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

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

Cotswold Classic – 5th Aug 2018

Good morning all, I hope everyone’s well and out enjoying this somewhat exceptional summer we’re having ?
We’re less than 2 weeks away from the race, so this is my third instalment of info in the run up to the event.
I’m still getting lots of questions from people that have not downloaded and read the race info pack yet, so if you’re one of those, please head to https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/downloads/ and download it as it contains important info about the race.

In this instalment, I’m going to cover the following :

Water Temperature
Registration and briefings
Parking on Saturday/Sunday
Marshals request

Water Temperature
I’ll cover this first as I know that you’d all just scroll down to it anyway 🙂
As you will all be aware, we’ve been having a unusually great summer of sunshine, which although is great for training, it’s not great for water temperatures
Yesterday, the lake temperature was 25.1 deg, which puts us over the range of temperature where you would be allowed to swim in a wetsuit (</= 24deg) – Please see the last newsletter for details on the rules and how we apply them – https://www.113events.com/1662-2/
I’m still reasonably confident that we won’t have to ban wetsuits on race day, as yesterday was 30deg air temp, and the forecast is for it to reduce somewhat next week, which should help bring the water temperature down, along with a little cloud cover.
Generally, we can find a cooler spot in the lake and we do get some adjustment for air temperature. However, if the water does go back up to the 27.8 deg it was at the end of last week, it’s just not safe to swim the distance in a wetsuit.
I got in the lake in my wetsuit last week (water temp 26.9) and swam the full 1.9km course just to see just how bad it’d be swimming that far in a wetsuit, and I absolutely cooked myself. Although I felt fine initially getting out the water, the heat exhaustion meant for the next few minutes I was pretty wobbly, and this is a critical time when you’re racing as you’re setting out on the bike on a hard tarmac surface.
We will keep everyone updated early next week, and I’m still reasonably confident that the temperature will drop to within the ‘Wetsuit optional’ range, but I just wanted to keep transparency of our process so we don’t get anyone worrying perhaps unnecessarily.
Even if it does go into the Wetsuit optional range, I’d strongly suggest that people have a go at open water Swimming without a wetsuit in the run up to the race, as it’s a much nicer experience when the temperatures are high.
In the next couple of days, I’ve asked Jason Tait of SouthWest Swim to put some words together on Swimming without a Wetsuit and how to approach it, and I’ll post these onto our facebook page (facebook.com/113events)
The final decision for Wetsuits or not Wetsuits will be made on Saturday the 4th and the decision will be published in the registration tent, but I will, of course, keep you all updated in the days before the race

Registration and briefings
We have our registration for the race on Saturday the 4th between 13:00 and 17:00 at the lake, right next to the swim start and the race finish.
At registration, you will collect your race pack, which includes your timing chip, a bike sticker,  your race number and your swim cap, the colour of which relates to your swim wave. You will also get your shirt and your goody bag. This year, to reduce plastic bag use, your goody bag won’t actually come in a plastic bag, but you’ll get the goody itself and the shirt in your hand as we use around 1000 plastic bags that then just get binned as soon as you get back to your car.
To register, you will need photo ID and £5 cash for a BTF day license, or if you’re already a BTF member, you’ll need your 2018 BTF license card.
You can get someone else to register for you, and they’ll need a photocopy of your photo ID or BTF membership, and £5 cash if you’re not a BTF member. It has to be a photocopy, and needs a note on it from you saying it’s fine for ‘Joe Bloggs’ to collect on your behalf and your signature. To comply with the BTF rules, we have to retain these photocopies and pass them to the BTF ref so he can make spot checks in transition that the person racing is the person that should be racing.
We can’t, unfortunately, post out race packs as the postal system uses magnets, and these play havoc with the timing chips.
We will also have the race packs ready at our house by around Wednesday PM next week, so if you’re passing Swindon on the M4 at the end of next week, and want to come and collect your pack from Nicci (I’ll be at the lake all next week getting things ready), you’re more than welcome, and we might even have some biscuits in the tin.

