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)
55.90
wow chris
that's fast
congratulations
ande
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.
55.90
wow chris
that's fast
congratulations
ande
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.
