The following email went out to all Cotswold 113 2019 Competitors today:

Bike course update

Good afternoon all, I hope everyone’s well ?
As the more eagle eyed social media followers of ours would’ve seen towards the end of last month, we have had a small issue with the bike course and badgers.
At around the 13 mile point of the bike course lap, the road between Kempsford and Hannington has been closed for a couple of weeks now due to a badger set under the tarmac causing a certain amount of subsidence. Initially, we had been confident that we could come to an agreement with the Council and controlling agencies that we could still use that section for our race for the bikes to pass with the correct manning with Police and Traffic Management contractors (the badger section is only around 10meters long)
However, subsequent surveys this week have shown that the badger set is much deeper than originally expected, and this has now left the section of road with an official ‘Unsafe’ marking and we now cannot use it for the June race (It’ll be sorted by July, we’re told)

There’s positives and negatives to this. The positive being that this section of road leads to the courses only real hill.
The negative being that we now need to make alternative plans to provide you all with another great bike course.
We do, of course, have an emergency plan B bike route which is completely different to the traditional 113 course (1 Large 56mile lap previously used on our 226 race), but given that the section of road closed on the 113 course is only small, we are now going to look at ways around that section so that you can all enjoy the type of course you’ve come to expect from our middle distance races.
We are aiming to have adjustment to the course made and approved by the various agencies, highways departments and Police in the next 2-3 weeks, but please bear with us in the meantime and as soon as the changes are fixed, we’ll get the maps out straight away.

Thank you for your patience in this matter, and please be rest assured that we’ll have it sorted in good time for the familiarisation day on June 2nd

Thanks for your understanding.

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
graeme@113events.com
07595 591612

The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold113 2019 Competitors today

Cotswold113 – 9th june 2019

Good afternoon all, I hope everyone’s out enjoying what appears to be the start of the summer ?
We’re less than 2 months away from the Cotswold113 now, so I wanted to drop you all out a mail with a few things in the run up to the event.
This mail’s gonna be a long one, so grab a seat and a coffee as you’ll need to stay awake for it all as there’s some good and important info below
In this mail, I’ll cover the following :

1) Race information pack
2) Not feeling quite ready
3) Marshal requests
4) Familiarisation day
5) Race weekend Wave times and numbers
6)Kit choices

1) Race Information pack
You can download the race information pack here:  https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/1132019-–-Race-Information-Sheet.docx
I’ve tried to include absolutely everything you could ever need to know in this, but if you think there’s something else you need to know. This is your info pack, so please let me know if there’s anything else that you think should be in there
Please please please take the time to read thisas it contains some quite important information on where to be and when.
I’ve tried to make it as ‘work looking’ as possible, so you can probably get away with reading it at your desk and not get told off by your boss, or you could print it off and put it by the toilet so you can read it in peace and quiet at home, but please do take the time to read and digest it.
I appreciate that many of you are experienced triathletes, and you know pretty much everything about racing, but we do things slightly differently to many other races, so it’s important that you know what’s going on over race weekend
The more eagle eyed amongst you will see that we’ve moved the start of the first wave from the suggested provisional start time of 05:30 to 06:00 as many of you didn’t appear too keen to be up so early, and to be honest, our team weren’t overkeen either.
We’ll also have a couple of full Saturday briefings during the registration day on June the 8th in the afternoon, and I’ll send out info on these in a few weeks. They’re not compulsory, but they’re a good chance to hear me and Noisy Dave talk through the race bit by bit and answer any queries you might have on race weekend. Normally, they tend to be at around 13:00 and 16:00

2) Not feeling quite ready ?
We’ve now reached the point where the start list for the June race is pretty fixed, and we’ve insured you all etc.
However, what this means is that until we start to committing to various other things against your names to a specific race, we can still transfer you to the August 4th Cotswold Classic Middle distance tri, which is effectively a rerun of the June 113 under a different name.
If you’re now starting to worry that you’re 7 weeks out from the race and you’re not feeling quite up to the distance yet, we can still just about transfer you over for free as we have around 200 slots for that race remaining.
I’ll need to know by Thursday the 25th April, as after that point we have to commit to numbers on the June race, and beyond that point, although it’ll still be possible potentially, it’ll incur some costs to yourself.
I’m afraid we’re unable to offer year on year deferrals, and we’re beyond the point where we can change names against a June slot, sorry
We don’t ask or care why you want to swap to August, and it may be for a million reasons that are none of our business, but if you ask in the next week I can still sort it very easily, but if you ask me in a few weeks when it’s too late, you may incur some cost for doing so (Assuming there’s still spaces in the August race) as beyond next Thursday we have to start to putting things in place that aren’t then interchangable between the two races and these incur cost as you might appreciate.
So, if you are unsure, please ask now before it’s too late as every year I get loads of requests about a week or a few days out from the June race, and it’s just not possible at that point.

3) Marshal requests
We still have around 20 unfilled Marshal positions of the 200 we require for the race that we’d love to have names against. If you have anyone coming along with you, or can bring someone along with you that wants to be part of the team, please get in touch
We’ll make sure they have a good day too, as happy marshals are good marshals, and they’ll get the best seat in the house to cheer you on too
All our marshals get paid too, and they can choose from either £20 cash or a £40 113 Events voucher to use with us on any of our other future events, and we can find them/you somewhere to put up a tent on the site on the saturday night
Please email graeme@113events.com

4) Familiarisation day
As per my previous competitor newsletter (https://www.113events.com/cotswold113-march-19-newsletter/) , our annual free of charge course familiarisation day is going to be held on June 2nd, so 1 week before the race.
It’s a great chance to come and meet the team and see the courses, so if you haven’t already, please book on at www.entrycentral.com/113events under 113 Fam Day

5) Race weekend Wave times and numbers
As mentioned above, we’ve opted to set the start time to 06:00 from the previously suggested 05:30 and will go off in 6 waves at ten minute intervals.
Wave 1 06:00
Wave 2 06:10
Wave 3 06:20
Wave 4 06:30
Wave 5 06:40
Wave 6 06:50

