(Background: the only wetsuit I’ve ever had is a sleeveless (it used to have lycra short sleeves, but they died years ago so I cut them off) wetsuit I bought used back in 1992 or so)
Finally broke down and bought a De Soto T1 (Front Wave top, Black Pearl bottom), which arrived yesterday, and which I brought to the pool this morning. Monday, I had done a simple 2x200 (scy) on 2:45 without a wetsuit as a benchmark in anticipation of the new wetsuit. 900yd warmup, then 2:28 and 2:30. Didn’t push very hard, and I don’t swim as fast on Monday mornings, for some reason. When I do sets of 200s (say 4 or 5 on 2:40/2:45) in a normal workout, I bring them down from 2:28 to 2:25 or so. At this point, I have good endurance (long sets with little rest), but very little speed: I can’t do anything much faster than my interval pace without dying.
Today, did the same warmup, then put the suit on. First, the plastic bag over the hand/foot makes life very easy when putting the wetsuit on. Piece of cake. Did an easy 50, and almost hit the far wall on my flip turn, because I was going much faster than I realized. Then did my 2x200 on 2:45: 2:09 and 2:11. No kidding. Yes, I was psyched to use the new toy (I don’t get new toys very often), and I pushed a little harder, but wow! A few minutes later I did a hard (not all out) 100 in :59.
Conservatively, looks like this wetsuit saves me ~:08/100yds over no wetsuit. I had calculated that my old wetsuit (when it was still “new”) saved me < :05/100yds over no wetsuit.
Boy, it sure gets hot doing a pool swim in a wetsuit…
I had very similar results in my T1. Swam IMLP in 1.05, 15 minutes faster than IMmoo last year, 5 minutes faster than IMFL and 18 minutes faster than Ultramax athree years ago.
I does get very hot in the pool, but it was fun to see the tiles go by at almost a “swimmers” speed.
Pardon me for being shocked at the magnitude of the improvement.
Ken,
I am glad to see that you have a new wetsuit.
However, I seem to recall a thread from a while back when you were poo-pooing replacing your old cut-off wetsuit and NOT believing the claims of how much better/faster the new wetsuits are. I am glad that you have seen the light. Of course, I would be advocating for another brand
I would suggest to anyone who has an entry level wetsuit that is older than 3 - 4 years, to seriously consider a new wetsuit. I think that you will be pleasently surprised, as Ken has been, of the improvemnets in swim performance that you will discover.
as others have noted, this is pretty typical. you’ll get about 3/4 of the benefit of a well made fullsuit in a well made longjohn, that is, if you get 8sec/100yd from a fullsuit, you’ll get 6sec out of a longjohn.
any decent fullsuit will get you the advantage you got out of your T1. the measure of an exceptional fullsuit, for a good swimmer such as yourself, is not in how you do over 200yd, but in the ability to change speeds later in the swim. you’re good enough to swim in a pack, and your speed in an older AG means near the front of that pack. if you get dropped by a faster swimmer or faster pack, it’s likely to happen just after rounding a buoy. it’s just like in a criterium, the pack bunches going into a turn, accordians out of the turn, and you have to go like mad as the elastic contracts, to make sure the elastic doesn’t snap right in front of you.
if the elastic snaps one or two swimmers in front of you, you’re in even bigger trouble, and you have to change pace to regain the feet of the last person not to get dropped.
the T1 works very nicely for bad or average swimmers, and it’s great for retailers because it fits a wider range of bodies than any other wetsuit, because of the ability to mix and match tops and bottoms. but none of that was part of the thinking behind this suit. it was designed for the very good swimmer. this is a swimmer’s wetsuit. and the whole reason for this suit’s existence is in its ability to change speeds. most other fullsuits come with a built-in cadence limiter, and you don’t realize it unless you really do check your stroke rate – number of strokes per second – later in the swim. if you really want to test the T1 versus another fullsuit, swim a 1000yd time trial, while swimming the 7th hundred as fast as you can. do this in a T1 and another fullsuit, and you’ll see what i’m talking about.
of course you can also change stroke rates quite easily in a longjohn, if the water’s not too cold. the problem is that the longjohn is just not as fast, it’s a four banger in a world of V8s.
of course you can also change stroke rates quite easily in a longjohn, if the water’s not too cold. the problem is that the longjohn is just not as fast, it’s a four banger in a world of V8s.
