REV3 Williamsburg 70.3 Race Report - The Swim From Hell

This past weekend, I decided to partake in the inaugural Rev3 70.3 Williamsburg race in historic Williamsburg, VA. This was one of those last minute decisions as I only signed up last week. I originally had planned to join some of my MoCo Mafia team members for the Masochistic Metric, a hilly ride that is part of the Garrett County Gran Fondo in Deep Creek, MD. I did the Diabolical Double last year which was very challenging. I didn’t really feel that I needed to prove anything by doing it again and thought the hills were actually a bit of overkill for my Ironman Lake Placid training. With my 14th wedding anniversary this past week, I thought Williamsburg would be a nice weekend with my wife while still getting in some decent training for Lake Placid. Going into the race, everything I had read about the course led me to believe this would not be very challenging. Both the bike and run courses were listed as a fairly fast with some mixed rollers. With a Sunday forecast in the 90‘s, the only real concern was heat.

My wife and I headed to Williamsburg late Friday evening hoping to bypass most the heavy traffic on Interstate 95 - no such luck. Even at 9 p.m., traffic was stop and go and the 3-hour drive turned into 5 hours.  I always dread travel involving I-95 South for this exact reason.  We arrived in Williamsburg just after 10 p.m., checked in and went to bed. The practice swim started at 8 a.m. followed by packet pickup and bike check-in. 

Saturday went as planned.  I met up with my friend Sara who was also doing the race, and we headed over to the James River where the swim portion of the race would take place. The water temp was a nice 76 degrees, and the river had very little current. I was feeling confident about the swim portion of this race, although there still was some doubt if wetsuits would be legal. Wetsuits cannot be worn competitively in a USAT sanctioned race if the water temperature is higher than 78 degrees. If the temperature exceeds 82 degrees, wetsuits can’t be worn at all.  Since I wasn’t planning to place, I expected to wear a wetsuit even if the temperature was over 78 degrees, but it would put me in a special wetsuit wave.

After the practice swim, we picked up our packets, listened to the mandatory race briefing, then I racked my bike in T1. The race had two transition areas. The T1 area was near the swim portion of the race at the James River while the T2 area was located on the campus of William & Mary College. I am not a huge fan of races with two transition areas, but REV3 seemed to have things laid out pretty smoothly especially for an inaugural race.

For the rest of the day, my wife and I did various things around Williamsburg. Race day came early as transition opened at 4:30 a.m. We setup T2 first then hopped a Rev3 shuttle to T1 roughly five miles away.  I rode over with Sara so my wife could sleep in a bit.  The alarm went off at 3:45 a.m. for a light breakfast of grocery-store pastries.  We were staying at a Holiday Inn Express so I didn’t have access to a stove to prepare my normal pre-race breakfast of eggs and toast, but I wasn’t overly concerned since I wasn’t expecting a super-challenging race. At 4:20 a.m., I headed down to the lobby to meet Sara and head over to the race. I hadn’t bothered to look out any windows and had no idea what the weather was doing. I had listened to a local forecast on Friday which said there was a possibility of rain later in the day so I wasn’t concerned about rain; that was a mistake. As I walked into the lobby of the hotel and got my first glimpse of the outside, I was greeted with a huge rain downpour. My first thought was “What The F@#K!” This was not a good sign for how the day’s race would go. Sara swung around in her car, and we headed over. Neither of us were very happy with the current weather status nor had either of us really prepared for doing a race in the rain. Fortunately, I had put all my gear in three plastic bags which would protect my gear from normal rainfall although not the heavy downpour of the moment. 

Upon arriving at T2, we hung out in the car for 15 minutes or so hoping the rain would subside or at least lessen to something other than a downpour. The weather forecast had definitely deteriorated as now they were saying it could rain off and on for the entire day. The rain finally did lighten to a more manageable rain. We placed our run gear in our transition spots. Sara had managed to secure a plastic bag for her stuff and I had one for mine, so as long as the rain stayed light our stuff had a decent chance of staying dry. The numbers on the bike racks were not faring as well. The number on my spot had started to fall off, so I was a bit concerned that finding the spot during the race would be a challenge.