The waves tend to be mixed abilities and the race has been won by most waves now, but by default we tend to set off the youngest competitors first and the oldest ones last (regardless of gender or entry type)
However, you might want to choose a specific wave and or race number, so now is your window to do so. Before you get your request in, please read below:
You might have a lucky number, so you can also choose a specific race number, or you might want a group of sequential numbers so that you and your club mates are all racked together in transition next to each other (our transition is numbered and runs sequentially)
Of course, you don’t have to choose a specific wave and/or race number, but the option is there if you do
There’s a million variables in why you might want a specific wave, so I thought the easiest way was to list a few examples to give you food for thought:
Wave Choices
1) You might feel you’re going to be at the slower end of the competitor field, and not want to be the last person on the run course, so you would want an earlier wave
2) You might not want to have your breakfast at 4am for a 6am Swim start, so you could want a later wave and eat your porridge 50mins later
3) You might have forgotten it’s your mums birthday and need to be back early to take her for lunch, so you’d want wave 1
4) You might not want to have lots of following waves swimming past you on the course, so you would want a later wave
5) You might feel you’re the next Michael Phelps and want nothing but clear water in front of you, so would want wave 1
6) You might want to see a wave or two go off before you do so you can see how it works, so you’d want wave 2 or 3

If you have a group of mates that all want to go off in the same wave and in sequential numbers, we can sort that too
Typically, I’ll get around 800 of the 1100 competitors ask for a wave and/or number, and as you can imagine, this is massively time consuming for me to do (I block out 4 days/40 hours or so to do this). I like that we can offer this for free, as I think it’s great to be able to choose a wave and rack with your mates at our races, but in order to make my life easier, please follow the few simple guidelines to getting your request in:
1) Please give me your name, email and DOB as people often email back from a different account to the email they have registered and we have duplicates of many names.
2) If you’re asking for a group of people, please ask them first and clear it with all of them as about 30-40% of our group requests in the past have included someone that is already racked with another group, or may be in your club, but potentially can’t stand the rest of you and wants to be as far away as possible – You may laugh, but this seems to happen a lot
3) When you email in a request for a group, please list each person’s DOB and email and their real name, as I won’t know who ‘Chopper’ Jones, ‘Speedy’ Liz or ‘Baldy’ John is. Also, lots of seemingly unique names have duplicates in the race, so don’t assume as your mate is called Quentin Parker-Williams, that we might not have another one, and you end up racked next to the wrong Quentin.
4) Please get the groups right first time, and make sure everyone in the group is happy as it’s a real pain to try and squeeze more people into a group of sequential numbers later and not always possible – You have a week, so please get it right first time
5) Please don’t CC your whole group into the email to me as invariably, someone starts replying to everyone and it escalates into an unrelated group chat. As much as I love to read about how everyone’s extension is coming along, or people moaning that someone always swims in the wrong lane at Tri Club swim sessions, it’s none of my business and I takes me ages to pick though to see if anything is pertinent to the race – Just get one lead person to email me an excel spreadsheet of the people in the group you want
6) Numbers and waves are first come first served, so if you have a specific race number you want (number 69 always gets snapped up early for some reason, as do all numbers that generally relate to a year of birth (ie 81 or 70 etc), so please put in a few other numbers as 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th choices as if it’s gone, it’s too late and there might be another 100 emails come in before I can tell you it’s not available
7) If you’re not fussed about the actual numbers but want to be in a group, I’ll allocate out a random group of numerically sequential numbers from what’s left for your names to be together (ie 845-861)
8) The numbers available are 10-900inc only, so please don’t ask for a telephone number or for number 1-9 as we reserve them out already for previous winners or our own team.
9) Please title your request email ‘Waves and numbers’ to graeme@113events.com
10) To save sending 7-800 emails next week, I won’t be able to respond to everyone’s request to confirm it’s done, so please keep your eyes pealed for the start list which will be published around the 1st week of May

The window for requesting this (should you want to) is now open, but will close on Thursday the 25th April,as at that point, we need to order numbers with names on them, and we can’t then change anything from this point. You have a week to get your request in, so please please please, speak with your group and get everyone’s permission before putting your request in, and agree between you which wave you might want rather than asking to chop and change all the time.
Please email your request to graeme@113events.com and make sure you include the registered name, DOB and email of yourself and any others you want to be racked with.

Also, if you head to www.entrycentral.com/cotswold113 (and head to the people button near the bottom marked “list’ you can see the registered names signed up to the race. Please can I also ask that you check your christian name is spelt correctly as this will be what is printed on your race number. We had a lady by the name of Virginia race with us previously, and the spellcheck on her phone had changed her name to a certain ‘lady part’ when she registered for the event, and luckily it was picked up before printing and she opened her registration pack with it printed on the race number 🙂

6) Kit choices
It’s about the time in the run up to the race where you will all be thinking about what kit to use on race day, so I thought I’d give you all some info on the course and the conditions you’re likely to expect.
Firstly, for those of you that have the nice dilemma of using a TT or road bike, the course is very flat and is an Aero bike course all day long. There’s one hill on the course, and it’s certainly no Col’ du Tormalet. To give you an idea of the one hill you’ll get per lap: it’s about 150m long at most and some of the faster guys will go up it on the big chain ring. It’s looks like a Mountain climbers stage on the TDF on our bike course map elevation profile, but this is only because the rest of the course is so flat, and it’s really nothing to worry about.
The run course is around 60% Tarmac, about 3% grass and about 37% Hard Packed lakeside pathing. If it’s dry, or even if it’s mildly raining, it’s a road shoe course. The lakeside paths are very hard packed, and much of it is under the tree canopy, so unless we get a lot of rain in the week running up to the race, it’s easily a good enough surface for road shoes rather than offroad or trail shoes. I will, of course, keep everyone updated on the conditions under foot in the run up to race day.
The swim is Wet and flat as you might expect, and I’m fully expecting the water temperature to be within the ‘Wetsuit Optional’ range defined within the BTF rules. The water is currently at a very chilly 11deg, but I expect by race day, it’ll be something like 17-20deg

