I decided to buy a swimskin this year, encouraged by monty’s reviews and knowing that I’ll have a couple non-wetsuit swims this season. I was curious, though, about how the skin would affect an adult-onset average triathlete swimmer like myself rather than a fish like monty. I have no background in swimming, having started about a year ago in preparation for my first season in triathlon. I still do lots of things wrong and in recent months have been improving very rapidly. I also wanted to see how the suit performed over my tri-suit, since that is how it will be used in competition.
There are several things that affect the accuracy of the results - and they are not very accurate. First, I am no where near as consistent as monty. My splits are all over the place. Second, I was pressed for time, so just had a 200 yard warmup and went right into it. I was still “getting into the groove” in the first couple 100’s. Third, I meant to do a third set, putting the suit back on after removing it, but the lifeguard that I know who helped me put it on before the first set was gone by the time to do the third and I felt odd asking a random stranger to zip me up into my superman suit.
The tests were done on the 1:45, with a DeSoto Riviera suit with the float pad underneath the Blue Seventy PZ3TX. The suit is TIGHT. I am 5’9 and 160 and was wearing the medium. In the pre-swim shower, the water just beads and slides off the suit, like I had just been dipped in rain-x. OK, the results:
With skin and tri-suit:
1:24.5/1:25/1:22.5/1:22.5/1:21.6
With speedo
1:23.6/1:24.6/1:23.4/1:23.9/1:24
Average split with the skin = 1:23.3
Average split without = 1:23.9
Because of my short warmup, I do not think these averages are representative of the suit’s performance. I think my swimming in the last three 100’s with the skin is more comparable to the swimming I did without the skin because by then I had found my groove.
Avg. of last 3 100’s with the skin = 1:22.2
Using that data, I averaged 1.7 sec/100 faster with the skin. That equals 35 seconds over HIM distance - my focus this season. Does this make wearing the skin worth it? I would have to do a test with just the DeSoto Riviera to tell. It does make the DeSoto Liftfoil seem like a very attractive option for non-wetsuit swims assuming swimming with it on is roughly equal to swimming in a speedo. Are these tests, given my limitations on consistency, accurate enough to discern a 1.7s difference? Probably not.
So, after all that, results I think are inconclusive - but my hunch is that it is faster than what these results indicate. My splits in the suit were in a downward trajectory when I switched.