Why we start with paper
I grew up racing club galas in Ireland with a damp notebook in the kit bag and a parent on the balcony writing times on the back of the programme. That is still decent for the first few weekends. No signal. No login. A Sharpie does not crash.
Paper fails in predictable ways. Notebooks get wet or left in the car. You cannot filter 25-metre short course from 50-metre long course. Finding last November’s 100 back means flipping. Photograph every page and the camera roll becomes the archive nobody can search in March.
If you are still in that first block — one swimmer, one or two events, one course — keep writing. The day itself still belongs to paper. After that you need one list in charge. For what belongs on every row, see How to Track Swimming Times.
When a spreadsheet is actually fine
Most families “upgrade” to Excel or Google Sheets for the same reason I did: columns. Date, event, time, gala, course. A formula for the drop. A colour for PBs. It feels like a proper system. For a while, it is — four or five events, one pool length, one person who opens the file every Monday. Google Drive if two adults need to look. No subscription.
I am not going to pretend an app is morally better than a tidy sheet. If you have a handful of events, you never mix 25m and 50m, and you update it the same day, keep it. The best way to track swim times is the list you will still open in March.
One tab. A course column you refuse to leave blank. Official / unofficial / converted in a word, every row. No “copy of copy”. The other parent should find last best in thirty seconds on a phone — or the sheet is already lying.
Where sheets break
They do not break because Excel is bad at numbers. They break because swimming is not one number. It is event, course, licence, tired week, and a seed due Thursday night.
Mixing 25m and 50m is the classic. One “best 100 free” column. An honest long-course swim looks like going backwards. Short course metres and long course metres are different races. A sheet that treats them as one PB is already wrong.
Sharing with a parent is the second crack. Google Sheets is easier to share than a laptop file, which is why families try it. Then two people edit on phones, someone sorts by time and wrecks the date order, and you have two truths. Poolside, a grid of cells is a poor thing to read with wet fingers.
Losing a tab is how the source of truth becomes a debate. “PBs”. “Copy of Aoife times”. “FINAL (1)”. Nobody knows which file the Team Manager should trust for a seed. Typos do the quiet damage: 58.45 entered as 58.54, and next month’s heat is seeded off a fiction.
The last failure is calendar, not software. Gala weekends get busy. The sheet becomes a guilt object in Drive. I have lived that: paper for the first few galas, a spreadsheet while someone typed every Monday, then abandonment when the season actually started. The file did not die because we were lazy. Maintaining it was a second job nobody had signed up for.
Do not run a live sheet and a camera-roll archive and a WhatsApp thread. Three half-lists is how you text the coach for a seed. Pick one list. Everything else is a source.
Paper, sheet, and app
Think of the three as tools for different volumes. Paper is the day. A sheet is a small, disciplined season. An app still works when the season is not small.
| Paper notebook | Excel / Google Sheets | Swimming app (your log) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best at | The gala itself, no signal | A handful of events, one course | PBs by event and course, plus workouts |
| Sharing | You cannot | A link — messy on a phone | On the phone already in the bag |
| 25m vs 50m | Easy to mix on one page | Only if you never skip the column | Keep SC and LC as separate PBs |
| History | Flipping; lost pages | Sortable until the tabs multiply | Searchable personal history |
| Training | If you write sessions too | Usually a second file | Log the week beside the PBs |
| Fails when | It gets wet or left at home | You mix courses, share edits, or lose a tab | You do not open it the same day |
An app does not type itself. If you will not write the time on Sunday, Finzy will not save you any more than Excel did. The difference is one list, PBs that cannot merge two courses, and the week beside the race — see Why Swimmers Should Log Training.
A “best 100 free” is one cell. Six events in 25m and 50m is twelve PBs — before unofficial versus official, a second child, or last season. That is when Excel becomes a project.
Results apps vs the log you own
This is the mix-up I want to kill. “Swimming app” is not one product. Meet Mobile, SwimCloud, Gophin, and a personal log do different jobs. Using the results one as your diary is how Irish Level 1 times vanish.
Meet Mobile is a meet-day tool. When the host publishes the Hy-Tek database, you get heat sheets and live results on the balcony. Useful on Saturday. A poor archive — often behind a subscription — and a gala that never got posted will not be there in March. Screenshots of the result are unsearchable.
SwimCloud is a competition database: profiles, rankings, recruiting, official files from meet hosts. It is not a training log. If the host never sent the file, the swim is missing.
Gophin and tools in that style auto-sync official competition history from national databases, especially in North America. Brilliant when the database has the swim. They do not log practice. They have Ireland’s hole too: Swim Ireland’s public rankings are a filter. Level 1 gala times stay with the club. Auto-import cannot invent a swim the database never saw.
I built Finzy as the family and swimmer log you own — workouts, PBs by event and course, SC and LC kept separate, goals, history. It does not auto-import official results. You type the time. That is a feature when the ranking page is empty and the swim was real.
| Tool | Job | Official-result import? | Your training log? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meet Mobile | Heat sheets and live results on the day | When the host publishes that meet | No |
| SwimCloud | Competition database, rankings, recruiting | When the host submits the file | No |
| Gophin-style | Auto-sync published national results | Yes, from those databases | No — competition only |
| Excel / Sheets | Whatever columns you built | You type everything | Only if you make a second tab |
| Finzy | The log you own: workouts, PBs, goals, history | No — you enter times yourself | Yes |
Use Meet Mobile on the balcony. Use a ranking page to check what was published. Use Finzy — or a ruthless sheet — for the story that has to survive a club change and a Level 1 gala the database will never see. Different shelves, not rivals.
Signs you have outgrown the sheet
You do not need a committee. If two of these are true, the sheet has already stopped working.
| Still working | Outgrown |
|---|---|
| You can say the short-course 100 free PB without opening anything | You screenshot Meet Mobile instead of opening the file |
| One tab, course on every row, updated the same day | Two versions of the file, or a tab named FINAL (1) |
| One course this season, a handful of events | 25m and 50m live in one “best time” column |
| The other parent can find last best on a phone in thirty seconds | You text the coach for a seed — or only one adult understands the formulas |
A second child, a first long-course block, or a move between clubs usually finishes it. Club websites do not travel. Ranking pages do not keep the Level 1 year.
Move the messy sheet before the next gala
Do not migrate four hundred rows on a Friday night. Migrate the PBs. Archive the rest. One honest list before the next programme drops on WhatsApp — not a museum of 2024.
- ✓Open the sheet that is supposed to be in charge. Rename it with today’s date and the word Archive. Stop editing it as a live list.
- ✓Split 25m and 50m. Two columns or two lists. No single “best 100 free” that jumps pool length.
- ✓Write current PBs by event and course — official times only in the PB column. Converted guesses stay in notes.
- ✓Download Finzy on iPhone or Android. Enter those PBs, keeping short course and long course separate.
- ✓If you have last week’s sessions, log those workouts too. Race times without the week are only half the story.
- ✓After the next gala, write the new times the same day in Finzy — not into the old tab, not into the group chat.
Archive the PBs, open the app
Holly races 50 and 100 free, 50 back, 50 fly. Short-course PBs live in a Google Sheet; long-course times from July are in a camera roll. Freeze the sheet, write the eight numbers that exist, put them in Finzy, log Monday’s main set. Saturday then has a baseline. You do not rebuild 2023.
Parents can start this for a younger swimmer. By the early teens they should own it.
Spreadsheets are fine for a few events. They break when you mix 25m and 50m, share with a parent, or lose a tab.
