Just giving you some tough love.

If any of my friends told me what you typed in your original post, I would have told them to quit being a big <rhymes with juicy> and jump in the water. If you've been training for a year, you've had plenty of time to check out trinewbies and/or beginnertriathlete as well as pick up at least one book. All of these cover the topic of wetsuits and swimming in cold water.

You're planning to do a triathlon so HTFU. Otherwise you might as well go to france and hang out with the rest of the...well, you get the picture