After leaving our stuff at T2, we hopped on the shuttle to head over to T1 and the swim start of the race. You could tell from the expressions of many of the other athletes on the shuttle that we weren’t the only ones caught by surprise over the morning weather. Some athletes looked quite nervous. By the time we arrived at T1, the rain had decreased to a light drizzle that would pick up in intensity here and there but was a lot better than the initial downpour we woke up to.

After checking my bike and getting everything as ready as possible in the rain, we prepared for the race. I sprayed some sunscreen in case the sun made an appearance later in the day. I also put some Body Glide on although I later would discover it was insufficient to prevent chafing from the wetsuit under my arms (I hate when that happens). I guess I rushed applying the stuff due to the rain.  We headed a quarter mile down to the river where the swim would take place.

The swim course was essentially a big rectangle that you would swim clockwise. There were actually two sets of buoys set up, one for the 70.3 race and another set up for the Olympic Distance race occurring simultaneously. This would turn out to be a pain during the race (more on that later) as the Olympic distance buoys were set up as a smaller rectangle closer in since they didn’t have to swim out as far.

The official race day water temp ended up being 77.6 degrees so we just made the cutoff for wetsuits (I guess the rain had one benefit). By this point, the rain had stopped although no one knew for how long. We got our wetsuits on, and I managed to get in a quick warm-up swim before the race started. The swim would be done in waves based on age and sex. My wave consisting of males between 40-45 and between 20-25 was the third to go. The cutoff time for this swim was 1:10 from the start of the last wave. Originally the waves were supposed to start five minutes apart but a delay to the race start squeezed that to three minutes.  Still, I wasn’t concerned about the cut-off time. I had my wetsuit and no reason to believe I couldn’t have a comparable time to my last 70.3 race which was 48 minutes. In fact, I was really expecting that I was going to be able to do this swim in under 45 minutes.

The pros were the first in the water.  As the second wave hit the water, I headed into the chute.  The race had a beach start with a run into the water. The water was shallow enough to walk practically to the first buoy. I had done my normal buoy count and saw that it was four buoys to the first turn, then six buoys to the second turn and three buoys for the swim back to shore. The sighting buoys were yellow with red turn buoys for the 70.3 race and orange turn buoys for the Olympic distance.

My wave started, and I started walking.  I got almost to the first buoy before starting to swim. It was a crowded course with a lot of people in front of me so I didn’t see the point of swimming until things opened up a bit. Things were going pretty smoothly starting out. The announcer had mentioned the current was moving from right to left, so I tried to stay as far right as possible. Due to the number of people with the same thought, this was harder than it sounded. Still, things where good as I approached the third buoy. I was feeling strong and moving well. At the third buoy, I realized that a protruding landmass to our left had been buffering the current.  Once I passed beyond the land, I really started to feel the current pushing me to the left.  Immediately, a swimmer kept bumping into me.  He had opted not to use a wetsuit.  I’m not sure what his challenge was, but he would not get away from me.  In frustration, I decided to swim a bit to the left to get away from him.  Big mistake.  By the time I got close to the first turn buoy, I was much farther out than I had wanted to be since the current was pushing me.  Now I had to swim against the current to get to the buoy. In fact, the longest stretch of the race course was against a very strong current. As I got closer and closer to the red buoy (which felt like an eternity for me), the crowds began to pick back up. I don’t know how many times someone bumped into me or hit me. At one point someone almost knocked off my goggles.  The frustrating part was that I kept swimming and still wasn’t passing the stupid buoy. I swear the thing was actually following me; I wasn’t sure if the buoy had come loose or what. I also had two different times when I actually had to stop swimming as volunteers in the canoes had to cut across our path to get to swimmers who were in distress. The first time it happened I started to get really irked until I saw that they were going to save someone.

I finally got past the first turn buoy and things started to thin out a bit, but I could tell this was not going to be a fun race.  I also knew I had no chance of finishing in under 45 minutes. The current was a real bitch, probably the worst I have ever had to deal with in a race. I constantly had to stop and sight because the current was constantly moving me off course. I can only imaging how much zig-zagging I did. This was only a half Ironman distance race but I felt like I swam a full. The Olympic buoys just added to the pain.  Several times, I swam too far in thinking the Olympic buoys were the 70.3 ones, then I would have to adjust and swim back out to the right ones. It didn’t help that the second red turn buoy was difficult to see and some of the sight buoys for the half seem to have floated out a bit further than others, so it wasn’t a straight line. Endurance-wise I fine. There was never a point were I felt I was too tired to continue, but my frustration levels were growing exponentially as I was having more and more problems trying to figure out where I should be swimming and feeling like I was hardly moving at all. The worst feeling for me in a swim is not being able to tell where I am and that was exactly what I was feeling at this point. There were a few times when I felt like calling it a day, mainly because I was getting more and more frustrated and figured I wasn’t going to make the cutoff time. Nevertheless, I continued on in spite of my flashbacks to the swim at the 70.3 race in Hawaii where I didn’t make the cutoff and had my one and only DNF. 