Dan,
Thank you for continuing to advocate the use of full-suits. I wish that I could have you, the Godfather of triathlon wetsuits, along on sales calls and at Demos when I get told point blank by many people that long-johns/sleeveless suits are “better”. That they are “faster” in a long-john/sleeveless suit and that, that is the only kind of wetsuit that they will sell or swim in.
“when I get told point blank by many people that long-johns/sleeveless suits are “better”. That they are “faster” in a long-john/sleeveless suit”
hey, in the *old *old days i got told point blank that no wetsuits are faster for “true swimmers” (i lose my feel for the water). then it was longjohns are faster (i lose my feel for the water). so, fine. i don’t argue. keep your feel for the water, but lose your feel for the podium.
go to the ITU’s website. look through its photo galleries. i’ll give you $100 for every photo of a pro athlete in a longjohn. you give me $10 for every pic of a pro athlete in a fullsuit. who’s going to do better on that bargain? why do you think all these athletes choose fullsuits, every last one of them? what sort of macrohallucination are they all succumbing to? do they not have pools and pool clocks with which to test the speed of these wetsuits?
keep your feel for the water, but lose your feel for the podium.
Dan,
That’s a great line. I will have to add that to the repatoire
Indeed, when you look at the ITU races, where it really is absolutly about performance, where a loss of even a few seconds in the swim can make or break the race and mean the difference between winning big money or going home empty handed, you see EVERYONE swimming in a full suit! No talk about feel or over-heating or other ambient issues with these guys. It really is about swim speed and performance and nothing else.
Pardon me for being shocked at the magnitude of the improvement.
Ken,
I am glad to see that you have a new wetsuit.
However, I seem to recall a thread from a while back when you were poo-pooing replacing your old cut-off wetsuit and NOT believing the claims of how much better/faster the new wetsuits are. I am glad that you have seen the light. Of course, I would be advocating for another brand
I doubt I dismissed how much faster the new suits are: I just didn’t know. Now I know.
By the way, I also tested my new LG Rocket last night
(this is what happens when your pent-up spending desires are released by finally selling your house)
any decent fullsuit will get you the advantage you got out of your T1. the measure of an exceptional fullsuit, for a good swimmer such as yourself, is not in how you do over 200yd, but in the ability to change speeds later in the swim. you’re good enough to swim in a pack, and your speed in an older AG means near the front of that pack.
Things must be different on the Left Coast, or the races I choose out here. I haven’t seen a “pack” in the water in any race I’ve done over the past umpteen years. None. I haven’t done a mass start race yet, but I haven’t been beaten out of the water by more than 2-3 people in my wave at any race, I haven’t been overtaken by a pack of faster swimmers in a later wave ever, and I don’t believe I’ve dragged more than half a dozen people total in all my races. It’s pretty much solo swimming for me, all the time.
Between the new wetsuit and the pack swimming I hear about, I’m not so much in awe as I used to be of some of the IM swim times I’ve seen from my fellow AGers.
“It’s pretty much solo swimming for me, all the time.”
i don’t understand that, unless you’re always first out of the water in your wave, or unless the only person faster than you in a swim is way faster than you. the way it is out here, if you’re that fast, you know everybody by name and face that swims faster than you in your AG. and you line up next to that person, and you hang on for dear life. somebody’s got to be 5sec per 100yd faster than me in pure speed before he can drop me. any less than that he’s got a passenger.
you know everybody by name and face that swims faster than you in your AG. and you line up next to that person, and you hang on for dear life. somebody’s got to be 5sec per 100yd faster than me in pure speed before he can drop me. any less than that he’s got a passenger.
