tri shorts vs bike shorts for 1/2 IM

Are you sore right now in your bike shorts or in your tri shorts? 

Personally, I find tri shorts more comfortable than bike shorts for rides of all lengths, as long as I make sure to use a product like chamois butter before heading out.  It definitely took a few weeks to work up to it, though.  All I'm saying is... don't rule out the tri shorts!

I train in bike shorts and race in tri shorts. I will do a long brick or two before a longer race in my tri shorts just to make sure they feel good.

I find when I race stuff I worry or think about while training just goes out the window as I focus on racing. 

I think of the 3 types of bike shorts I wear one would dry okay others would take longer. If  you want to try it out, get them fully wet and do your long bike/run brick of the week and see how it works. Or if you want to take a more modest approach get them wet and then do an hour ride and see how they do....and then if the work ok do a long brick with them. 

on my long rides (i.e. >40 mi) , have had some issues with the tri-shorts , but invariably with some of that wonder chammy butter , alls well

am not very fast so I need all the reduction in T-time that I can get , hence I never wanted to go with bike shorts for my HIM.

I have generally used tri shorts for 1/2 IM distance, although I always get a bit saddle sore since I almost always train in bike shorts - and the tri shorts have a smaller pad. But, my tri shorts were expensive whereas the bike shorts were not, so I used the bike shorts for training and tri shorts for racing only.

For an IM, I wore bike shorts under my wetsuit and it worked fine. The shorts I wore were the desoto 400-mile. THe pad is good, but it's not so thick that it sops up water. But even if it did, it will usually dry pretty quick. But, I changed to tri shorts for the run; I don't think you could comfortably run in bike shorts. 

Good luck!

tom