Briefings – Everyone that races will have a quick 3 minute compulsory briefing 10mins before your race wave start. This will cover all the important safety aspects of the race. However, on Saturday the 4th, we will hold full briefings next to the swim exit / transition that will go through the entire race bit by bit. These are not compulsory, but they’re a great way to hear how the race works and we’ll literally talk you through everything that will happen on race day and answer any questions you might have.
I try and make them a little entertaining, however, Mike the BTF referee, fell asleep on the grass next to me at the June one, so I’m conscious I’m quite boring and we’ll step our comedy game up for the Classic 🙂
These briefing’s take about 45mins, and we’ll run two identical ones on the Saturday at 13:30 and 16:00

Parking Saturday/Sunday
We will hold all our parking in the field around 250meters from the Beach end entrance to the lake on Saturday and Sunday.
This field is owned by a local farmer, who has charged us a small fortune to use it, so as such, there will be a parking charge for both days to cover the cost of the field and the people to control it both days. In fairness to the farmer, he does donate a good chunk of his fee to Wiltshire Air Ambulance.
The parking charge is £2 for the Saturday and £5 for the Sunday payable in cash.
It’s a field, and although it’s pretty flat for a rough grass field, if you were planning on coming in your Ferrari , I’d suggest you perhaps look at something will a little more ground clearance. Any normal car should be perfectly fine.
The field has enough space for all competitors and a small amount of spectators, but please can I ask that you park nice and close to the car next to you as we can very easily reduce it’s capacity by 30-40% if people park all over the place or leave 8 foot between the car next to them. If you have spectators coming along later on Sunday, you’d do well to advise them to come earlier rather than later as once that car park is full, the only other real option is to park in the beach and country park, and they will charge you something like £14 per car, and they also fill up veer quickly if the weather is looking good.
You can buy your Sunday ticket on the Saturday, and this will speed the process up on Sunday morning, but please allow yourself plenty of time to get into the car park, unload your stuff and get over to transition on race morning
The car park only has only one entrance, so just to reiterate, please leave yourself a good amount of queuing time Sunday morning and have the right change to hand when you get to the payment marshal.

Marshal request
Given it’s been so warm, we’re going to put an extra water station out on the run course around 1 mile after transition. We will need another 6 or 7 people to man this.
We can also use a few more people on the bike course, so if you have anyone coming along that fancies getting involved, please get them to email me at graeme@113events.com.
They’ll get paid too, and we’ll make sure they have a fun day and are well looked after

Right, that’s it from me for this week
The next newsletter will be early next week, and I will update everyone on Water temperature then
If anyone gets any questions, or needs anything from us in the run up to the race, please just get in touch

Thanks

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

Cotswold Classic July newsletter – Edition 2

Good morning all, I hope everyone’s well ?
We’re under a month to race day on August 5th, so as promised in my previous mail, here’s edition 2 of 4 of the July Cotswold Classic newsletter.
I appreciate you all get bored of going through my rather long mails, so this is a way of drip feeding it out to you in more manageable chunks and not putting anyone to sleep at their desks on a Monday morning.

I’ll try to keep this one pretty brief, and cover the following :

Competitor info pack
Marshal request
Finalised start list
Water Temperature

Competitor info pack
Please can you all take a few minutes to read through the competitor info pack at the following link :

Downloads

This contains everything you need to know about the race weekend, and much more.
I know I go on about this in my emails, but you’d be surprised how many email questions I’ve had in the last week alone on things that are in the pack in the first couple of pages.
Each race, we get someone that turns up on late on race morning and didn’t realise they had to register the day before and thought the race started at 9am, or we get numerous people that turn up each registration day and didn’t realise they needed photo ID.
In a later edition of the July newsletter, I’ll run through the bullet points for registration and race day, but please take a couple of minutes to print off the info pack and digest it.

Marshal request
We’re very proud that we have built a great reputation for having some of the best marshals in the sport, and I’m always looking for more. We have around 180 paid marshal positions on race day, and I still need to fill around 15 more of these.
If you have someone coming along with you that fancies being involved, then please get in touch at graeme@113events.com
They don’t need any experience at all, and all we ask is that they’re over 16 and know their left from their right and are enthusiastic (or can at least pretend to be enthusiastic for a few hours).
We’ll partner them up, take them through a full briefing and provide them with everything they need for the day as well as cover their drinks, burgers and ice creams for the shift.
The two shifts are;
Bike 05:45-11:45ish
Run 08:00-14:45ish
Both shifts start at the lake with a marshal team briefing at the above listed start time
We pay all our marshals too, and they can choose from either £20 cash or a £40 113 Events voucher to use with us on a future race (or you can use it if they’re not a triathlete) and all marshals get a technical fabric Red Team shirt to keep.
Please get in touch at graeme@113events.com

Finalised start list
The window for requesting numbers and waves has now closed, and we’ve had an unprecedented amount of requests from you all – Something like 930 of you have requested either a specific wave or race number by email – it’s been a busy week for me
I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to accommodate at least 99.99% of the requests, and you can find the final published start list here ; https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/cotswold-classic-start-list/
Please note that now the race is fixed and frozen, we can no longer change waves and race numbers, and all names against each entry can also no longer be changed.

