Let me preface this by three things -

1. This was my first race in a wetsuit
2. I live in a tropical country, and have never trained in cold water
3. The water wasn't - that - cold, about 18C

This was 70.3 Budapest last weekend. I was set for the race, I had just come off of an Olympic distance the week before where I had a normal (for me) swim of 1500m/32 minutes. I didn't leave nearly everything during the oly race and the swim was extremely easy, but I am sort of new to Tri so I didn't want to be gasping like I did in my previous races, so I did a lot of swimming the past few months and tried to take it easy on the swim. After the race I knew I took it way too easy, as I felt really great in the water during that race.

Fast forward a week to 70.3 Budapest, following a shorter but hard taper (this was my first 70.3). I did a few swims during that week and minor lifting. This was all I did that week. I figured I was on track for my swim as the 70.3 is only ~400m more. I was expecting a decent swim, I don't set swim time targets as I suck at sighting and essentially just want to finish swimming. I've swam once or twice in my wetsuit but it is damn hot here so I really just put it on for a few laps in the pool. Again I live on the equator, so it's not cool here at all. Anywhere. I am sure my open water temps in the tri's here are warm even when considering pool temps.

I did warm up on the water a bit (I thought it was damn cold water), and felt a little strange. My HR was a bit higher than I was expecting for just swimming a 100m or so.

Race start - 200m into the swim and I am literally rolling on my back and gasping for breath. Haven't even reached the first turn buoy. Quick check of my watch and my HR was 165bpm. For the next 1000m, I was just trying to breathe. Rolled on my back several times, changed stroke, whatever I had to do. After all the training and time spent over the past few months. Closest I have ever come to dropping out of a race, it was so demoralizing. I felt like my chest was extremely constricted and I couldn't get in enough air on inhale. I even unzipped a little bit of my wetsuit about 500m after the start, but that did not help. The wetsuit didn't necessarily feel uncomfortably tight around the neck, I would even pull on the front of the neck in the water and it didn't seem to help at all with ease of breathing.

The last 900m were a bit better. When I was in my stroke, I was fast, but it seemed my heart rate was just going way too high to maintain a pace for very long before I had to take a break for a few strokes.

I finished the swim in 0:41.xx minutes.

The rest of the race went like this;
5:13 finish time, 2:35 bike and 1:45 run.

So does cold water contribute to this? Was the wetsuit too tight?? I have another 70.3 in Korea which will also be a wetsuit race I think. I don't know if the water will be as cold, though.

Edit - my HRM showed a max of 165 at the end of my race, which is exactly what I saw when I rolled over in the water to check it - so highest HR during my whole race was 200m after the start.