Right, that’s it from me for this newsletter. There’ll be more newsletters over the month leading up to the race with more info, but in the meantime, if you get any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask as it’s what I’m here for

Thanks and happy training

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
07595 591612
graeme@113events.com
www.113events.com

The following email went out to all Cotswold Classic 2019 Competitors today:

Cotswold Classic – 4th August 19

Good morning all, I hope this email finds you all well and getting ready for this year’s race season ?
We’ve had a snippet of the spring last week, but judging by what I can see out my window currently, we’re firmly back into Winter now 🙁
We’re only 5 months out from the race, so I wanted to drop you all a quick email to bring you up to speed on things that are happening this end, and to get some info on the race out to you all.

In this email, I’ll cover the following :
1) Course Familiarisation day
2) Marshal request
3) What to expect from us over the next few months

Course Familiarisation day
On Sunday July 7th, we’ll be holding our course familiarisation day down at the lake for everyone to come down and see the Swim, bike and run courses before race weekend and to meet the 113 Events team and other competitors before race day.
These days are a great chance to check out the courses via guided laps, and to ask any questions you might have about how the race weekend will work.
The emphasis on these days is leisurely, so the pace will suit pretty much everyone, and if you were thinking of using this as a speed session for your training, I’d really suggest you plan that another day.
We’ll start off with a guided lap of the Swim course with toes in the water at 8am. The only part of the day that carries a cost is the Swim, and if you do want to swim, you’ll be asked to pay the lake guys a £5 day membership on the gate at arrival.
Our lap is 1,900m, but the lake also has 400/750/1500m loops marked out, and you’re free to swim as much or as little as you like, and whether you choose to join the guided lap is entirely up to you.
Our Swim course won’t be marked out on the day, so will be lead by our local OW swim coach Jason Tait (http://southwestswim.co.uk) along with a couple of kayakers.
The lap will have a number of stops and regrouping points, and we’ll be going at a nice leisurely pace.
If you only wanted to swim half the course, there’s a point at around the halfway mark that runs about 100m from the swim entrance, so you’d be welcome to drop out at that point if you like.
Once the lap has finished, myself and Jason will be on hand to answer any questions on the Swim part.
At 10am, we’ll then regroup by the Cafe (it’s easy to spot as the complex is quite small) and head out for a single lap of the bike course (2 laps on race day, so 28miles per lap).
During the bike lap, we’ll have numerous stops along the way to regroup and to point out things like where the aid stations are etc. We’ll aim to average around 15mph on the bike
The bike typically takes about 2.5hours, so following that, we’ll have a 15-20minute break for everyone to put their bikes back in their cars and change into their run kit before heading out for a single 4.33m lap of the run course (it’s 3 laps on race day)
Like the bike course, we’ll have a load of regrouping and info stops along the way, and we’ll aim to keep around a 10min mile average pace.
Throughout the day, myself and the 113 team will be on hand to answer any questions you might have.
These days are a great chance for us to meet all of you guys, the competitors, in a relaxed environment too. As on race weekend, we barely get a grunt out of you all as you all have your race faces on 🙂
If you have club mates or friends that are coming down to support you on race day, they’re welcome to join in on the familiarisation day, and not just for competitors only.
We ask that everyone attending please books on using the following link – www.entrycentral.com/113events and hit the tab marked “Fam Day Classic”
It all sounds very formal having to book on, but in reality, we only use this as way of gauging numbers and to have a method to communicate with all the attendees before the day
If you can’t get down on the 7th July, but still want to see the course, we can still come up with something:
I live fairly local to the lake, and work from home a few days a week on my day job during the summer season from about May onwards. I love a chance to skive away from my desk/laptop for a few hours in the morning, so if you can get down on a weekday morning, I’ll happily take you for a lap of the bike and run courses. My pace is very slow now days though, so please don’t come expecting to blast round quickly 🙂
I’m afraid I can’t do weekends as I’m generally tied up on family things at weekends

Marshal request
We have around 180-200 Paid positions on our team over race weekend, and although we get around 50% of those roles as regulars, we rely on the friends, family, club mates, enemies, stalkers, and anyone else associated with the competitors to make up the rest. If you have anyone coming along with you on race day, or any club mates that you can pressgang into being part of our team, we’d welcome them along and look after them for the day.
All our marshals get paid too, and they can choose from either £20 cold hard cash, or a £40 113 Events Vocuher, and all our marshals get an event team technical shirt along with free hot food and ice creams during the day.
We’re very proud that our races have built up a reputation as having some of the best marshals in the sport, and I’m very aware that happy marshals are good marshals, so we really look after our guys, and we’ll make sure that we make it fun for them too.
They don’t need any experience at all, and we’ll pair them up where we can and our course managers will take them through a full team briefing before kitting them up with everything they need getting them started.
Marshals, obviously, get free parking, and if they wanted to camp over saturday night, we can find them a spot at the lake too.
We can’t, due to insurance reasons, employ under 16’s, but if a marshal has kids with them, we can kit them out in an event shirt, and they can still take advantage of the free burgers and ice creams

Also, if you, as a competitor in August, wanted to really see what the race is all about, we need marshals for our June 9th Cotswold 113 race, which is identical to the August Classic in every way but name and date, so we’d welcome you along to our team them and get you involved.
Please email graeme@113events.com

What to expect from us in the run up to race day
The next thing you’ll get from us is the race info pack in around 4 weeks time. This race info pack is a downloadable PDF document that contains absolutely everything you need to know about race day from both a competitor and spectators point of view. You’ll hear me going on about this in all our emails, but it’s really important that you read and digest the info it contains. I find printing it off and putting it next to the toilet is the best place, as if your house is like mine and Nicci’s, it’s the only place in the house you actually get any peace and quiet
If you’ve signed up to the race in the last few weeks, and missed our Jan Newsletter, this also had some info about the race weekend, and you can find that here : https://www.113events.com/january-19-competitor-newsletter/