Water Temperature
Before anyone starts panicking, I’m fully expecting the race to be ‘Wetsuit Optional’, and in 17 races we’ve now run at that lake over the last 8 summers, we’ve never had to ban wetsuits yet.
However, I’m conscious that this summer has perhaps been exceptional so far, and that many large UK races are touch and go whether Wetsuits are going to be allowed or not. Therefore, in the interest of transparency, I just wanted to let you all know how the rules work, and how we apply them for our races whilst keeping in line with the BTF regulations.

The regulations basically say that above a water temperature of 24deg results in a ban of wetsuits (Between 16-24 they’re optional – Although nearly everybody wears one generally)
The lake was measured by the shore yesterday at 25.1deg, which is exceedingly high for that lake, and is a result of the last 4 weeks of sunshine and near 30deg temperatures.
We have a couple of work arounds for this, which are that we can always find a slightly cooler spot in the lake to ‘officially’ measure on race weekend, and that we also get allowed a certain amount of compensation for morning Air temperatures.
With this in mind, and the fact that this is England, by August it could well be back down to 12deg and rain or snowing, I’m fully expecting the race to be ‘Wetsuit Optional’
However, if for some reason, the water temperature continues to climb, it’s in the interest of safety for you all not to wear wetsuits as you’ll simply cook yourselves and set yourselves up for a rather unpleasant day.

If, in the unlikely circumstances, that we do have to make it a non wetsuit swim, I want to let you all know how it’ll work.
Firstly, for those of you that are worried about completing the distance without a Wetsuit, there’s a few things to consider:
1) There’s spots on the swim course where you can stand up and take a break
2) If you need a break away from those spots, we arrange with the water safety crew (70ish canoeists) that you can signal to them that you need a break and they’ll paddle over for you to hold their canoe for a couple of minutes and have a breather – This will obviously be whilst they’re not moving as you can’t hitch a lift for the rest of the swim, and please grab the canoe at either the front or rear tips, as if you grab the side, the canoeist will be swimming next to you and probably not overly happy.
3) We have no Swim cut off, and you’ll be allowed as long as you like as long as you’re occasionally making reasonable progress and the water safety crew don’t feel you’re a danger to yourself or anyone around you. – We often have people swim the whole 1.9km doing breastroke with their head out the water having a good chat with a canoeist

The banning of wetsuits means you need to swim in either a one of two piece tri suit or swimming shorts/trunks for the boys or a costume/two piece for the ladies (although in the interest of gender fairness, men can also swim in a bikini if they so choose!).
Tri suits cannot extend past your elbows or knees, and any neoprene (ie swim buoyancy shorts or sleeveless and short leg wetsuits) are not allowed.
You would not be allowed to wear calf guards during the swim if it’s a non wetsuit swim as these are seen as Hydrodynamic aid in the eyes of the rules, and you’re not allowed tow floats of anything else that could be deemed as a floatation device.

In saying all this, I’m very confident we won’t have to ban wetsuits, but I just wanted to keep transparency in the process so that no-one feels unsure about what’s happening.
I’ll update on water temperature in our next few pre-race newsletters and also on our facebook page.
I swam a lap of the lake with and without a wetsuit last week, and whilst it was a little toasty in my wetsuit, it was bearable, and it was a really nice temperature to swim without one too.

Right, that’s it from me for this week
My next email will come out early next week, which will include some info and stats on the race, and also some info on how you can book your bike in for a pre-race tuneup and how to book into the pre-race massage we’ll have by registration on the Saturday.
In the meantime, we’re here to help, so if anyone gets any questions, please just call or email me, it’s what I’m here for !

Thanks and happy training

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

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

Cotswold Classic Tri – 5th August 2018

Good afternoon all, I hope this email finds you all well and as excited for race weekend as we are ?
We’re just over a month to go to the race, so I wanted to drop you all out a few mails over the coming weeks with info on the race
I’m conscious that many of you don’t actually make it to the end of my waffling emails before you’re asleep or your attention has drifted back to the TV, so I’m going to send you out regular mails in the run up to the race to cover a load of different things, all of which are important so require some attention.

