Times for 50m freestyle (avg->good->great)?

Perfect. Exactly what I needed. Thanks guys!

Oh yeah, its gonna be AAAA for me this year once I shave :applaud: I forgot about those. Thanks for the reminder link swimosaur. EDIT: actually looking at it again I already have it. Boy the 100 qualify is much slower than the 50 it would seem.

I don't even feel worthy of a quad-a on that swim lol. I don't think it is an error though... the 100 lcm times were just that slow last year in my age group. I was amazed that a double-o could make top 10 :confused: Don't you worry. All those college boys are sitting at home now disgusted by their girth and making plans to return to the pool. Then, you can enter the 40-44 and 45-49 AG and suffer.

I'm sure there is. I wasn't far off personally. My first 50y free when i was 14 I went 29.9 after 3-4 weeks of swim practice. All i had done prior to that was swim in my backyard pool. I was a beginner, and could barely keep my head in the water. 29.9 doesn't convert too bad if you consider I could barely do a flip turn let alone a fast one. 33 even in lc meters maybe if I didn't have to stop and turn? I think its easy to arrive at that conversion. There's a counterexample for everything. I'm just saying, asking for subjective opinion, you'll get responses like mine, and responses that are far from mine as far as how some people want to classify times. Note: I should've denoted my classifications was for men also. I don't want anyone to think that I feel "beginner" is a dig or negative opinion of someone. I am in competition and have been for 18 years. When i see people in my age group going 30+ in a 50free the first thing on my mind is that they haven't trained enough to step from beginner to average. The list swimosaur posted is a very good objective classification of swimmers, but it would appear that it doesn't classify low enough to suit the needs of some. I agree with you about the subjectiveness of the question, but I think that's what the OP wanted -- a sense of what Masters swimmers tend to think of as fast. I also agree with you that the answers will be all over the map. But when you say "I don't want anyone to think that I feel "beginner" is a dig or negative opinion of someone" -- read the post just below yours, and imagine how someone who has been training and working hard for all of those years will feel to be called a beginner. And when you say, "When i see people in my age group going 30+ in a 50free the first thing on my mind is that they haven't trained enough to step from beginner to average" again, I think it would be hard for such a person not to feel insulted (i.e., that they just haven't worked hard enough). It's great that you started early enough and had enough natural athletic ability to swim so fast after only 4 weeks of training. But that is not true of most people, and frankly, it's comments like yours that make people think that Masters (or this discussion board) is only for top competitive swimmers. I'm saying this not because I want to start an argument (I don't), but because I think you must not be aware of the vast number of people who have been swimming and working hard for many years without achieving your speeds. I think you're also not aware of how elitist your comments sound. I don't think you intended them that way, but you're not representing the majority of Masters' swimmers experiences.

Don't you worry. All those college boys are sitting at home now disgusted by their girth and making plans to return to the pool. Then, you can enter the 40-44 and 45-49 AG and suffer. But, I am one of them :)

I can speak as someone who began 2.5 years ago at age 20, so I'm in a bit of a unique position. My first 50 free SCY was in February 2009, one month after I started swimming competitively. It was 34 seconds. In the same month, that went down to 32.5, then 31.08 in March, then 30.08 in April. Then I didn't swim the 50 free for a year. When I came back to the event in May '10, I went 27.72. Last January, I put up a 26.35 which I have hovered around roughly since. That 26.35 converts to just a hair over 30 LCM, which is the number people keep throwing around in this thread. That took two years of hard work, jokes about sprinting and sprinters aside. It's been my own observation that for other young men my age who come to the pool completely new to competitive swimming, but essentially knowing how to swim for recreation, will put up around 34-35 seconds on their first 50 free in their first month of swimming. It has been impossible, however, to look at these same people over the span of two years and see how much they improve. Some aren't in it anymore, some are geographically elsewhere, some swim at different times, etc... Before last October, I was obsessed with figuring out how I stood in relation to other swimmers, especially other latebloomers. I wanted to figure out a field of valid comparison. I would scour swimming times databases looking for other people who seemed to start around my age, people who maybe started earlier but weren't as dedicated, etc... I didn't want to compare myself to people of the opposite sex, people in the elite ranks, Olympians, etc... I think this preoccupation is only an all-too-natural inclination when you're in a competitive sport. People who start earlier than later in life, in childhood, in age-group, have a universe of close comparisons, entire galleries of fellow swimmers to make nemeses and rivals, to either best or chase after time and again. Before last October, I always thought this was such a tremendous advantage that I didn't have. Last October, I had a disappointing meet after several months of very hard work. My times were all a second within my PBs. I don't know if my expectations were too high or if this is just normal for the beginning of a season (it was my first October meet ever, in retrospect). I started taking a different look at the swimmers around me, in the pool, in other pools, their times online, in other age-groups and clubs. I came to a very unexpected and quite-welcome realization... I am a fast swimmer. I am a great swimmer. I am top-range. I had done a lot of hard work in the last two years, I kept my nerve time and again, I never once thought about quitting. If you want to know how good your times are, decide for yourself after honest, reasonably truthful assessment. If you think you are fast, you are fast. If average, you are average. If slow, slow. If everyone on this forum did this, I'd say 100% you should come to the realization that you are fast, that you are good, because I've seen what hard workers you are, what sacrifices you make, what conditions you've prevailed against. And then, with that in mind, remember that there is always faster, better, greater. Back before October, I kept my vision narrow. I looked for people close to me and compared myself to them, tried to ask or probe when they started. This was a mistake. The fact that I didn't have a crowded field around me, obstructing my vision, is an advantage. It freed me up to look at the bigger picture. By all means, I started comparing myself to NCAA Div-1 college swimmers, to that one really fast guy on my team, to girls, to the Olympians. Two months later that December, after several months of being stuck on the plateau of a 1:03 100 free SCY, I finally broke the minute barrier with a time of 58.93. At the time, I talked about technique and being ever so slightly tapered, but I knew it then and I know it now, it was mental, it was the willingness to step back, be subjective instead of struggling in vain to be objective, and say I'm a fast swimmer and nobody's gonna change my mind.

I generally consider the NQTs to be a good starting point for defining a fast Master's swimmer. I also agree with Jazzy's statement of perceived fastness.

my gauge, for the same age group i am in (30-34) >30 = beginner 26 = average

First what classifies a beginner? I would say experience, not ability. So a beginner would be anyone without former swimming coaching or competition, basically within the last year never swam an entire pool leangth. Intermediate would be this person up to the 3 year mark with successive training. Advanced is 3 year's up. Would this sound reasonable? Fmracing, what is your 500?

Are we talking long course here or short course? I'll assume short course. I'd say a "beginner" time is around 40 seconds. Obviously talented athletes might be faster, but I think that's a good ballpark figure for your average Joe. "Good" would probably be under 30 seconds. This is a time where at most meets you'll probably beat a few people, but plenty of people will also beat you. Is that good? Kind of depends on the definition. "Top range" to me means you are making Top Ten or very close. In 2010 the tenth place time in the 50 SCM free was 25.10 for the 30-34 age group. I feel that my 26.6 lcm 50 free this past weekend was pretty average even though it is a classified AAA time... and my 1:00.1 in the 100m free was pretty terrible, but it somehow comes in at AAAA? I agree. If this is true maybe there's an error in the tables. A 26.6 seems like a much better swim to me than a 1:00.1.