Anyone going to start practicing in a in the big rubberband?

Anyone out there going to start doing some pool practices in a wetsuit due to the new "proposed" rule change of allowing wetsuits in USMS open water swims? :frustrated: Kristina, This thread probably belongs in the OW Forum, but: The rule hasn't been voted in and is not the radical change that it has been presented as. Wetsuits are already allowed in all USMS OW competition except national championships. In such races, there is a separate wetsuit category that is populated by slower swimmers. All the proposal does is allow the same thing to happen at national championships, at the discretion of the race director. The race director can also decide to start the wetsuit-cladd swimmers in a separate wave (this is true at any race). Personally, I don't believe I will ever wear a wetsuit in a competition unless the water is too cold for me to swim in briefs. The only other possible exception I can think of is the Chesapeake Bay swim, since almost everyone wears them. IMO, the greater change is allowing the FINA approved wetsuit lookalikes like the Xterra Velocity. I think race directors may have their hand full distinguishing between them and "real" wetsuits. www.xterrawetsuits.com/velocity.html By the way, if you don't like the proposal, you should show up at next year's convention and speak out against it. Even if you aren't a delegate, you still have a voice...and the convention is in your backyard (Atlanta)... And I'm curious: could you explain to me why you have no problem with technical suits like the FSPro (and presumably the LZR) but react so strongly against wetsuits?

Any thoughts on how to deal with the ridicule in practice? The way things are going, I guess I had better learn to swim with fins as well. . . Maybe with the approval of wetsuits and fins, the powers that be will approve swimming with paddles and buoys - then I'm in! :party2: As to ridicule, ignore it. You know what you're doing. As to fins, I'll give you my usual :thhbbb: and just say that I recently found out a teammate of mine did competitive monofin swimming in Korea after a RC tear. Now, she has the finest underwaters of any woman I know and wear fins a lot in practice. Oh, she also just won the 50 and 100 back at Austin. :cheerleader:

At the 3 different clubs we practice with most often there are almost always 1 or 2 swimmers in wetsuits...pretty common when we were in Colorado as well.

At the 3 different clubs we practice with most often there are almost always 1 or 2 swimmers in wetsuits...pretty common when we were in Colorado as well. No kidding? I can't imagine someone wearing a wetsuit for a pool workout.

Can't do *** in one. Never tried fly.

Wetsuits have been a part of OW/Triathlons for years so I'm not sure where all this is coming from...aside from a recent update to the USMS rules. As for training in a wetsuit I see almost exclusively swimmers involved in OW/Tri's and the reality is if your going to race in those events that allow wetsuits you should probably spend some time getting familiar with it. On allowing fins in races guess what...Randy's OW race down in Bonaire (May be a different location) in the fall has a category for that as well!

If you wear a wetsuit you are no longer considered a swimmer. And, if you show up to a pool practice in one you should have your pool and USMS membership permanently revoked.

I nearly did a workout in a wetsuit.In Feb the heater at my main pool broke.They kept the pool open but almost no one was swimming and no one for very long.After one truncated workout I thought"I'll just wear my wetsuit tomorrow."Instead I changed my schedule so I could use another pool.Good thing I did or Geek would have banished me.

My educated guess is that once the wetsuits are allowed in OW championships, you will no longer see just the "slower" swimmers using them. You will see a trend towards the fastest swimmers using them. Perhaps, but I don't think so. Big Shoulders and other races -- like this one -- have been allowing wetsuits for years. The fastest swimmers still mostly swim without them. In fact, both those races allowed wetsuits even when they were national championships and somehow civilization marched on. (They got around the rules by starting the wetsuit-clad swimmers in a separate wave.) There is one big difference between this rule and allowing suits like the LZR: there is a separate awards category for wetsuit-wearing swimmers. Given the distaste that most "real swimmers" have for wetsuits, why would that category suddenly become the more important one? The only reason I can see is to train for a triathlon.

Chris is right: you can relax. I have probably swum in 60-80 USMS-sanctioned OW races over the past 10 years, in California, Oregon, and Illinois, and I think every event except one or two that I have ever done has had a wetsuit division. The definite exception is the Trans-Tahoe Relay, which seems to have an unofficial naked division instead. I think also maybe they didn't have a wetsuit division at FINA Worlds in 2006. I swam in a race once that was designated as the USMS 1500m national championship, but I think even then there was a wetsuit division. Maybe the winner(s) in that division just couldn't call themselves national champions. The fastest swimmers have had ample opportunity to adopt wetsuits but have not, although many do wear technical suits such as fastskins. Lisa Hazen, Susan Preston, and Suzanne Heim-Bowen would not be caught dead in wetsuits, at least not for a little 2-mile lake swim, even though Susan in particular always looks as if she is absolutely freezing when she finishes because she is so lean. As Chris says, the wetsuit swimmers are almost always slower than the non-wetsuit swimmers. At any rate, don't worry about it. They always score the wetsuits separately and they nearly always start them separately as well. Just don't enter the wetsuit division if you don't want to race wetsuit wearers, and if you do want to race the fastest people. And even if someone in a wetsuit comes in ahead of you, you can always say, "well, s/he had an advantage from the wet suit." (When a man outswims me, I like to console myself by thinking "well, he had an advantage from the testosterone.")