if fill in the blank here]?
I've seen the "its only masters" and "you shouldn't care about others" argument thrown at lots of topics on these forums. I get quite a few emails every week about top ten issues. Surely it has been proven by now that some people care quite a bit about these things? That's not bad -- good IMO if it motivates one to become more healthy -- unless taken to an extreme.
As far as comments about spending valuable bandwidth on a "trivial" issue: heck, I think I've seen more vitriol and space devoted to font choices... :bolt:
I guess this doesn't fit "sandbagging" but I've seen an instance drastically effect a meet. At the NE SCM championship one person had entered times that were no where near his seed times and this person ended up in a faster heat when they should have been in the first heat. This slowed the meet way down and knocked it off the timeline. It messed me up a little for prep for the 800 since there was an extra 5+ minute wait while they finished.
I guess I was guilty of it last weekend, hence the evil looks from some swimmers. I swam the 100 and 200 *** for the first time to check them off and I had entered times from practice, but I went +15 seconds faster in both. It's not like I was trying to be in a slower heat, that's just what I thought I would swim. Oh well.
I have a few times chosen to swim another stroke (fly), in a freestyle event, and in these cases, I don't want to be seeded with my fastest freestyle times. I have entered my fly times, and then am seeded with the freestylers of the comparable speed. It actually makes for good competition. I've done it twice so far in a 200 and a 500, and plan on doing it again as long as I have the opportunities to do so.
That sounds fair to me. I've been beat many times in freestyle by a butterflyer.
