Skip to main content

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.


Copyright © 2014.  All rights reserved.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Utah and Las Vegas

Talk about a study in contrast – Utah’s monumental, grandiose natural splendor versus Las Vegas’s monumental, grandiose manufactured opulence. Donna and I got to experience both on a weeklong trip to the Western U.S. during which we logged a mind-boggling 57 miles of hiking and walking over six days. We flew to Las Vegas and rented a car to drive to Zion National Park, then to Bryce Canyon National Park, and finally back to Vegas to spend a couple days with our son Jack. ZION On the drive from Vegas to Zion there are RV parks and campgrounds like at beach towns there are ice cream shops and mini golf courses. We chose to go in early October to avoid the summer crowds and high temperatures and failed on both counts. Zion, the more beautiful of the parks in my opinion, with trails that wend through spectacular vistas, peaks, sheer cliffs, the Virgin River, and beautiful foliage, was hot and crowded. The park tries its best to absorb four million visitors a year with a large vis...

Jack and Erin's Wedding!

This past weekend Jack married Erin Breslin in Santa Barbara. Erin is smart, sassy, strong, funny, and beautiful. She and Jack are nearly inseparable, and when they are together, they talk and laugh nonstop like two school kids. As Donna noted in her beautiful, heartfelt remarks at the rehearsal dinner, it's hard to know what they have left to talk about after carrying on this continual conversation for more than three years. It is obvious to anyone who sees them that they are head over heels in love. Donna and I had met Erin's parents last December in Philadelphia. We immediately became friends and found that we shared a lot of common values -- particularly the importance of family. It was great to see them again in Santa Barbara and to meet their son Gerard and many of their siblings and in-laws. It also was great to meet some of Jack's fellow YouTubers. There's a culture of camaraderie in the industry, and many of them were eager to help Jack when he was g...

Romance at the Meadowlands

Is there a more romantic setting than the sprawling parking lot of the massive (8,400 acres) Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey? Especially on a big college-football game day, where 50,000 beer-infused fans crowd together to tailgate, pre-game, and celebrate like the end of the world was imminent? I think not. Forty-four years ago Donna and I and some friends and relatives attended a Notre Dame-Navy game. Donna and I had met a few weeks before, when a mutual friend played matchmaker and brought us together in Washington, D.C., where I was living and working. Our friend, Monica, was trying to set me up with another of her friends, but Donna and I had an immediate attraction. This was our first weekend together. I stayed at Donna’s parents’ house, where she was living. It was a big deal meeting the parents and siblings. The next morning a big group of us headed to the old Giants Stadium in multiple cars and met up. It was cold and very windy. I don’t rememb...