Originally Posted by SwimmerMike

Yes, wear a wet-suit if it is wet-suit legal, otherwise lava shorts. The lava shorts will help with body position and reduce the effort you need to put out in the swim. My advice for a front of the pack swimmer, would be different. Today I was doing my swim workout, the guy next to me was mixing up using a pull bouy and not using it. He was probably a 1:40-1:50 per 100 yard swimmer. The difference in his body position and what I perceived as the effort he was putting out was much better with the pull bouy than w/o it.