Bending the Trend Line

I have swum for and coached a number of age-group swim teams. When I was 14 I joined our community pool’s swim team, at the suggestion of a girl I had interest in, and I really enjoyed it. I later coached that team, and swam for and coached my high school team and swam on an AAU team in high school. For the last eight or so years I have been on a Master’s club for post-college swimmers. We have meets and, like the summer community pool leagues of my youth, the results are posted by age bracket.

There is an interesting phenomenon in age-group swimming. When you are young, it’s to your advantage to be at the top of your age group—in the 13-14 age group, the 14-year-olds have the advantage over the 13-year-olds. As you age, however, at some mysterious tipping point the advantage switches to the younger members of an age group.

The U.S. Masters Association has national competitions and sets qualifying times for the various events by age bracket. A goal of mine has been to qualify for nationals in an event someday.

The good news is that qualifying times rise with the age brackets. I’m currently in the middle of an age bracket and anxiously awaiting the time in two years when I will enter the next bracket. The problem is that swimmers slow down as they age.

The graph below shows the dilemma I am facing. The blue line shows the qualifying-time trend for an imaginary event. The red line is my expected time in seconds for that imaginary event as I get older. While the lines eventually converge, meaning that my time would qualify for nationals, the trend shows that I wouldn’t qualify until I’m 110 years old.

No matter. I’m going to keep trying. If I can stay healthy, work out harder and get a little stronger I think I can bend that red line down enough to qualify for an event—any event—when I enter the next bracket in 2016. It’s something to work toward.

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