Swimming style or triathlon wetsuits are designed as they are to be more flexible to allow maximum movement during the swimming motion.
The downside of this is that they are often not much more than 3mm thick and in some cases such as the high end wetsuits, 1.5mm, which means they are especially prone to damage.
Over time and the more you use the suit, coupled with those instances where perhaps you forget or are too tired to maintain the suit after an event, the suit invariably takes a beating and starts to show signs of wear and tear.
Instead of going out to buy a new wetsuit though, it is possible to repair them and do so yourself, without spending lots of money.
In this first of a two part blog, we will look at how to repair damage to the inside of your wetsuit, where you can often see less obvious signs of impending damage due to seam rips or wear on the inner fabric.
And a few minutes later...!
In our experience the winter months see quite a bit of wear and tear for a few reasons: you're often in a hurry to get the suit off to warm up, more rocks around on the beach due to storms, more surf, more chance of falling over or scuffing on entrance/exit... and so on.
So our advice is this: look after your wetsuit, but when it does start to show signs of age, get on the case as soon as possible, fix it before the wear becomes a major problem, and the wetsuit should continue to last you for a few more seasons.