About 4-5 weeks out from the race day itself (so around the time of the familiarisation day), once the start list is fixed and frozen, I’ll send an email out to all competitors asking if they want to choose a specific wave and/or race number. Or you might want a group of race numbers together so that you and your mates are racked next to each other in transition.
We issue these out on a strictly first come first served basis following that email early July, so please don’t ask for waves and numbers yet as without a frozen start list in excel, we have no way of recording this, so it’ll get forgotten or ignored.
Sorry to be strict on this, but in the interest of fairness to all, we won’t accept any requests until that email comes out to you all

Right, that’s it from me. I hope my rambling on hasn’t put any of you to sleep, and you’re all still reading this ?

Myself and the 113 team are here to help, so if you have any questions at all in the run up to the race or there’s anything we can help with, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. It’s what we’re here for

Thanks and happy training

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
graeme@113events.com
07595 591612
www.113events.com

The following email went out to all Cotswold113 2019 Competitors today:

Cotswold113 June 9th 2019

Good morning all, I hope this email finds you all well and taking in that little hint of spring we had last week with some training ?
We’re about 3 months out from this year’s race, so I wanted to bring you all up to speed on what’s been happening, what’s coming up and to get some info out to you all
I’ll try not to waffle on too much as I appreciate it’s Wednesday and you’re all probably in that midweek slump, so I’ll try and keep this one fairly brief.

In this email I’ll cover the following :

1) Familiarisation day
2) Marshal Request
3) Transfers to August
4) What else to expect and when 

Familiarisation day – June 2nd
On Sunday June 2nd, we’ll be holding our free of charge course familiarisation day for the 113.
These days are a great chance to come down to the lake, and to see the Swim, Bike and run courses.
The bike and run are completely free, but if you wanted to swim, the guys that run the lake will want a £5 guest membership fee from you on the gate.
How it works is that we’ll run a guided lap of each of the courses, and the emphasis is very much on seeing the course in a leisurely fashion, so the pace will be very low, so if you were thinking of using this day as a speedwork training session, then I’d suggest you plan that in for another day.
The swim will start with toes in the water for 08:00, and the lap will be lead by our resident Swim Coach, Jason Tait of South West Swim (http://southwestswim.co.uk).
It’s a single lap on race day, so the guided lap will be 1,900m. However, you can dip out at any point, or just get in the water and swim the lakes own marked out 400/750/1500 meter courses if you want to just get a taster of the lake (not literally, hopefully).
If you want to do the guided lap, we’ll have regular stops along the way for everyone to regroup, and we’ll have a kayaker or two to point everyone in the right direction as our course won’t be marked out on this day. At around the halfway mark, the course comes back to within 100m of the start area, so you have a good chance to drop out or just do half if you so choose.
Once we’ve finished the Swim, myself and Jason will be on hand to answer any questions you might have before we head out on the bike. There’s changing rooms and showers at the lake too.
The bike will head out at around 10am, and we’ll meet by the cafe at the lake (it’s a small complex, so it’s easy enough to spot)
The bike course is 2 laps on race day, so on the familiarisation day, you’ll be covering 1 lap of 28miles.
Like the swim, the emphasis is on leisurely, so we’ll aim to average 14-15mph, and we’ll have various stops to show where the aid stations are etc and to regroup.
The bike typically takes about 2.5 hours, so once we’re all back in from the bike, we’ll have a 20ish minute break to get changed and put our bikes away, before heading out on the run
The run course is 3 laps on race day, so we’ll cover one lap of 4.33 miles on the Fam day.
Again, we’ll have loads of regrouping stops to point out how it will all work on race day, and we’ll average something like 10minute miles.
Parking is free on the day, and the car park is around 200m from the lake, so it’s easy enough to get back to your car and put your kit away between sessions. It’s pretty safe down at the lake, but if you’re not planning on having a car or van to put your bike in, I’d suggest you bring a lock and there’s some fencing you can lock it against whilst you’re out Swimming or running just in case.
The familiarisation days are a great chance for people to come and see the course and meet the team in a nice, relaxed environment, and the team and I will be on hand during the day to answer any questions you might have. It’s also a nice chance for us to meet you all away from race weekend too, so as a team, we look forward to these days as we barely get a grunt out of you all on race weekend as you all have your game faces on.
I apologise that it’s a week before race day this year, but given the hectic diaries of the lake, and my team, it wasn’t possible to find a date in the typical 3-5week out range that we aim for.
If you can’t make the June 2nd date, there’s still other chances to see the course. I live local to the lake, and generally work from home on my day job over the summer season a couple of days a week, and I love the chance to skive away from my laptop for a few hours for a bit of cycling and running. I can’t do weekends, as they’re normally tied up with other stuff, but I can sometimes get out for a few hours on a weekday morning from about the beginning on May onwards when my day job winds down a bit for the Triathlon season, so just drop me a line and I’ll try and sort a date nearer the time.
To book onto the June 2nd day, please head to www.entrycentral.com/113events and book the 113 Fam day.
It all sounds very formal having to book on, but in reality, we use this as a way of gauging numbers and to give us a method of communicating with you all directly in the days before the day. This is not just limited to competitors only, and you might have friends and family that want to come along too, and see the courses you’ll be racing on the weekend after.
We look forward to seeing many of you there