Before I get started, I just want to say a quick thank you to everyone that came along to yesterday’s course familiarisation day. With around 150 people turning up, we had a cracking day of Sunshine, and I hope that everyone found seeing the course (And Dave Falling off the paddle Board into the lake !) useful (and funny) ?

In this, the first of my race month emails, I’ll cover the following :

Race Info Pack
Start list
Waves and Bib Numbers

Race info pack
Hopefully, by now you’ve all downloaded and digested the race info pack. If you haven’t, then please take the time to read it as it contains everything you need to know about the race weekend, and what to expect, what to do, and where you need to be at certain times etc.
You can download the pack at https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/downloads/

Start list
The race entry list is now fixed and frozen, so you can find the start list of all competitors here https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/cotswold-classic-start-list/
Please can I ask that you take a couple of mins to find yourself on there and to make sure your name etc is spelt correctly.
A few races ago, we had a lady enter by the name of Virginia, and when she had entered the race online her spell check had changed her name to something sounding very similar that was more related to a very personal lady part. Luckily, it was picked up before it ever got printed onto her race bib, so it’s worth taking a couple of mins just to make sure you’ve actually entered with your own name correctly spelt before you spend 113km with something else written on your bib 🙂

As the race is now fixed and finalised, we now cannot make any changes to competitors (ie swap your name for someone else racing in your place), and as we now cannot backfill your slot, we’re now past the stage where we can offer any deferrals or refunds (Unless you took out the 3rd party refund insurance at sign up), sorry

Waves and Bib Numbers
The race on August 5th will start in 8 waves going off at 10 Minute intervals from 06:30.
By default, these waves are decided by youngest going off first, and oldest going off last and the start list is filtered by age and chopped into 8 equal numbers. Relay teams and males/females are mixed together, so the waves are not gender or entry type specific.
Most waves have around the same average swim time, and the race has been won in the past from waves 2, 4 and 6 rather than only wave 1 as you might expect.
As those of you that have raced with us before will know, you can now have the chance to choose a specific wave and/or race number if you wish.
In terms of the waves, I appreciate it’s not an easy task to think which you might want to be in, so I’ll give you a few examples of why you might want to choose a specific wave if you want to do so;

1) You feel like you’re going to take a while to complete the course and don’t want to be the last person on the run course, so you might want to choose an earlier wave to have more time on the run with others around you.
2) You might have missed the olympic swim squad selection by 0:0001 Seconds, and want clear water in front of you, so would likely want wave 1
3) You might be a more nervous swimmer, and don’t want subsequent waves catching up with you in the water, so would want the last or a later wave
4) You might want to be home in time for Songs of Praise, or have a dog grooming appointment mid afternoon, so need an earlier wave to give you time to get finished and home.
5) You might just want to see a few waves go off before you start to see how it all works, so might want a wave in the middle

As well as a wave, you can also choose a specific race number or a group of race numbers so that you and your club mates can go off together and be racked next to each other in transition (Our racking works numerically). If you’re not fussed about the specific numbers, I can find you a set of random sequential numbers grouped together so you’re all next to each other.
If you are asking for a specific number, these are first come first served, so please also list a few alternatives in case the number you are asking for has already been snapped up.
You can select any number between 10 and 900inc, and the numbers that relate to years of birth (ie 74, 82etc) are very popular and go very quickly, as do 111,222,333 etc, so please give me a 2nd/3rd/4th preference

If you are asking for a group of numbers for other people, please can I ask that you work to the following rules:
1) Please ask your club/mates first. I regularly get emails asking for a group of people to race together, and two of the people actually want to race with other people, or have already selected a wave and number themselves.
2) Please check the start list to see if anyone in your group has actually not entered, and that’ll save me spending ages scratching my head to find someone that actually didn’t get around to entering the race (this happens a lot – Maybe 5-10 email requests per race)
3) Please list the persons name, DOB and email as you’d be surprised how many duplicates of seemingly unique names we have racing, not just your John Browns, or Sue Smiths. Also make sure you use the name that they have registered with as I won’t know who ‘Chalky Brown’ or ‘Speedy Jones’ is if they’ve not registered with that name
4) Please don’t CC your entire group into the email to me as normally someone clicks reply to all to start an ordinary conversation, and as interested as I might be about your loft conversion, or your new promotion at work, it distracts me from putting in race numbers and waves 🙂
5) Please get your request right the first time, and don’t start adding names in at a later date as this is not always possible. Take your time to actually think who you might want to race with, check with them and then submit your request

