I did not record my final QWERTY speed before switching to Colemak.  I typed nothing but Colemak for a little more than 12 months and reached a max speed of 72 wpm, with a normal speed of at least 10 less than that.

I then switched back to QWERTY as I was working with other people a lot, and casually tried the speed test again (in QWERTY) after a month of QWERTY, with very little expectations.  I was surprised I could do 78 wpm, just goofing around.  I could have tried to gun for a higher speed, I guess -- but typing in QWERTY as a speed sport isn't really motivating enough for me to try to excel.

My switch back to QWERTY was purely for social convenience.  I do intend to get back to Colemak.   I wish I could keep both skills simultaneously like some do, but it seems like layouts are jealous masters -- there is at least a week of misery when I switch between them.  However, it looks like once that week is past, I could regain the familiarity I had when I last used the layout.  I was pleasantly surprised that my QWERTY had *not* been crippled from 12 months of disuse.  I feel equally confident that I can regain Colemak when I switch back.

It is also instructive that I didn't really have a good subjective sense of speed, whether on QWERTY or Colemak.   I can of course tell when I am substantially slower because I'm struggling to remember keys, but beyond a certain OK speed, I am not really exploiting that speed during business as usual, so 68 or 78 doesn't matter.  Thus, unless one is a copyist and productivity is strictly measured by the number of bytes transcribed, comfort easily trumps speed as an advantage to be aimed for.

I switched form hunt-pecking qwerty to Dvorak, than discovered Colemak. I newer managed before to sustain touch type on qwerty because of so much floating over the keyboard but I did it.

It is suprising for me that I can now do touch typing on qwerty with speed matching other layouts and with comfort matching colemak. I think that the "easier" layouts helped me to learn the keys positions whilst letter layout is another matter.

The point is that I am confused what to do now... I abadoned Dvorak, which feels substaitialy easier, because of socializing in the office - it is very hard to even hunt-peck on somone others qwerty keyboard.

Switching between colemak-qwerty is a way easier but I feel only slight change with the two layouts - colemak might be very well optimized but with certain texts the qwerty might be even easier. Furthermore I think the comparision weighting on the main colemak page is not "real". Typing on qwerty I mostly rest my fingers on top row - I just move finger when it is necessary and stay with it till I need to move it somewhere else. The "meters trawelled' counter is certainly inaccurate for qwerty.

In fact I think best and easiest optimization of qwerty would be just switching 'c-d, n-j' thats all ;-)

I am very interested in stories of keeping up both qwerty and optimized layout at the same time - does anyone do it !!!