Be part of our team
As anyone that has every organised an event will know, getting marshals is one of the hardest bits of the process. We have around 200 paid positions on our race day, and although we typically get around 100 of these as repeaters, the remainder tend to come along as a friends, family and club mates of competitors, so we’d love to hear from you if you have anyone that you can bring along to our team and to help make the race by seeing it from the other side.
All our marshals get paid too, and they’ll get either £20 cash on the day or a £40 113 Events Voucher, and all marshals get an Events team shirt, a full briefing, and everything else they could possibly need. They also get kept in hot food, drink and ice creams.
Due to the insurances, we can’t pay or employ under 16’s, but if you have an under 16 with you as a marshal, we can get them an event shirt, and they can of course make use of the free ice creams and burgers. We have team shirts down to a toddler size, and if the marshals have kids with them, we will, of course, make sure they have a role away from a road or bikes.
The marshals don’t need any experience at all, and we’ll take them through a full team briefing with the course managers, and we’ll aim to pair them all up so they’re not just stuck on their own somewhere. All we ask is that they’re reasonably enthusiastic and they know their left from their right
The two main shifts are Bike and Run courses.
The race starts at 05:30 and will go off in 6 waves at 10 minute intervals
The bike course team have a briefing at 04:45 and will be finished around or before 11:30 depending on where on the course they are
The run course team have a briefing at 06:45 and will be finished around or before 14:00
We also have roles in Transition and swim exit, and these have fairly variable times
All marshals get free parking on the day, and if they wanted to camp over, we can find them a spot for a tent.

We’re very proud that our races have built up a great reputation for having some of the best marshals in the sport, and we know only too well that happy marshals are good marshals, so they’ll be really well looked after on the day, and we’ll make sure it’s fun for them and that they’ll have a few laughs along the way.
If you have someone that can help out, please get them to drop me an email at graeme@113events.com
Also, if you want to be involved in the team this year, but are racing in June already, we’d love you along on our team on August 4th to see the race from the other side. Or if you have someone that wants to race in August and help in June, we can hold them an August slot, and they can earn a £40 credit towards it on June 9th.

Transfers to August 
As it stands currently, we still have slots left for our August race (quite normal this time of year as the August race always fill up much later than the June race)
The August 4th Cotswold Classic Middle Distance Tri is identical to the June 113 in every way other than date and name
Typically, I tend to get a load of requests from June 113 Competitors close to the June race wanting to move over, and at that point, it’s not always possible to move as either the August race is full, or we’ve committed too much to your name for June.
We’re also aware that the summer season can sneak up on you, and that the June 113 is also now just 3 months away and you might not perhaps be feeling quite ready for it, you might have picked up an injury, you might (like me) still be carb loading from Christmas, or you might have forgotten that June 9th is actually your wedding anniversary and breaking the news to your partner that you’ll be racing on that day could result in divorce.
With that in mind, if you feel there is a chance you might want to swap to the August race, please ask now as we can do it completely free, and the closer to the race we get, the harder or less likely it is possible to do. We don’t need to know why, so don’t feel embarrassed, but just drop me an email asking for the swap and we’ll sort it straight away
Details on the August race are available at www.113events.com

What to expect and when
Over the next three months, we’ll be sending you a few emails with info about the race and your race info pack. If you haven’t already seen it, our last competitor newsletter contained some info about race weekend and what’s going on when and where : https://www.113events.com/january-19-competitor-newsletter/ so take a few minutes to bring yourself up to speed on that
About 6 weeks out from the race when the start list is fixed and frozen, I’ll send you all an email from which you’ll get a chance to choose a specific wave and/or race number. In the interest of fairness to all these are on first come first served basis following the email at that point, so please don’t ask yet as we can’t allocate waves or numbers until that time.
The next email you’ll get from us will be in a couple of weeks with the link to the race information pack
We’re here to help though, so please just ask if there’s anything you need from us, or there’s anything we can help with or you’re struggling with to understand. Or you just want to chat Triathlon and you’re passing this way, our kettle’s always on

Right, that’s it from me for this week. I hope you’re all still awake 🙂
We are here to help you all, so please get in touch if there’s anything we can help with in the run up to the race or you have any questions at all

Thanks and happy training

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
graeme@113events.com
07595 591612
113events.com

The following email went out to all Cotswold Classic 2018 competitors this morning :

The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold Classic Competitors tonight:

Cotswold Classic Newsletter – Edition 6

Hi All
This is going to be the last of my emails in the run up to the race, so I hope that you’ve all found them useful, and I’ve not put too many of you to sleep or bored you to the point of wanting to giving up the will to live.
I’ll keep this one brief as I know you’re all busy getting your kit ready for the weekend, so in this mail I’ll cover the following

Water Temperature Update
Race Morning Planning

Water Temperature Update
I know that many of you are getting a little nervous about the water temperature (as the 100 or so mails I’ve had in the last 48hours on the subject show), so I wanted to bring you up to speed on where we are, and how it’s going to work.
Tonight, I called the lake around 6pm and asked them to take a measure of the temperature for me. It’s currently 23.2deg.
Realistically, I think it’s now looking increasingly likely that we’ll be on a Wetsuit ban on Sunday morning, as the forecast for the next couple of days is for it to be pretty hot.
However, we will measure the Water Temperature on Saturday morning at 06:30 (24hours before the race) and we will make our decision on whether it’s going to be Wetsuit Optional or Wetsuits Banned at that point.
Realistically, if it’s close to the cut off and is a Wetsuit optional swim, I’d strongly recommend you consider whether you really need it or not anyway, as the water is very warm, and overheating in the swim in a wetsuit can set you up for a very bad day of not feeling well at all. If I was racing, and the water temperature was over around 21, I would 100% not be wearing a wetsuit, but that’s just me !
I appreciate the water temperature can change in 24 hours from the Saturday AM measurement, but unless we get a full Saturday of 30deg and Sunshine, or a full Saturday of heavy rain, it’s not going to be by much, so unless either of those two scenarios happen, that is the judgement we will stick with.
We will publish this decision at 12:00 Midday on Saturday once we’ve had a chance to sit down with the Water Safety Crew, the BTF ref and my team.
With this in mind, please can I ask that you all bring both options if you are setting off before Saturday morning and staying in the area for the weekend. The Wetsuit decision will be published at Registration on Saturday as well as on our facebook and twitter pages.
The rules on what you can and can’t wear in the case that it is a Wetsuit ban can be found in my previous newsletter (you can find that here: www.113events.com/news )

Race Day Morning
Firstly, and most importantly, please pleas please leave plenty of time to get parked. It’s a field with one entrance, so invariably, there’ll be a queue, so please leave yourself enough time. You can pay your Sunday parking fee on Saturday (Sunday parking fee is £5) , and this will give you a chance to save a little bit of time as you’ll already have your Sunday sticker when you arrive at the parking area, and not have to fumble around for the right change at 4:30am in the dark.