Typically, if a race has 1100 competitors as next month’s Cotswold Classic does, I will get around 900-1000 requests for waves and numbers in the next 6 days. As you can appreciate, this is massively time consuming for me, so I literally block out 4 full days at 48hours this week to pick through all the emails in front of an excel chart. I love that we can offer this for you guys, but please make my life easier by getting your requests right first time and not keep coming back to me to change or add names into your group, as often this is not possible.

The window for requesting waves is open now by return email to me using the title ‘CC18 Waves and Numbers’ and you have until Midnight on Sunday the 8th July to get your requests in.
Sometime next week, I will publish the start list where you can find your waves and numbers allocated, so please accept that I physically cannot respond to all request emails.
After Midnight on Sunday the 8th July, I cannot then move people around waves or change people’s numbers, so please make sure you get your request in this week !
All waves and numbers are first come first served, and once a number is gone, it’s gone, and once a wave is full, I’ll put you in the nearest one I can.

Right, that’s it from me for this week. I’ll send out another email early next week which will include the start list with all waves and numbers, and the next instalment of info on the race

We’re here to help, so if anyone needs anything from us in the run up to the race, please just ask

Thanks and happy training

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

The following email went out to all Cotswold Classic Familiarisation day entrants today:

Cotswold Classic Familiarisation day – July 1st 18

Good afternoon all, I hope everyone’s well and has been out enjoying training in the sunshine ?

Our Cotswold Classic familiarisation day is this Sunday, and as you’ve all signed up to attend, I wanted to drop you all out a quick mail with some info on the weekend.

The day will be held at Waterland Outdoor Pursuits, which is Spratsgate Lane, Ashton Keynes, Glos, GL76DF.

We will have Jason Tait (http://southwestswim.co.uk) leading a guided lap of the Swim course starting at 08:00, but you don’t need to attend this if you don’t want to, and there’s also 400m, 750m and 1500m courses laid out in the lake if you just wanted to get in to get a taste for the lake (Not literally).
The guided Swim will start at 08:00, and will be at a nice leisurely pace with several regrouping stops.
The lake water is currently measuring in at around 22deg, which is pretty warm, so whether you choose to wear a wetsuit is entirely up to you, especially as the forecast for this weekend is very hot, so could be even warmer by then.
These last couple of weeks have been unusually warm, and to date, we’ve run 17 races from the lake over the summer and have not had to ban wetsuits yet where it’s gone over 24deg, so this is unusually warm for the lake.
The familiarisation day with us is completely free of charge, but as the lake guys need memberships to swim, if you wanted to get in the water before the bike and run, they’ll charge you £5 day membership on the gate.

The bike will be a single lap (28miles as it’s two laps on race day), and will head off from the lakeside Cafe (Next to where you’d have started/finished the swim) at 10am.
As we’re around 90 signed up, we’ll head out in a single or maybe 2 groups, and like the swim, we’ll have a few regrouping stops. As we don’t have police and marshals out on the bike course, this is a lead group ride and everyone will be expected to ride in a courteous manner and to give other road users plenty of space
This is the UK, so there’s a number of potholes on the course. On race day you, obviously, won’t be riding in a pack, so they’re easy to spot and avoid, but please be mindful to call them out when riding in a group.
You can of course ride on a TT bike, but when riding in a group, please don’t sit on your aero bars as group rides and aero bars are not a great combination, and I’ve seen a fair few accidents over the years where a group has stopped and someone on Aero bars can’t get to the brakes in time. If you want to ride on your aero bars, please hang back and ride off the rear of the group with a decent gap to the rider in front.
For the bike route, we’ll aim to average around 15mph

Once we get back in from the bike, we’ll have a 15-20min break to ask any questions and get your run kit on, and we’ll then head out on a single lap of the run course (4.3 miles – 3 laps on race day) at around 12:30 ish. This will be one group, and is a great chance to see the course. Like the bike course, this is a lead group run, so there’ll be sections that aren’t fenced off as they will be on race day, so there might be areas we need to walk through as a group so as not to bump into people having BBQ’s etc as the Waterpark gets mega busy on a sunny day.
We’ll have plenty of stops to regroup on the run course to point out where aid stations and various other bits of the race will be
For the run course, we’ll aim to average around 10min miles.

