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.:)
until today never signed and think will never sign with my best time ever or for each year.
I don't get it. Why would you not enter with your best time? And "it's my choice" isn't what I'm going for. If you are entering with the times you think you will swim that's one thing, but I can't understand why you'd choose to enter with times you know are slower than you'll swim.
Wait a minute, let's not forget the plight of the young men who are tired of getting chicked by the older, better looking and FASTER women out there. chowmi, Medicine Woman, Eney Jones and Laura Glass have all beat me in person and a couple have even told me good swims! Way to pat me on the head and shoo me off to the corner to cry.
Ok, Laura isn't older than me, just faster in 3 out of 4 strokes and thus age shouldn't be a factor.
The Sandbagging rule needs to be extended to chicking. Fast chicks get lead weights tied around their legs, they have to enter with their best shaved and tapered times from college and swim slower than me. Subrule A shall stipulate that one Kurt Dickson is required to checkin in person before the early warm up and swim the final heat of the last event of the day is. Subrule B shall stipulate that one The Fortress will be required to swim between pwolf and fmracing in lane 8 until such time that bigger faster swimmers can be found as replacements. That should solve all the complaints about special enforcement.
Whose on the rules committee? I need to write a letter.
Subrule C shall stipulate that whenever a thread veers into whitewhine.com territory, qbrain will be required to post. :agree:
Have had affiliation as a Master in England, Germany, Portugal, Spain, never accepted coaches, organizations or anyone to decide which entry time would be signed.
We are adults, we have a choice to decide… Do not accept someone to say what time I will swim , until today never signed and think will never sign with my best time ever or for each year.
If people think it is wrong to take advantage of a signed time just add penalty fees to the regulations, for each …seconds more or less than the entry time..
Never swum as a youngster and do not compare adult swimming with young swimming or elite swimming. This is supposed to be fun and “choice” free.
This Saturday have signed for Madrid national, if they do not correct my entry times ( 2 events are with entry times best done while was affiliated to Spain last year) I will not participate as have paid the registration and my trip to swim events under times I KNOW doing on practice.
I just spent 4 days racing in a USAS meet where all the kids were entered in their best times for prelims and then we were all, obviously, entered in our prelims times for finals. Here's my "AHA" that I think all swimmers need to understand: heat sheets are works of fiction. 99+% of the time, all swimmers' performances will vary from their entered time. In particular, what I saw this weekend was that the delta in performances between prelims swims and finals (both faster and slower) was often more dramatic than the differences between initial heat sheets and prelims performance.
People need to get over the illusion of the heat sheet as predictive of that day's performance and just race.
I am not sure how comparable USA-S (especially age group) meets are to USMS meets. In USA-S meets it is not uncommon at all to see swimmers blow their times out of the water; then (if I know the kid and congratulate him/her) I find out that the time is over one year old. At 13 or 14 that makes a pretty huge difference! Heck, I see age-groupers doing best times in practice sometimes.
Older kids are different, but that is also a crapshoot based on hormonal levels, who's dating whom, the phase of the moon, and God knows what else. I have seen such huge differences in prelim & final swims that I just marvel how age-group coaches have any hair left at all.
People need to get over the illusion of the heat sheet as predictive of that day's performance and just race.
While I generally agree, my experience in masters meets is you're often lucky to get much of a race and if people who might be competitive against you are seeded in a different heat it diminishes the chances even further.
"Have had affiliation as a Master in England, Germany, Portugal, Spain, never accepted coaches, organizations or anyone to decide which entry time would be signed."
How did you convince your German coach to willfully enter a sandbagged time--especially when his valued reputation (trust me on this) is on the line?
Coach?! never had a coach and think never will; have been a Masters for 17 years training alone.
Did not had to convince anyone, while doing my registrations always put which time I want to enter, if by any change the organization decides to put a time given by the informatics system I ask polity to change , no participation if the organization refuses.
As my nationality rarely is the same as the affiliation seldom had problems (people think as a foreigner……), but sporadically I miss a few competitions because federations assume what time I am going to do :blah:
The meets that seed everybody together don't do this just to irritate women who don't like to swim against men
Wait a minute, let's not forget the plight of the young men who are tired of getting chicked by the older, better looking and FASTER women out there. chowmi, Medicine Woman, Eney Jones and Laura Glass have all beat me in person and a couple have even told me good swims! Way to pat me on the head and shoo me off to the corner to cry.
Ok, Laura isn't older than me, just faster in 3 out of 4 strokes and thus age shouldn't be a factor.