Once you get into the race site, you will see the transition area. I appreciate it’s an odd rule, but you must have your helmet on and done up before you go into transition to rack your bike, and your bike must also have the number sticker attached to it – it doesn’t matter where, as this number is just to the show the bike is yours when you go to pick it up at the end of the day, as we’ll only let you take out a bike if you have your race bib with a matching number to the bike sticker.
This helmet rule is to show the BTF referee, who’ll be there at check in, that your helmet does actually fit on your head and does up, as we’ve seen a fair few over the years that either don’t fit on the persons head at all, or the chin strap is actually down near your belly button, so won’t hold the helmet on if you are unlucky enough to have a crash.
Once you’re in transition, you will see that all the racking is numbered, so you can find your slot and sort your stuff out in it’s place.
The transition has two toilets in there, but these will not be open before the race starts as these are for urgent T1 or T2 toilet stops.
The pre race toilets are back past the Swim start, and around another 100m, and there is a block of 28 ports-loos to use before you start your race.
The reason these are quite far away, and not next to the Swim start, is that the Swim start is right next to the finish, and on a hot day, pre race toilets are somewhat fruity smelling by lunchtime, and you really don’t want them anywhere near where crowds will congregate. They’re also the run course toilets as you’ll be running right past them on each lap.
The walk from transition and back to the start is around 300m and is on hard packed gravel. You can walk it barefooted if you either have the soles of Zola Budd, or you don’t mind that funny ‘walking on hot coals’ triathlete style. If you want to bring some old trainers, flip flops, hotel slippers or even a pair of roller skates, you can dump them by the waters edge at the swim start, and they’ll be there after the race for you to grab, or if they’re old ones and you don’t want them back, we’ll chuck them all in a skip on Sunday night.
Each wave will have a quick briefing that will take place by the swim start ten minutes before you’re getting in the water to start your race. The briefing will take around 3mins, and you’ll then have 6-7minutes to get in the water and have a quick warm up before your wave will start in the shallow water next to the entrance. (ie wave 2 starts at 06:40, so your briefing will be 06:30)
This briefing is important, so I’d please like to ask for your full attention as I appreciate all you’ll want to do is get started racing and watch the last wave swim off into the distance.

Right, that’s it from me for the pre-race emails. We look forward to welcoming you all to our start line this weekend

Please get in touch if there’s anything you need from us in the meantime

Thanks

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events Team
Tel 07595 591612
Graeme@113events.com

The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold Classic 2018 Competitors today:

Cotswold Classic July Newsletter – Edition 5

Hi All
With only a few days to go before race weekend, this is instalment 5 of our newsletter.
I think you’ve all come to realise by now that I can waffle on for England, and this could be a long one, so please grab a strong coffee (Or whiskey, depending on how you feel) and get comfortable.
In this Mail I’m going to cover the following :

Tracker and Results
Fitting your timing chip
Water Temperature update
Race Day Parking
Racing in the heat and how to do it at our race

Tracker and results 
For those of you that have people wanting to track your progress during the day, they’ll be able to find the live tracker and results here :

Results

There’s a smartphone version link on there too, and most of the area around the lake has reasonable 4g signal for those of us that have upgraded from a Potato to a Smart phone 🙂

Fitting your timing chip
When you come to register with us on Saturday, you will get a timing chip and strap. This should be fitted to your left ankle, and should go either below or underneath your Wetsuit should we be racing in them on Sunday.
The reason you cannot wear your chip over your wetsuit is that when you remove the Wetsuit for the bike, there’s a good chance you will pull the chip strap off with it, and we then won’t get a time for you post swim.
We’ve seen a few people lose chips during the race, so the guys at DBMax, who time our event and we rent the chips from, have created a short instructional video on how to fit the chip correctly to the strap. I appreciate Will from DB max is perhaps not the most charismatic Youtube host, but hopefully, this will stop anyone getting out the water without their chip
https://youtu.be/zdlquSMoxwc
If you’re not sure, please just ask any of our team on the day, and they’ll gladly help you

Water Temperature Update
There’s good news and bad news in this section, so if you were going to pour a whiskey, now’s a perfect moment 🙂
I have been down on site today, and the water temperature has come down from nearly 27, and is currently around 22deg after the 3 days of rain we’ve had over the weekend. The ‘Wetsuit optional’ to ‘Wetsuit Banned’ temperature cut off is 24deg (actually 23, but we can read that as 23.99)
However, I’m sure you’ve all seen the weather forecast for this week, and it’s looking like from today onwards, it’s going to return to 29deg and Sunshine, which is not great for keeping a lake cool

