Three buckets, three jobs
I built this page because families keep one column called “best” and pour three kinds of clock into it. The WhatsApp screenshot, the Hy-Tek estimate, the licensed result sheet. They look like the same hundredths. They are not the same object. This is the definitions page. How you keep the list is how to track swimming times. The number that goes into a gala is what a seed time is — last best going in. How to estimate the other course is convert SCM to LCM. Do not come here for the formula. Come here so you never paste it into the PB column.
A personal best is a swim, in one course
A personal best — a PB — is the fastest time you have actually put on a clock in one event in one course. 100 freestyle short course is not 100 freestyle long course. Extra walls make 25m faster. Treat them as two races or you will crown December and treat January as a failure. That physics sits in short course vs long course. The event is not “freestyle”. It is 100 free, or 50 fly, or 200 IM. A 50 free PB does not travel from a 100. Relays do not overwrite an individual best. Hundredths are how the sport keeps score. “About 1:08” is a story, not a PB.
Parents search “official swim time vs PB” as if one were the real number and the other were vanity. Both can be real. The official result is the one the meet will accept. The PB is the fastest you have actually swum in that bucket. When they match, life is simple. When they do not — a faster time trial, a converted estimate, a balcony watch — the list has to say which is which.
A PB is a swim you did. An official time is a swim a licensed meet will stand over. A converted time is a swim nobody did.
Be honest about unofficial and time-trial PBs
I am not going to tell a nine-year-old their first 50 fly did not count because the club used a stopwatch. Write the time. Celebrate it. Then tag it. Unofficial means a training time trial, a hand-timed splash, a watch on the balcony, a Meet Mobile first look before officials signed the pads off. Useful at home. Not a ranking time. Not, usually, a seed — unless the pack says the host will take it. File the result sheet, not the live screenshot.
A home PB from a time trial can sit beside an official PB. Two rows if you must. Do not let the faster unofficial overwrite the licensed number you will need when the Team Manager asks for last best. That is how a family tells the club “she went 1:07 in training” and the entry still needs 1:08.42 from November.
Do not paste a time-trial 1:07.10 into the official PB column and then wonder why the heat sheet still prints 1:08.42. The club can only enter what the licence will stand over.
An official time is a licensed result
An official time is the clock from a licensed gala: proper timing for that licence, a result sheet, a number the paperwork will treat as real. In Ireland that usually means a Swim Ireland licence on the meet pack. The time is usable as a seed for the next gala in the same event and course. It is often usable as a qualifying time — depending on the licence, the window, and what that championship actually accepts.
Official does not mean “on the national rankings”. Level 1 times are recorded by clubs and never reach the national database; they can still be official for that gala, and they can still seed the next club meet if the host accepts them. The public Rank tab is a Level 3-and-higher reference. Rankings are a filter, not a diary. If the seed column says NT, nothing official is on file for that event. Today they get one — if they finish legally. Write it. That is personal best number one in that event and course.
Licence level decides what the time can do
The same hundredths can be a seed at next month’s invite and useless as a QT for a championship. That is the licence, not a conspiracy. A Level 1 Saturday is for racing. A Level 3 or 4 weekend is where qualifying maths usually lives. Read the meet conditions. I tag the licence on the row when I know it. In six months you will not remember whether 1:08.42 was the regional invite or the club fundraiser. Course plus licence is how you stop offering a ghost when the Team Manager asks “have we got a long-course official?”
| Bucket | What it is | Can it seed? | Is it a PB? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official time | Licensed gala, result signed off, same event, same course | Yes — the usual entry | Yes, if it is the fastest official in that bucket |
| Unofficial / time trial | Training, balcony watch, live board before it is signed off | Only if the host accepts it | A home PB. Tag it unofficial |
| Converted time | A time from the other course, run through a formula | Often, if the pack allows it | No. Never |
A converted time is maths, not a swim
A converted time is an estimate: short course turned into a long-course guess, or the other way, so a host can sort a mixed field. Irish paperwork calls them Hy-Tek conversions. The child did not swim 1:08.76 in a 50-metre pool. Someone estimated what 1:05.20 short course might look like over a longer course. That number can seed a heat, or go on an entry if the pack allows it. It is still not a personal best on that course. Some Irish championships — including recent Irish Open and Irish Summer National Youth & Senior conditions — refuse short-course times and conversions altogether. The pack wins.
How to run the estimate is convert SCM to LCM. This page only needs one rule: never paste the output into the PB column as if it were swum. Write “converted seed” in the notes if that is what went on the entry. After the race, log the official time against the course they actually raced. The conversion seeded the heat. The PB list stays on the pool they were in.
On the start list, put a C beside any seed you know was converted. After the race, file today’s official time under today’s course. Do not let the conversion overwrite last best in either clock.
The converted ghost you should not chase
Here is the Saturday I keep seeing. Short-course 100 free PB is 1:08.42, official, November, Level 2. January is long course. The club converts the seed so she is not NT. The heat sheet prints something like 1:11.90 LC. She goes 1:11.18. The balcony says she missed her PB. She did not. She swam a first official long-course 100 free. The converted number was never hers to beat. Chase that ghost and every honest 50-metre race looks like a step backwards. Compare this long-course swim to last long-course swim. If you only hold an SC official, the first LC time of the year is personal best number one in that course. Write it. Leave 1:08.42 alone.
Tag the course and the licence so you do not chase a converted ghost. The hundredths look real. Nobody swam them.
This is not the seed-time page
A seed time is last official best going in — the entry the club sent so the host could sort heats. Today’s official time is what they swim. If that time is faster, it becomes the next seed. That baton is what is a seed time. This page is the three kinds of number that get mistaken for it: a home PB, a licensed result, and a converted guess. The heat sheet’s last column is usually the seed. Sometimes it is official last best. Sometimes it is converted. Sometimes it is NT. Knowing which is why you read the pack, not why you argue with the child about a clock they never raced.
Tag course and licence on every row
The system is boring on purpose. After every swim, write event, time to the hundredth, course, date, gala, and whether it was official, unofficial, or converted. Add the licence level when you have it. Update the PB only when the new swim is faster in the same event and course — and only promote it to the official column if it was actually official. A converted 1:08.76 in the short-course PB cell will seed next winter off a swim that never happened. The tracking guide is how you run that list. This page is why the three words matter.
- ✓Event and course on every time — 25m and 50m never share a PB.
- ✓One word on the row: official, unofficial, or converted.
- ✓Licence level when you know it — seed and QT are not the same job.
- ✓Converted numbers stay in notes. They never overwrite last best.
- ✓A faster unofficial swim gets written. It does not steal the official column.
What Finzy does — and does not
I built Finzy so a family can keep personal bests by event and course, log the week, and still open the list in March. You type the time. We do not import official results. Rankings miss Level 1 and anything the host never uploaded; I will not pretend an import fills a hole it cannot see. We do not auto-convert short course to long course. Keep SC and LC as separate PBs. If a seed was converted, put that in the notes. Tag the course. Tag the licence if you have it. That is how you stop chasing a converted ghost when the camera roll looks faster than it was.
