Westsuit vs. trisuit results

Triathlon Forum
1

I’m racing a sprint this weekend - 1/2 mile swim - was thinking of going without the wetsuit but figured I better check out the time difference. Now don’t bash the n=1 sample size, the multiple variables…its just my experience and opinion (or go ahead and bash - no worries…).

Swam 3x4 lengths without the wetsuit (in a tri-suit that I’ve compared to speedo and found equivalent). Swam 3x4 with wetsuit. Then 2x4 hard with and without.

Now the pool was a funky distance - like 30 yards - but basically the wetsuit was faster by about 5 seconds/100 yards (at least). Also stroke count with westuit - 18. Without = 20. My times within each set were very consistent - within about 1 sec.

So I figure I’m about 90 secs faster/mile in the wetsuit.

Now I’m good swimmer - top 10% easily and I’ve got pretty good body positioning so I imagine the benefits would be greater the more you tend to sink…

Also its a 13 year old Aleeda with short lycra sleeves. I wonder how a new De Soto dos/tres would compare? I hope to find out next year…

So not only am I way warmer and more comfortable during the warm-up, standing around before the start, and during the race - but I’m definitely faster! And it only takes 12 seconds to take off…

Oh yeah - wore my heart rate monitor and kept similar heart rates in the with and without swims…(checked after the fact).

De Soto - if you want me to compare your fancy new suit to my old one - just send me a suit - I’ll post my results and if its faster - I’ll buy it!

Hope this gives you some insight into something.

2

That sounds about right. My friend and I though we would test it at an olympic a few weeks ago. We and I swim stroke for stroke together and are both top 10% swimmers. He wore a rented wetsuit and I didn’t (neither of us have used one before). He beat my by almost three minutes in the water that day and had a great bike for him. I made up about 45 seconds in transition but that was all. We had been within five seconds of each other on the swim at the last three races we had done even when we started in different waves.

3

I didn’t realize you good swimmers benefitted that much from a wetsuit. I knew MOPers, like me, became almost dolphinlike in a wetsuit compared to not having one…OK, maybe like a tired and sick dolphin, but we certainly improve our times in a wetsuit. I was under the impression that the better swimmers disliked the wetsuit races because it took away some of their natural advantage in the water. So, maybe you are land mammals after all.

4

The wetsuit still benefits you more than us. Meaning that we prefer a non-wetsuit race because we have a larger lead out of the water (not that it matters for me, I can’t bike or run). Same as a windy course, even though it effects every one hurts the bikers less as they are more comfortable and able to deal with the adverse conditions.