Seconds per 100 that is… The BlueSeventy PointZero3 name actually refers to the frictional coefficient of the swimskin, which is 0.03, compared to ~0.10 for something like a Speedo Fastskin, or 0.50 for human skin. But who really cares about all that? How does that number translate into a number we really care about, namely how fast we go in the pool.

In order to try to answer this question, which I’d heard rumored was as much as five seconds per 100, I headed off the pool. The suit, which works in two ways - reducing the friction over your body AND increasing your buoyancy slightly - is very comfortable, and swimming in it requires no changes to your stroke, unlike swimming in a wetsuit, where you really should change your stroke a bit to take maximal advantage of the suit. In the PZ3, you just swim, and, *hopefully*, go faster.

So I wanted to test a few things - maximal speed, cruising speed, and then consistency over a steady interval set. Maximal speed is a bit flaky, since warm-up, turn-quality, etc. plays such a large role. But I can pretty consistently bang out 31 second 100’s when swimming fast. In the PZ3? 29.5 at what I perceived to be the same exertion level. So far, so good. I also did a cruising 200 just to see how it did for steady, which I can normally nail at 2:35-2:40, and I was 2:28. Again, so far, so good.

But this was all one-off stuff. How about a workout where consistency is key? So I had a good set - 30 x 100 as 10×100 swim on 1:30, 10×100 pull-buoy only on 1:25, 10×100 pull paddles on 1:20. The swim 100’s were really good, and I was consistently 2-3 seconds faster than when I had done the workout the week before. The pulling sets were harder to compare since the pull buoy slipped down so easily on the smooth skin of the suit, so I would call those basically useless for comparison.
So, after my basically unscientific study, I have concluded that I like this swim skin an awful lot. Thanks guys… To give a reference point about this suit, a good wetsuit will save you 8-10 seconds per 100, so to have just a swim skin save you 2-3 seconds is pretty darn fast. As with all these sort of things, I’ll offer the disclaimer “your mileage may vary.” Or rather, I should say “your timeage may vary.” Of course, timeage isn’t a word, but never mind…