Ya, saw he swam 21+ for 50 back, beats most of the freestylers!!! I suppose this goes into the often discussed topic of pros racing in the AG ranks. Personally I think age is age, so whoever is of the age, they get to race the masters races. OF course we have had 40+ year old olympians, so maybe age group doesn’t really start until 45+??
Looking forward to some big swims today, already a bunch of records broken, mostly in the older AG’s…
Yeah, I’m with you. Shouldn’t penalize an athlete for being more talented than the rest of us. Fast is fast, and age is age.
Looks like Bonnie Spivey just crushed the 60+ women in the 500, she went 5;50. Lets see how her daughter does today in her ITU race…
SO Friman did a 2;07 for 200 back for 5th, not too bad. He is swimming a lot of events thus far, wonder if he is in the 400IM??
**Also, great to see Jim Sauer crush the 200 fly in 2:09 to take 1st! **
Your horse just won the 200 back in 2;10, he is going to have a hell of a 400IM!!!
Sadly, Friman’s done for the meet. You’re limited to 6 events. He’s in great shape (for a triathlete). Perhaps there’s a comeback in his future?
Ya, I see he got 27th in the 50 in 24+. His graph is perfect from his 1650 win, to this 27th 50. Good on him for pitching up and competing, would love to see more triathletes at this meet…
My 2:10 200 free converts to about a 1:57 in SCY, which would have put me at 8th in the 45-49’s or 11th in the 50-54s. I thought we were supposed to get slower!!!
Most of these threads are depressing to follow for the rest of us adult onset swimmers.
It’s like being the person with a 180W FTP and everyone on ST is talking about a 400W FTP. If I just went with times posted on ST, I’d just give up sport, fortunately in real life, there are people who are just normal humans to doing sport, not just ulta front of pack!
This is why Lionel has so many fans on ST. We want him to win because he is an outside. He is one of “us”. he’s not one of those people whose parents put them into the pool at a young age and on the insider fish super dolphin club and came up through an elite sport program!!!
But, hey, I am following while you guys are complaining that you would not make 8th place or 10th or 15th. Someone has to finish last LOL! But most triathletes won’t even try, and don’t want to finish last, so its largely just a front of pack sport with a few random stupid people trying to do the sport and getting lapped constantly!!!
That’s nationals, it’s a bit of an anomaly in that it’s mostly the faster ones who go to it. So take it all with a grain of salt. It’s kinda like a Kona thread for guys who can’t, won’t or don’t bike and run so good!
The local meets have a huge range of abilities to show up. We have a couple of guys here who usually swim the 1500 in the 75-79 and 80-84 AG’s. They know they aren’t fast anymore, but they keep showing up because they love it. And really, masters is a friendly bunch for the most part, it’s about the experience more so than the times. And as far as times go, If you set a PB I’m just as happy for you as if Monty does.
My 2:10 200 free converts to about a 1:57 in SCY, which would have put me at 8th in the 45-49’s or 11th in the 50-54s. I thought we were supposed to get slower!!! //
Dont worry, it goes backwards when you hit 60! In most of my distance events it would have been easier to get 10th in the 55+ than it was in the 60+. 200fly, 200IM, 400IM, 200 breast, all faster in the 60+ AG than the one below, what the hell is up with that??
I think 60+ is faster/deeper field because more of the competitors have time to train and money to travel. Seems to be a similar pattern in the 30 to 39’s where fields aren’t as deep, as most people are raising families and building careers. Then the fields get deeper over 40. Plus us 60+’s are facing mortality. Never know when your time is up, but you know it’s one day closer and more days have passed than you have left.
On a more positive note, congrats to the Canadian posters all the great swims at provincial championships.
That’s nationals, it’s a bit of an anomaly in that it’s mostly the faster ones who go to it. So take it all with a grain of salt. It’s kinda like a Kona thread for guys who can’t, won’t or don’t bike and run so good!
The local meets have a huge range of abilities to show up. We have a couple of guys here who usually swim the 1500 in the 75-79 and 80-84 AG’s. They know they aren’t fast anymore, but they keep showing up because they love it. And really, masters is a friendly bunch for the most part, it’s about the experience more so than the times. And as far as times go, If you set a PB I’m just as happy for you as if Monty does.
I guess my main point is that if you see posts on ST, the entire world is 2 min 200m free people and 6W per kilo FTP people. When you show up to a real world event, there is a huge range of abilities. We had a women in the 95+ category setting world records this weekend at Swim Ontario Nationals. Its the same beef I had forever when Herbert would only feature super fast age groupers on front page articles…really, I do want to read articles of the single dad with 4 kids that he shares 50% of the time doing his 1st Ironman in 13 hrs after coming off the couch. The story about the wannabee pro who is cleans up in the age grouper ranks, but is a slow pro is not that interesting.
In any case, my warning to all you fish people is that even though you want to encourage triathletes to become swimmers, most people just get scared off by all the fast times you post and they just give up thinking they can never do it. They can (not as fast as you guys, but they can learn a new skill), but either don’t have the persistence to give it a go, or don’t want to be last at a sport all the time. That’s basically why you don’t get more triathletes really trying your sport.
When I go to a real swim meet, and I’m with real world masters swimmers is a different story than on ST. Its the same as when you go to a real tri…not everyone is in a team EMJ team kit.
