Use a wetsuit when you can

Back in May, I raced in the Kinetic Sprint Triathlon. It was a fun event. At some point, I may even get around to posting a RR on that one here too. But for now, I want to note something interesting I found while looking around at some recent race results. After the Kinetic, I was quite surprised at how poorly I ranked on my swim time - #35. Now, many folks would be happy with that placement - but how many of them were NCAA D-3 All Americans? I certainly wasn't trying or expecting to win the swim that day. I hadn't done any swim focused anything in a long time. Heck - I'd just come off a serious marathon cycle. Still, I was quite surprised that 34 people showed up who could swim faster than me - OK, my ego took a bruising. At the time, I simply chalked it up to a bad day & left it at that.

Today, decided to compare this with some previous races. I found a couple others who had done both races so I had something of an external basis for comparison. Here is a summary:

My Results

Culpeper Sprint Tri 0:11:30 0:50:02 0:20:49

Kinetic Sprint Tri 0:10:45 0:48:39 0:19:33

% Improvement 7% 3% 6%

Competitor #1

Kinetic Sprint 0:11:45 0:45:46 0:20:27

Culpeper Sprint 0:13:54 0:45:07 0:20:38

% Improvement 15% 1%

Competitor #2

Kinetic Sprint 0:11:57 0:46:55 0:21:03

Culpeper Sprint 0:16:13 0:48:18 0:22:01

% Improvement 26% 3% 4%

First, my own internal comparison is quite favorable. I improved substantially in every discpline. The swim was the same distance in each race - 0:45 improvement there. The bike leg was done 2:00 faster even though it was 3 miles longer - huge gain by a wide margin. The 5K run was 1:13 faster at Kinetic. Also, the run & bike rankings support the improvement in times. So, I improved relative to the competition.

But how to explain the swims? My swim at Kinetic was 0:45 faster than Culpeper, but I dropped in placement from 13 to 35. Did no one show up to swim at Culpeper? Possibly, however, my other previous results are consistent with Culpeper - the Kinetic result is the outlier. Did a bunch of great swimmers show up at Kinteic? Also possible, this is where the comparison with other competitors comes in. Competitor #1 had basically the exact same bike & run splits for the two events. But he was 2:10 faster in the swim. Competitior #2 improved everywhere, but a full 4:16 improvement in swim time seems almost unheard of. On percentage basis, Competitor #1 improved by 15% and Competitor #2 by 25%! It is difficult to believe that these types of improvements are simply a result of training - something else must be happening here.

The only thing I can think of is wetsuits! At Culpeper, wetsuits were not legal - water temp was too warm. At Kinetic, pretty much everyone wore a wetsuit - except me. I chose not to, thinking that any time I saved on the swim would be negated by a slow T1. I now suspect this was a mistake. I think competitor #1 is the most interesting comparison in that, there is no evidence this person was in better shape in the second event. So, it is possible that the entire 15% improvement was in fact due to wearing the wetsuit. Based on this, it is entirely possible that I could have saved 15% or about 1:20 seconds on my swim time. In other words, with a wetsuit, that day - all else equal - I should have swum 9:25. Interetsingly, that time would would have given me a swim rank of 9, which would have been consistent with my other results - namely close to, or in the top 10!

Admittedly, there are a number of weaknesses in this analysis. 1) Only two comparison points in hardly conclusive. 2) I do not know for 100% sure that the competitors did in fact wear wetsuits, but from my memory, I don't recall seeing anyone else choose not to wear a wetsuit. 3) I have not controlled for the effects of training & simple improvement in the comparisons. So this isn't definitive & does not prove that if you wear a wetsuit, you will have a swim time that is 15% faster. However, it clearly makes a difference - so wear one when you can!