I finally got far enough so that I could see the second turn buoy and other swimmers in the water. I figured as long as there were others out here with me, I still had a good chance of finishing the race within that cutoff. I knew that once I got around that second turn buoy, the portion back to shore was not that far.  I also hoped that the currents going back into shore would be kinder than the ones going out. As I finally made the second turn, I could see the buoys back to shore pretty well.  Although the chop in the water wasn’t great, I was no longer feeling as if I was swimming in place. I got back to the beach, and my Garmin said 1:18.  So much for having a good race time. Still, I was anticipating a fast bike and run course so I had a chance to make up some time.  I was pretty sure that beating my 70.3 PR of 5:18 (at Kinetic a few weeks earlier) was no longer possible, but I would try to get as close as possible.

My official swim time was a horrid 1:20:25.

I did a light jog back to T1 which was about a quarter of a mile away, shucked my wetsuit, and pulled my bike gear out of its protective plastic bag. After I dried my bike off some, I donned my shoes and helmet then I headed to the mount area. My sock had gotten a little damp, but overall my stuff had managed to remain fairly dry.

My T1 time was 6:35.

I started out on the bike with a goal of 2:30. I had not ridden or even seen the course, but everything I read about it suggested it should be a fast course with no major hills. The bike course was pretty much as billed although there were a few portions with some bad headwinds. I did not like the one lane roads open to car traffic.  On several occasions, this led to sitting behind a slow moving car that in turn was stuck between bikes moving in both directions on the road.  On one stretch, I was stuck behind a slow moving truck for about half a mile. This was very frustrating. Some stretches of road didn’t have very wide shoulders, so we had to be very careful when passing other bikers to make sure no one got hit by cars approaching from behind.

I felt I had a pretty strong bike, although not as good as Kinetic due mostly to getting stuck behind slow cars.

My final bike time was 2:42:54.

As I rode into the campus of William and Mary where T2 was located, the sun finally came out. Lucky me; just in time for the run. It was also muggy and hot by this point. I managed to find and rack my bike without to much problem and grabbed my run gear from the bag. The bag did its job as my stuff remained fairly dry. I changed and headed out for the last portion of the race.

My official T2 time was 3:59.

As I started on the run, I was feeling pretty good overall.  My first indication of bad chafing from the wetsuit appeared as moving my right arm highlighted the painful raw spot in my armpit.  I poured some cold water on the spot at the first aid station which seemed to help, then I did my best to tune it out.

Unlike the bike course, the run course was more difficult than what I had expected from the course description. The course had a lot of hills on it. Most were rollers, but rollers on a run course aren’t quite the same as on a bike.  The course also had some decent size hills throughout, especially one big one you had to run twice at mile 1 and 9. The course was also tight in a lot of places as they had us squeezed in portions where people were running out and back. When passing folks, runners had to take care not to run into oncoming running traffic at various spots on the course. I felt pretty strong on the run though the mugginess of the day certainly had its impact, especially along the stretches that had no shade. Fortunately the aid stations were well stocked with cold water and cold sponges to cool you down. I was expecting a run course easier than Kinetic but actually felt this course was as tough if not a bit tougher with hills throughout - even for the final mile of the course which always sucks.  Add in the fact it was much warmer than it had been at Kinetic.

My official run time was 1:51:05.


My final official time for this race was 6:04:57. Certainly not my best time, but for a course that turned out to be far more challenging that what I had prepared for, it is a time I can live with. For an inaugural race I think Rev3 did a fairly decent job with it; there are definitely areas that need improvement. I suggest making the swim course counter-clockwise and allowing swimmers to move with the current. I don’t know if I would ever do this race again, but I am glad I was able to embrace the challenges of the day and overcome them.