Solo Swimmers

Thanks! (If the pace clocks were digital, I would have less worry - those I could see. No glasses and all I'm good for is watching the second hand spin.) Have you ever tried the prescription goggles? My daughters (-11/12 diopters!!!!) used them before they got contacts. They work very well.

I've thought about prescription goggles, briefly. It's not bad enough that I can't see the end of the pool, or my own watch, or the big numbers on the analog pace clocks. But big digital pace clocks would be easier.

Yeah, I pulled a deltoid in Aug of 2014 racing my son and grandson across the pool and the pain stayed with me for about 18 months. I was able to swim with it. The pain eased after a lap or two, but afterward, that's another story. And oddly, a gentle arm swing while running hurt quite a bit. Jack, how is that shoulder now? Having a similar problem here.

Jack, how is that shoulder now? Having a similar problem here. It went away eventually. Never had a recurrence. Maybe I got over-protective and never went that hard on it again. All sorts of things get achy every time I do butterfly, but I have such poor technique I should just avoid it altogether.

It went away eventually. Never had a recurrence. Maybe I got over-protective and never went that hard on it again. All sorts of things get achy every time I do butterfly, but I have such poor technique I should just avoid it altogether. Fly is hard. I have a friend I lap swim with. About 15 years ago she did tri-events and learn to swim as adult. She has been swimming about 2 to 3 days a week around 1,500 to 1,800. yards a week. She has difficulty with fly too.

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.

:welcome: 'fritz! Thank you for your post. I'm glad my article was helpful to you. I am VERY happy to hear you have developed an updated USMS motivational times chart, because I had been using Swimosaur's charts for my own goal times. We all could really make good use of a new chart. Thanks! :applaud: I'm not sure what Swimosaur is up to these days. He was a teammate of mine with Georgia Masters; however, he didn't renew this year. I'll have to shoot him an e-mail and see what's up. Meanwhile, I will send you a private message with my e-mail address.

Hi everyone, right now neither ElaineK nor I have figured out how to insert a PDF file into a forum post, so for now everyone interested in getting a copy of the Masters Motivational Times (MMTs) should send me a private message through the forum and include their email address. The PDF file is relatively small, only about 60 KB. And if anyone out there with mad forum skills can explain how to insert a PDF file (as opposed to an image file) into a forum post, PLEASE reply and let us know. Thank you! For those of you that are unfamiliar with age-group motivational times, they all start with "seed times" that are computed from the fastest times for each event for each age group in recent history, usually within the previous three years. USA Swimming and USMS compute these seed times differently, but they represent a similar concept: if you can swim these times for those events, you have a good chance of placing within the top 16 (USA-S) or top 10 (USMS) at the respective National Championships. Using these seed times, USA-S then computes for each age group six different levels of performance, from AAAA down to B as follows, but note that my description here is simplified by sticking with only short-course yards events for age groups 13 and over: AAAA: Seed time + 5% AAA: Seed time + 10% (USMS NQT for events 200 yards and over) AA: Seed time + 15% (USMS NQT for events 100 yards and under) A: Seed time + 20% BB: Seed time + 30% B: Seed time + 40% For children 18 years old or under, these motivational times allow (for example) a 12 year-old girl to compare her best time in a particular event to that of an 18 year-old boy in a meaningful way. If the girl is swimming AA times, she is "relatively faster" than a boy swimming A times, even though her actual times may be significantly slower than his. The same applies for Masters swimmers, even though USMS doesn't compute official motivational times, in that (for example) a 65 year-old man swimming A times is "relatively faster" than a 27 year-old woman swimming BB times, even though his actual times may be slower than hers. Now, for children under 13, USA Swimming makes a series of other adjustments to the motivational times using specific factors for each event, but in addition they also make the following change to the BB and B times for children 10 and under, which represent the *youngest* age group: BB: Seed time + 35% B: Seed time + 50% For the age-group masters motivational times I did not create event-specific adjustment factors, but I have similarly widened the BB and B times for the *oldest* age group for which NQTs are published, which is swimmers 80-84 years old. I welcome comments and suggestions for improvements, and I especially welcome having any errors identified!

Mickelfritz - Thanks for this file! Helps a bunch to have these guesstimates in hand! Now to see if I can get near some of these!

Hi Elaine, I think I found how to add an attachment to a post, and assuming I did it correctly everyone should now be able to download the 2019 Masters Motivational Times for SCY directly from this posting. Please let me know if you have any problems.