Solo Swimmers

Hi, I'm a brand new forum member and a relatively new swimmer. I started swimming infrequently with one local masters training group back in 2016, and then somewhat frequently with another training group of the same team last year, but the practices were all at oh-dark-thirty and getting to bed early enough proved to be too difficult. Too many teenagers still in the house. So this year, like everyone else here apparently, I joined the ranks of solo swimmers. Elaine, I enjoyed your article on your blog concerning keeping yourself motivated while training "alone" (even though you're sharing a lane at a crowded YMCA or community pool). One of my own motivational goals is to try to swim at the same level as my middle son, who is a senior in high school and swims for a local USA swim team. Yes, yes, I know, "the same level" obviously can't mean swimming the same times, or I'd be packing my bags for USMS Nationals and FINA champs every year. What I mean is using the same concept as the USA age-group motivational times for the kids, but designed for us. Unfortunately, USMS doesn't publish these times like USA-S does. Doing a quick online search, though, I found the work that another USMS forum contributor nicknamed Swimosaur did for the past several years. This work was great, and it helped me get a sense of where I was in terms of development. But I never saw an update of the masters motivational times for 2018 or 2019, and I also noticed that Swimosaur's approach didn't guarantee that the AA times (for sprints) and AAA times (for other distances) exactly matched the official Nationals Qualifying Times (NQTs) published each fall by USMS for the upcoming short-course championship meet the following spring. Being a retired aerospace engineer, I decided to go ahead and compute my own age-group masters motivational times (MMTs), starting with the official published NQTs instead of the published Top 10 times for the previous three years as Swimosaur did. This approach was actually much simpler and was guaranteed to produce times that exactly matched the NQTs, but it also lacked a bit of the flexibility that Swimosaur introduced for situations in which event times were fairly sparse in some of the higher age groups. For me, though, the simplicity and exact match to the official NQTs won out. So I created unofficial age-group masters motivational times (MMTs) for 2019, using the NQTs recently released by USMS for the upcoming short-course yards National Championships in Mesa, AZ. It turns out I'm swimming at least B times in several events, and better than BB in a few, which actually does help me stay motivated in the face of times that are much, much slower than what I see while volunteering at my son's USA swim meets. And the intermediate goal of making the next level in each stroke helps to break down the longer-term goal of making an NQT cut into something manageable and not *quite* so intimidating. Anyway, if anyone is interested in getting a copy of the motivational times or in the details of how I computed them (hint: I used the same percentages as USA-S does for age groups 13 and over), I'd be glad to oblige with one caveat: I'm a brand new forum member and I can't post any attachments. Or at least, I don't know *how* to post attachments. I'll need to email them to somebody who has that part figured out. So please let me know if these MMTs might be useful to anyone else, especially those of us basically going it alone.

Hi, I'm a brand new forum member and a relatively new swimmer. I started swimming infrequently with one local masters training group back in 2016, and then somewhat frequently with another training group of the same team last year, but the practices were all at oh-dark-thirty and getting to bed early enough proved to be too difficult. Too many teenagers still in the house. So this year, like everyone else here apparently, I joined the ranks of solo swimmers. Elaine, I enjoyed your article on your blog concerning keeping yourself motivated while training "alone" (even though you're sharing a lane at a crowded YMCA or community pool). One of my own motivational goals is to try to swim at the same level as my middle son, who is a senior in high school and swims for a local USA swim team. Yes, yes, I know, "the same level" obviously can't mean swimming the same times, or I'd be packing my bags for USMS Nationals and FINA champs every year. What I mean is using the same concept as the USA age-group motivational times for the kids, but designed for us. Unfortunately, USMS doesn't publish these times like USA-S does. Doing a quick online search, though, I found the work that another USMS forum contributor nicknamed Swimosaur did for the past several years. This work was great, and it helped me get a sense of where I was in terms of development. But I never saw an update of the masters motivational times for 2018 or 2019, and I also noticed that Swimosaur's approach didn't guarantee that the AA times (for sprints) and AAA times (for other distances) exactly matched the official Nationals Qualifying Times (NQTs) published each fall by USMS for the upcoming short-course championship meet the following spring. Being a retired aerospace engineer, I decided to go ahead and compute my own age-group masters motivational times (MMTs), starting with the official published NQTs instead of the published Top 10 times for the previous three years as Swimosaur did. This approach was actually much simpler and was guaranteed to produce times that exactly matched the NQTs, but it also lacked a bit of the flexibility that Swimosaur introduced for situations in which event times were fairly sparse in some of the higher age groups. For me, though, the simplicity and exact match to the official NQTs won out. So I created unofficial age-group masters motivational times (MMTs) for 2019, using the NQTs recently released by USMS for the upcoming short-course yards National Championships in Mesa, AZ. It turns out I'm swimming at least B times in several events, and better than BB in a few, which actually does help me stay motivated in the face of times that are much, much slower than what I see while volunteering at my son's USA swim meets. And the intermediate goal of making the next level in each stroke helps to break down the longer-term goal of making an NQT cut into something manageable and not *quite* so intimidating. Anyway, if anyone is interested in getting a copy of the motivational times or in the details of how I computed them (hint: I used the same percentages as USA-S does for age groups 13 and over), I'd be glad to oblige with one caveat: I'm a brand new forum member and I can't post any attachments. Or at least, I don't know *how* to post attachments. I'll need to email them to somebody who has that part figured out. So please let me know if these MMTs might be useful to anyone else, especially those of us basically going it alone.