Looks like Masters swimmers have decided on the best new suit available right now - probably a combination of price / value / and length of use.
I am at the Long Beach SCM - west coast "nationals" and the winner is: The Blue Seventy by a ratio of about 50 to 1 over the LZR.
People are either wearing one of the older suits (some of them are to be had for $25) or a Blue Seventy. There is still a bit of "confusion" over which Blue70 to get - I saw quite a few of the open water models. But I think I have seen a total of 3 (including mine) LZRs at the entire meet. No kidding Speedo wants the coaches to ban the Blue70.
Personal comparison - 50 Free - Blue 70 = 23.25 /// LZR = 23.44 (but I had a poor dive and a poor turn - I would still rank them about even)
Were they allowed to swim in the open-water version?
Sure, why not? It is virtually the same suit. As Patrick noted, I wore a knee-length version of the suit. I actually have the Nero 10K (the OW version). The only difference between it and the Nero Comp is the zipper: the Comp version is more aerodynamic (and, I was told, more prone to failure though I've never seen it happen). The 10k was something like $40 cheaper at the time and I didn't feel like paying $40 for a zipper.
I did a little experiment. Saturday night I led off a 400 medley relay wearing jammers and a regular latex cap. I went 57.73. A respectable time, about 0.3 seconds slower than I did last year (wearing a FSII, which I don't think is faster than jammers for me). Oh, I was shaved too (arms/legs/torso).
I did this to get some approximate idea of the effect of the suits since I was slated to swim that event the next day in the morning against Mike Ross. I was a little more motivated for that race, to say the least, and planned to wear the B70 and a silicone cap.
Since the leadoff swim was 7:30 at night (based on recent prelim/finals meets, I seem to swim about 0.5-1.0 sec slower at night), was after three events (200 fly, 50 back, 200 back) and was without any competition (or even much warmup), I decided ahead of time that I would need to drop more than 1.0 second from this time for me to consider the effect of the suit significant.
I went 1.8 seconds faster (55.90), so from this VERY crude expt I would consider the "enhancement" on the order of 0.5-1.0 second for the 100 SCM back (an event where I spend half the time underwater). I freely admit this is just an educated guess, based on my experience and assessing how much faster I thought I would go when less tired and more motivated the next day: I expected to break 57 and instead I broke 56.
In the spring I'll do some more expts (at a trials/finals meet), just thought I'd share.
By the way, this is the fourth meet I've worn this suit, I suppose it might be approaching the end of its life though I don't really notice it. (Maybe it is a little easier to get on than before, I suppose.)
One last thing: it is MUCH more comfortable wearing the B70 in an indoor meet in cold weather, compared to wearing it last summer at LCM nationals.
Were they allowed to swim in the open-water version?
Sure, why not? It is virtually the same suit. As Patrick noted, I wore a knee-length version of the suit. I actually have the Nero 10K (the OW version). The only difference between it and the Nero Comp is the zipper: the Comp version is more aerodynamic (and, I was told, more prone to failure though I've never seen it happen). The 10k was something like $40 cheaper at the time and I didn't feel like paying $40 for a zipper.
I did a little experiment. Saturday night I led off a 400 medley relay wearing jammers and a regular latex cap. I went 57.73. A respectable time, about 0.3 seconds slower than I did last year (wearing a FSII, which I don't think is faster than jammers for me). Oh, I was shaved too (arms/legs/torso).
I did this to get some approximate idea of the effect of the suits since I was slated to swim that event the next day in the morning against Mike Ross. I was a little more motivated for that race, to say the least, and planned to wear the B70 and a silicone cap.
Since the leadoff swim was 7:30 at night (based on recent prelim/finals meets, I seem to swim about 0.5-1.0 sec slower at night), was after three events (200 fly, 50 back, 200 back) and was without any competition (or even much warmup), I decided ahead of time that I would need to drop more than 1.0 second from this time for me to consider the effect of the suit significant.
I went 1.8 seconds faster (55.90), so from this VERY crude expt I would consider the "enhancement" on the order of 0.5-1.0 second for the 100 SCM back (an event where I spend half the time underwater). I freely admit this is just an educated guess, based on my experience and assessing how much faster I thought I would go when less tired and more motivated the next day: I expected to break 57 and instead I broke 56.
In the spring I'll do some more expts (at a trials/finals meet), just thought I'd share.
By the way, this is the fourth meet I've worn this suit, I suppose it might be approaching the end of its life though I don't really notice it. (Maybe it is a little easier to get on than before, I suppose.)
One last thing: it is MUCH more comfortable wearing the B70 in an indoor meet in cold weather, compared to wearing it last summer at LCM nationals.