What this means, and I just wanted to give everyone advance notice, is that we’re going to be touch and go as to whether we’re going to be Wetsuit Optional or a non Wetsuit race on Sunday.
I will monitor the lake temperature closely this week, and keep updates on our facebook and twitter pages, but we cannot make a decision on Wetsuits until Saturday afternoon.
As I’ve said in my previous mail, we have some movement in this, and A) we can find somewhere a little cooler in the lake to make the ‘Official measurement’, and B) We have some room for adjustment for Air temperature.
However, if it’s drastically over 24deg, it’s simply not safe to bend the rules and send Swimmers out in Wetsuits as you’ll simply cook yourselves.
If we do have to ban wetsuits, I just wanted to make sure that everyone understand the rules that are set out by the BTF, which you can find in full here : https://www.britishtriathlon.org/britain/documents/events/competition-rules/british-triathlon-competition-rules-2018.pdf
The basics of these rules are that you cannot wear any form of Wetsuit (including shorty style wetsuits), and any Tri suit or swim suit must not extend beyond either your knees or Elbows. You cannot wear buoyancy shorts or a tow float (which is a strange rule, but it’s a BTF rule as it can be seen as a form of buoyancy aid or performance advantage), and you’re not allowed to wear Calf guards as these are seen in the BTF rules as a hydrodynamic aid (?)
I’m afraid we must follow the BTF rules to the word though, and we are simply not allowed to make any exceptions or they’ll review if we get a race license again -The swim element of any race is the most safety critical part of the whole day, so please understand that I simply cannot bend the rules, even if you didn’t want to have an official finish time, we simply cannot allow you to get into water in anything other than correct gear according to the rules, sorry
I genuinely try and be as flexible as I can to help people out, but when it comes to safety, we absolutely have to be strict.
There’s benefits to this hot weather though, and the lake has dropped a foot or so, which means there are a couple of spots where you can stand up to take a break (in fact, you’ll need to stand up and walk for around 5meters unless you have arm to body proportions of a T-Rex, as the water is around a foot deep)
We don’t have a swim cut off at all, so if you wanted to swim breaststroke with your head out the water for the whole 1900m, you can.
I’d strongly suggest that if you get a chance this week, that you please go an have a trial swim in a lake without a wetsuit. If you’re local to the Cotswolds, you can swim in the lake we use for racing Tuesday and Thursday evenings after 5, and Saturday morning before 10am. You might find it’s actually quite a nice experience, but please give it a test before the weekend.
Even if the water does measure in at 22-23 deg and we fall into the Wetsuit Optional range, I personally, would be swimming without one, but that’s just me (and I’m now a fat git that doesn’t dissipate heat well)
As I said above, I will keep the facebook and twitter pages updated with Water Temperatures from Thursday onwards, and we will make our final decision on Saturday afternoon with the water crew and the BTF referee as a group and let everyone know.

Race day Parking
Parking for both registration and Race morning is located in a field a few hundred meters from the lake. Parking on Saturday is £2 cash and Parking on Sunday is £5 Cash payable on the gate. Please can I ask that you allow plenty of time to get parked on race day morning, as although it will seem like a simple process on Saturday when no-one’s rushing and you have everyone coming over a 5hr period, on Sunday morning when it’s Dark and you have 1000 competitors turning up over a 60minute period, there will inevitably be a reasonable sized queue of nervous triathletes sat in cars to get in watching the clock and worrying that they’ll miss their starts.
The car park on Sunday will take all competitors and a few spectators, but please can I ask that you park as close to the car next to you as is reasonable possible or we’ll run out of parking spaces before any spectators even arrive, and they’ll be forced to use the Waterpark car park, which is £14 for the day if they can even get in (it gets very busy on a sunny day)

Racing in the heat and how best to make a strategy for our race.
Everyone knows that racing in the heat is not easy, but I just wanted to give you all some tips and advice on how it can work for our race on Sunday for each discipline.
1) Swim – Please get into the water well hydrated. Whether we are in wetsuits or not, the water is very warm right now, so you will lose a lot of fluids through sweat in the swim. If we’re looking like a wetsuit optional swim, we will position a drinks station for water right by the swim exit
2) Bike – We have one Aid station per lap on the bike (it’s a 2 lap bike course). Due to various reasons, the only place we can position this Aid station is fairly well into the lap (around mile 23), so you will have a good period of time on the bike (around an hour for even the fastest racers) before you can get a drink, so please load your bikes up with drinks before you start.
Our bike course Aid station has 750ml bike bottles of both Water and pre-mixed High5 (along with Iso Gels and Half cut bananas), and there’s a bottle drop point just before the Aid station. If your bottle is special to you and want it back after the race, we will pile them up close to the HQ tent, and you’re welcome to fight your way through the wasps to retrieve it as they’ll be a rather sugary mess, and a magnet to wasps.
3) Run – As it’s looking to be rather a hot day on Sunday (hopefully I’ve not just jinxed it), we’ll add another water station into the run course at around 0.75 miles into the lap. We purposely buy very large waxed paper cups, as although we only half fill them, it means you can squeeze the top and run with it in your hand without spilling too much. We did talk to the waterpark about using sponges, but they won’t allow them due to the amount of waste and litter they create.
The second aid station is at around mile 3 and has pretty much everything you could possibly ever need at it:
Cupped Water
Cupped Flat Coke (Full fat red stuff, which is currently fizzing away in my kitchen and conservatory, and driving the cats nuts)
Cupped High5
Half bananas
Jelly babies
Salt and vinegar Pringles (The saltiest crisps I could get in the cash and carry)
Salt stick crisps
Salted Peanuts
Jamaican Ginger cake
Chocolate cake
Jaffa Cakes
Fig Rolls
Nice biscuits

The Third aid station is just before you cross the finish line, or start lap 2 and 3, and this has cupped water and ISO gels.
We’ll also put a mist shower out here, or at least have someone spraying you with a hosepipe (A job my kids love on race day)
We’re not, unfortunately, allowed to provide or apply sunscreen, which is a strange rule, but to do with the insurance saying that if we apply it and you still get burnt, we then become liable for it. With that in mind, please make sure that you bring some and slap it on as much as you can.
About 30% of our run course is around the lakes where there’s some shade, but it’s not a massive amount, and if it’s anything like the last few weeks of weather, it’s going to be a warm run

Right, that’s it from me for today’s newsletter.
We’re here to help, so if you need anything from us in the run up to this weekend, please just ask
As I said in my previous email , I’ve got to be out of town on Thursday on my day job, but I’ll be picking my mails and voicemails up in the evening on that day, and am on the end of my phone for the rest of the week

We look forward to welcoming you all to our registration and start line this weekend

Thanks

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
07595 591612
Graeme@113events.com

Then following newsletter went out to all Cotswold Classic Competitors today:

Hi All
We’re just a week out from the race now, so in this instalment of my newsletters, I’d like to draw your attention to some important information and rules relating to our courses.
I’ll apologise in advance that isn’t the normal upbeat news and info I get out to you, but it’s important you read this and pay attention please:

Just before I get into it, although the water temperature was nearly 27 on Thursday, it’s been hammering it down all weekend here, and that will bring the lake temperature down a lot !
I’ll publish a water temperature on Tuesday when I’m next down the lake, and let you know if it’s brought it down enough in Wednesday’s newsletter, but I’m pretty confident that we’ll be racing in Wetsuits next Sunday if you so choose.