I think 60+ is faster/deeper field because more of the competitors have time to train and money to travel. Seems to be a similar pattern in the 30 to 39’s where fields aren’t as deep, as most people are raising families and building careers. Then the fields get deeper over 40. Plus us 60+’s are facing mortality. Never know when your time is up, but you know it’s one day closer and more days have passed than you have left.
Nah, this is simply a case of relatively small numbers of entrants, e.g. not enough to have a statistically valid sample. On the average, if you look at all masters meets over time, then the fastest times are always in the younger AGs, the 18-24 being the only exception b/c generally the fast guys are still swimming full time in college or as post-grad swimmers shooting for next Oly. If you look at the Masters WRs, the times slow down almost always as you the AGs get older. I do recall one exception where the same guy swam faster in 65-69 than he did in 60-64, but he is a big outlier. Similarly, in triathlons, the fastest guys are usually in 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, and occasionally 35-39. When I was racing triathlons 10-15 times per yr, the top three OA were almost always under 40.
For more on the Law of Small Numbers, see Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_small_numbers
Met Bonnie at ITU Edmonton… she did a relay to keep busy waiting for Taylor to race 
That’s nationals, it’s a bit of an anomaly in that it’s mostly the faster ones who go to it. So take it all with a grain of salt. It’s kinda like a Kona thread for guys who can’t, won’t or don’t bike and run so good!
The local meets have a huge range of abilities to show up. We have a couple of guys here who usually swim the 1500 in the 75-79 and 80-84 AG’s. They know they aren’t fast anymore, but they keep showing up because they love it. And really, masters is a friendly bunch for the most part, it’s about the experience more so than the times. And as far as times go, If you set a PB I’m just as happy for you as if Monty does.
I guess my main point is that if you see posts on ST, the entire world is 2 min 200m free people and 6W per kilo FTP people. When you show up to a real world event, there is a huge range of abilities. We had a women in the 95+ category setting world records this weekend at Swim Ontario Nationals. Its the same beef I had forever when Herbert would only feature super fast age groupers on front page articles…really, I do want to read articles of the single dad with 4 kids that he shares 50% of the time doing his 1st Ironman in 13 hrs after coming off the couch. The story about the wannabee pro who is cleans up in the age grouper ranks, but is a slow pro is not that interesting.
In any case, my warning to all you fish people is that even though you want to encourage triathletes to become swimmers, most people just get scared off by all the fast times you post and they just give up thinking they can never do it. They can (not as fast as you guys, but they can learn a new skill), but either don’t have the persistence to give it a go, or don’t want to be last at a sport all the time. That’s basically why you don’t get more triathletes really trying your sport.
When I go to a real swim meet, and I’m with real world masters swimmers is a different story than on ST. Its the same as when you go to a real tri…not everyone is in a team EMJ team kit.
So I shouldn’t ever talk about my times because someone, somewhere, might be intimidated? To be perfectly honest, I don’t care if someone is intimidated. I’m not trying to be intimidating, but at the same time I can’t control what other people think about what I might say. Its a sport where time is the most important measure, everything is based on time. So it’s natural that we would talk about times in the sport of swimming. When I say that I don’t care, that’s not me being a dick. Everyone is intimidated by something, and not everything is for everyone. So I’m not going to start not talking about important aspects of the sport, and what’s important to me, in order to not offend someone who may not actually be interested in the sport to begin with. It’s up to each of us to find what makes us tick, so if the thought of maybe coming last is too embarrassing or intimidating for someone, then that’s something they’ve got to deal with.
Don’t get me wrong, I welcome new people to the sport, I love seeing people come and show an interest. But at the same time, I’m not in the business of trying to encourage people to become swimmers. That motivation has to come from themselves, and when that motivation exceeds their resistance, then they’ll come out. In religious terms, I’m not an evangelist, I’m just preaching to the converted.
I appreciate anything posted on here that is swim related cause there is not a lot out there training wise for masters swimmers. I steal the workouts from the MVN facebook page and occasionally take sets off here. I know how to tweak them for my abilities or lack of ability. I swam five event at the meet in Mesa. I wore a tech suit for the first time and dropped time in all my events!! It was friggin hot at the meet but it was bearable if you stayed in the shade and/or kept wet.
The cool thing for me was the live stream that you could play back the next day. I saw how slow my starts were but I also have full race video of my come from behind heat win in the 100fly. Best swims were my 100 fly 1:02 which was 19/28 and 100 free 57.6 was 34/52 placement.
My 200 free I died badly 1:00/1:08 I was kicking way too much the first 100 and went into severe oxygen debt the last half ouch I need to practice that race some more. Definitely need to do more sprints off the blocks as part of my workout. I also had some sloppy turns I had trouble sighting the walls I should have warmed up in competition pool more.
Of course your right about the larger database of all Masters swims. As a species we get slower with age. I was just commenting on the results for Masters nationals. I did take a few stats courses in grad school, so I do understand sample sizes.
A lot of swimmers don’t travel for the meet. My best event 100 fly was 19th place at the meet but only 48th overall for the year. My 200Im i was 22/25 which reflects my poor showing at the meet but for the year my ranking was 52nd on the usms site. I would have gotten a medal(top 10) in the 200fly if I didn’t drowned. first. So if you want to impress people with your rankings do the distance events…triathletes aren’t into bragging tho.
Of course your right about the larger database of all Masters swims. As a species we get slower with age. I was just commenting on the results for Masters nationals. I did take a few stats courses in grad school, so I do understand sample sizes.
OK, sorry, did not mean to insult you.