The Sandbagging rule needs to be extended to chicking. Fast chicks get lead weights tied around their legs, they have to enter with their best shaved and tapered times from college and swim slower than me. Subrule A shall stipulate that one Kurt Dickson is required to checkin in person before the early warm up and swim the final heat of the last event of the day is. Subrule B shall stipulate that one The Fortress will be required to swim between pwolf and fmracing in lane 8 until such time that bigger faster swimmers can be found as replacements. That should solve all the complaints about special enforcement.
Whose on the rules committee? I need to write a letter.
I don't get it. Why would you not enter with your best time? And "it's my choice" isn't what I'm going for. If you are entering with the times you think you will swim that's one thing, but I can't understand why you'd choose to enter with times you know are slower than you'll swim.
my best times each age group are European records!:afraid:
I do a average of 2 meetings per month , do you think I will do ER each time I swim?:bolt:
please, try to understand ,in my choice going to meetings is not to do best but to see people! going to swim is going to a social event where rarely I am in a mood to go fast! The motives to be Master are different from each … my social life is participate at Master swimming as I live at an isolated farm I the middle of nowhere in Portugal (nest city 44kms, nest village 15kms, next house with people 3kms):D
My view on sandbagging is a bit variable, like my view on the respective rights and responsibilities of car drivers and bicyclists sharing the same road.
When I am a car driver, and I am forced to slow down because a cyclist refuses to stay where he belongs, i.e., near the curb, I am outraged!
When I am a cyclist and some yahoo in a car acts like he owns the road just because he is burning gas, I am outraged!
I have, in other words, accused both species of being total dicks. It is all in the eye of the judger.
The same is the case with sandbagging.
When I have sandbagged in the past--usually not by huge amounts, but still...--I can easily justify it by telling myself I haven't been feeling well in practice, my shoulder is a bit sore, etc. etc. I have occasionally negative sandbagged, too, that is, putting in a near world record time to guarantee I will get a good lane (I once entered a 42 in the 100 free, though it is possible I entered a 52, and the meet official just read this wrong.) I may feel a twinge of guilt, but I certainly don't feel anything that would send me off to the confessional booth.
On the other hand, when I have been sandbagged in the past, it usually doesn't bother me too terribly much. There was one notable exception. A fellow at CZ a few years back entered a 54+ in the 100 freestyle and was next to me. I had entered a relatively realistic 53 and was, on paper, the favorite in the heat.
I looked at this fellow's other times and noticed he had also entered a low 24 in the 50 butterfly. This was my first clue that he was sandbagging.
To make a long story short, he swam a 48. Not only did I think I was going incredibly slow, but his wake off the second turn was so tsunamic that I inhaled a mouthful of water and spent my third length coughing underwater.
I honestly don't think I would have minded his sandbagging all that much were it not for the inhalation problem. I think when you put down an honest time and, by luck of the seeding process, get the "fast" lane in a heat, it's kind of a little perk of smooth water that you deserve. When somebody gets this smooth water via sandbagging deception--and turbulates it extremely, causing frail types like me to asphyxiate--then I think they deserve what is coming to them.
In this case, what is coming to him is to have his name turned in perpetuity to a verb.
As in: To Hiddabiddle (verb, transitive)--shamelessly and unapologetically sandbag an elder, swamping his lungs with your wake.
Note: I may have not spelled Steve Hiddabiddle's last name exactly right here, but he knows who he is!
I have been trying to entrench the verb Hiddabiddle into the Masters Swimming lexicon for several years now. Please help the cause by using it in a sentence at every meet you go to in the future.
Example: Boy, did you see Mr. X hiddabiddle that sap in lane 3!
www.usms.org/.../showthread.php
PS If you do hiddabiddle someone, either positively or negatively, I personally believe you owe it to your adjacent lane swimmers to fess up before the start of the race so they won't be thoroughly discombobulated.
For instance, when I entered the 42 in the 100 freestyle, I told the guys on the left and the right of me that there was a reasonable chance I wouldn't be swimming quite that fast.
They just looked at me dumbfounded.
the only female POV is dismissed
To balance this out, we either need to dismiss some more female POV's or dismiss some male POV's. I'm thinking that the first idea is not going to work out as perfectly as it would seem... so I'll take one for the team here.
From my point of view, pi is equal to -5,
Abraham Lincoln was the 3rd vice president of Quebec,
Albert Einstein invented the cotton gin after he chopped down a cherry tree,
and sandbagging is not that important, though I reserve the right to point and laugh when I see it.