Sorry, back to point :
Over the last 8 summers, we’ve run this Middle distance race 14 times, and had over 15,000 people race with us.
Over that period, we’ve had a grand total of 6 complaints from residents on the course. Compared to other middle and full distance organisers, who get 10’s or 100’s per race, this is something we’re exceptionally proud of, and wish to maintain.
However, the reason I’m emailing you all now is that we got 3 of those 6 complaints from 1 village during the June race this year.
Those complaints were about 2 issues. The first was that one of the clubs attending brought a load of supporters with them, who set up a cheering station outside the village pub with Cow Bells and Music at 07:30 in the morning (the Village pub/guesthouse, had, the previous night, hosted their village summer do, which I’ve no doubt went on to the early hours), so this understandably did not go down well. The second complaint, which I saw evidence of later, was Cyclists were cutting the corners, and riding on the wrong side of the road, and generally not being courteous to other road users.

I have no issues with clubs bringing supporters to make noise (in fact, I love it), but please don’t do it outside someone’s house or hotel business, or anywhere near a residential area as us triathletes tend to forget that getting up at 4am is not what the normal person does on a Sunday morning.
You’ll pass through 6 different villages on the courses next Sunday, and many of the local residents will come out and support the competitors, which is great. However, many won’t and that’s their prerogative, so please respect that and keep the noise down yourself, and ask any supporters you have on the course, not to make noise in residential areas please.
90% of our courses are in non residential area, and there’s loads of places you can support from that won’t wake up or upset anyone other than a local cow or sheep, and neither of which can write a letter that requires me to sit and get a telling off in a parish council meeting.

The second issue is a far more serious one. We don’t close the roads on our courses as in reality, the roads are super quiet that time of the morning, and it’s very unlikely you’ll encounter many other road users until later in the morning during the tail end of the bike on the run back into the lake on the Spine road. However, it’s possible that you might come across a car that won’t overtake a cyclist in front that you are perhaps moving quicker than, or that someone might not look and reverse off their drive in front of you.
Screaming abuse at other road users or undertaking someone’s grandad who’s already not comfortable driving to church with 100’s of bikes on the road is not nice for them and achieves nothing, but to bring our event into disrepute.
You will have, undoubtably, seen the recent footage from the horse rider at the Windsor triathlon who was undertaken by a bunch of fast moving cyclists and the horse freaked out – This made the national news. Because of this incident, Triathlon currently has a particularly bad name in the press and public eye, and we now need to rebuild people’s confidence in the races and competitors.

I appreciate that no-one gets out the water and sets off on their bike wanting to ride or run like an idiot, but red mist descends when you get a race number on you, and I’ve seen even the calmest person turn into an idiot when racing.
I’m going to identify the village of Castle Eaton on the bike course for you all, but in reality, you should be carrying this good behaviour mentality throughout the entire race, and undertaking, riding on the wrong side of the road to cut a corner, or being abusive or in anyway disrespectful to any other road user (or competitor) is something I’d hope all our competitors will not do throughout the race.
In order to prove to the residents of Castle Eaton that we can run a good race in a safe, controlled environment, we have agreed with them to police it with them on race day, and both our marshals, bike team and their parish council will be out checking and filming.
If anyone is seen not riding in a courteous manner, cutting corners by going too fast for the conditions, or generally being overly loud or rude, you will be instantly disqualified from the race, no exceptions.
It’s massively important to me for all the Villages we go through on our races to continue to love and support them, not just tolerate or dislike them, and a repeat of what we had in June could see us not allowed to race on the roads at all, so understandably, we’re taking it very seriously.

99.99% of you all ride/run very well and race very courteously (and for that, we’re very appreciative), but there’s still that 0.01% that’s creeping into our sport (as seen at Windsor) that can ruin it for everyone else.

Castle Eaton is around 17miles into the Bike course lap and you will go through there for around 300m. There are three 90deg corners in the village that you will need to slow to around 10mph to take (and that’s pushing on too):

We will mark the entrance to the village with the following signs, but in reality, I’d expect you to ride/run in this well behaved manner in all areas of the course.

Like when you’re running through Somorford Keynes later in the race, you must remain on the side of the road that you are supposed to be on, and cutting corners is both dangerous and against the rules.

Right, that’s it for my rant for today. The next newsletter this week will return to positive, I promise

I’m around all this week other than Thursday, when I have to be away for the day on my Day job (I’m not working the rest of this week, but I couldn’t get out of Thursday’s commitment), so please get in touch if you need anything from us this week, or there’s anything we can do to help in the last few days before the starter whistle goes off.
If you do need me on Thursday when I’m working, although I won’t be available on my phone or email before around 6pm, I will pick through my emails in the evening, or if you leave me a voicemail message, I may get a chance during the day to pick them up and call you back.

it looks like the weather is going to pick up again in the next few days, so we may well be racing in some pretty hot conditions. If so, I’ll send an email out later this week with some tips on racing in the hot and how you can adapt your strategies in line with our race and the extra aid stations

Thanks and happy tapering

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
Tel 07595 591612
Email Graeme@113events.com