Dan,
Bingo!
And as you pointed out, a great wetsuit allows you to do this much better - to accelerate when you need to and hang in there in that great draft as long as you can.
Anectdotally, there is no way that I could keep up with my key competition who were better swimmers than me in the pool. However, in open water, with a great wetsuit on and using some good, sound strategy and tactics, I was able to swim much faster in triathlon racing than my pool swimming times would indicate and thus be as close to the competition as I could, as we got back on land and the “real” racing began
What I find interesting about this thread is that the sole emphasis is on wetsuit speed. When I bought my first neoprene Body Glove wetsuit in the 1980s, my primary concern was staying warmer for the Lake Michigan tri swims. I didn’t even know that they were substantially faster to swim in. Now, you never hear anyone talk about the warmth benefit of wetsuits.
“It’s pretty much solo swimming for me, all the time.”
i don’t understand that, unless you’re always first out of the water in your wave, or unless the only person faster than you in a swim is way faster than you. the way it is out here, if you’re that fast, you know everybody by name and face that swims faster than you in your AG. and you line up next to that person, and you hang on for dear life. somebody’s got to be 5sec per 100yd faster than me in pure speed before he can drop me. any less than that he’s got a passenger.
Here are the top two swim splits in 45-49 at the NJ Triathlon in July (about 50 in my AG):
22:09 25:57
Throw in the top swim times of the 35-39s in my swim wave:
“Anectdotally, there is no way that I could keep up with my key competition who were better swimmers than me in the pool.”
back in the day when i swam a lot (i hope to get back to that again but, alas, i’m not there yet) i was a lot faster than i now and and i used to regularly come out with a couple of guys. in the pool, those guys would just about exactly lap me in a 500yd short course, and that means they were :35 or :40 faster than i was over this distance, 2min faster than me over 1.5km, in raw speed. yet we all came out together. they led, i followed. and i must say i wasn’t really on the edge during the swim. in a pool, if you take off 2sec behind a guy, and you swim on his feet, you can go 5sec faster/100yd without breaking a sweat. that’s 1:20 over an oly swim. if he’s got a nice, quiet, 2-beat kick, and/or if he’s big, it’s even easier to stick.
any decent fullsuit will get you the advantage you got out of your T1. the measure of an exceptional fullsuit, for a good swimmer such as yourself, is not in how you do over 200yd, but in the ability to change speeds later in the swim. you’re good enough to swim in a pack, and your speed in an older AG means near the front of that pack.
Things must be different on the Left Coast, or the races I choose out here. I haven’t seen a “pack” in the water in any race I’ve done over the past umpteen years. None. I haven’t done a mass start race yet, but I haven’t been beaten out of the water by more than 2-3 people in my wave at any race, I haven’t been overtaken by a pack of faster swimmers in a later wave ever, and I don’t believe I’ve dragged more than half a dozen people total in all my races. It’s pretty much solo swimming for me, all the time.
Between the new wetsuit and the pack swimming I hear about, I’m not so much in awe as I used to be of some of the IM swim times I’ve seen from my fellow AGers.
I would agree. I think that swims in East Coast triathlons tend to be more spread out. This is, perhaps, not surprising given the number of good swimmers on the west coast. There seems to be a lot more of the people who don’t know how to swim, based on my casual observation out East.
In reply to some other stuff, I’m glad to see you got a new wetsuit. I’m also glad you got a T1. I think you’ll like it a lot.
In reply to one of the people early on who said something along the lines of “duh, of course you are faster,” I’m curious how many people are actually going to the pool to make sure they are getting the 8-10sec/100yds that they should be. Especially doing a set like 20x100. Everyone feels faster in a wetsuit. Everyone is also going to be a little faster, even in a bad suit. But I wonder how many people have actually evaluated that speed.
