2.4mi OW swim race. Wetsuit or No wetsuit?
I'm doing a 2.4 mile open water swim in a river near the Jersey Shore next weekend http://navesinkswim.com/ and the water temp is expected to be around 68-69 degrees F. Seems pretty obvious that I should be wearing my wetsuit like every single other person doing the race that day.
However, I'm training for IMLou where wetsuits will not be legal. I don't really care much about this actual swim race. I just need practice with OW swimming and since I have never swam this far before, I thought it would be a nice practice run in real race-like conditions.
Part of me says to just wear my wetsuit, be less cold, and get one 2.4mi swim under my belt and worry more about RR's for IMLou when it gets a bit closer to IMLou later in the summer. The other part of me says to suffer through the cold and not have the help of the bouyancy of the wetsuit, because if I can get through that it will be a more realistic RR and I can get a slightly better idea of what my time will be and how I feel after doing that distance.
If it matters, my totally uneducated guess on my total time will be in the range of 1:15:00-1:25:00
2 main questions:
1) Should I wear my wetsuit or not? (I use an Xterra Vortex 3 sleeveless)
2) Should I actually try to race this thing, or just go at a normal IM pace and have a better RR?
Comments
given your issues -- OWS practice -- and the water temp, I would wear the wetsuit and then let you RR's closer to the race be wetsuit free.
you need the confidence in the distance first
if it were me and I wasn't riding and then running after, I would "race" it at what that means for you.
Plenty of time to practice pacing much, much closer to the race.