Race support & pre race tune-ups
For this year’s triathlons, we have Joe from VeloWorks offering pre-race servicing and providing our on-course mechanical race support. Joe will be on site during the Familirisation day on 1st July in case anyone needs any last minute adjustments ahead of setting off on the bike lap.

During race weekend itself, VeloWorks are offering a pre race tune-up service throughout Saturdays registration period for £20 that can be booked in 30min slots by visiting their website www.veloworks.co.uk. On race morning, they will be located near transition to provide any last minute support before heading out onto the bike course in case anyone needs mechanical assistance to get back into T2.

Finally for those of you local to the area, if you need any help with your bike between now and August’s race, check out the VeloWorks website to see the full range of services offered to ensure your bike is race-ready.

If anyone gets any questions or queries, please feel free to get in touch with me.
I’m going to be away for three days on my day job this week Tues-Thursday, so give me a call if it’s urgent as I’ll only be picking my mails up in the evening (07595 591612)

Look forward to seeing you all on Sunday, and please bring plenty of water and sunscreen as it’s looking to be a hot one.

Thanks

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

The following email went out to all Cotswold113 2018 Competitors today:

I hope everyone now has their feet up ? Good evening all, I hope that everyone enjoyed today’s Cotswold113 ? Firstly, thank you all very much for choosing to race with us, and we sincerely hoped that everyone enjoyed the day. It was a tough start this morning, and I can only apologise that we had to delay the kick off and hope that everyone understands that your safety is a priority to me and the team, and it simply wasn’t safe to send you out in the water until the fog had lifted and our water safety crew could see you enough to ensure you all got around safely (and you all actually be able to see where you were swimming) I sit here now, absolutely beat, but wanted to drop you all a quick email (Well, quick by my normal standards anyway), whilst I’m still awake and everything’s still fresh in my mind. I’ll try not to waffle on too long, so in this mail, I’ll cover the following How fast you went and how good you looked doing it Summary of the day, and feedback request Fancy racing with us again this year Don’t fancy racing again, but wouldn’t mind being part of our team Next year’s event How fast you went and how good you looked doing it I know this is the only bit of this email that any of you are actually interested, so I’ll get it out the way first : The main results sheet is here: http://dbmaxresults.co.uk/results.aspx?CId=16421&RId=2218 Event Photo’s will be here by Monday night-ish https://www.charleswhittonphotography.com/cotswold-113-tri-10618 We pay for the first couple of downloads, and Charlie will then have another few available to purchase on his site if you so choose Summary of the day, and feedback request As you unfortunately saw this morning, we had to delay the start of the race today by 90mins due to the fog. This lead to a few problems later on in the day, largely that by starting just 90mins later, meant that the bike course was still in full swing when the traffic started to build up on the roads around the course, and some cyclists encountered more cars on the road or congestion in junctions than I would perhaps have liked, so please accept my apologies for this if you were expecting largely traffic clear laps, and you did happen to get stuck behind a caravan or a random slow Sunday driver. Nearly all of the behaviour on course towards other road users was impeccable from yourselves, so thank you very much to all of you for that. As I explained in the briefing, maintaining local relationships in the area we race in is super important to me, as I want this race to carry on being the race all the local residents love, so a big thanks from me and the team for being so well behaved considering we had you all standing around for 90mins getting cold, when all you all wanted to do was go out and race I love your feedback too, so please take a couple of minutes to write down your thoughts or come and see me and let me know what you felt about the day. I’m conscious there’s a few bits we can’t change (largely the overlap of the run and the bike at Spratsgate), and that I was so boring in the Saturday briefing’s that Mike (our BTF referee) actually fell asleep on the grass next to me in the 2nd one :), but there’s lot of little bits of the race that you guys see that I simply don’t, and that’s the feedback I relish as you all see the race with a completely different set of eyes to me and the core 113 team. Anyway, I truly hope that every single person that started the race today had a great time, but please let me know what you liked and what you think can be improved on. What do you think of my style of mails and communication and that I try and being very hands on with everything. I have thought about it all being more formal, but in reality, that’s just not and the way I deal with people in life and just not very me or 113, so if I tried to become all formal on race emails, it’d come across as a bit fake. I’m keen to know what you think As a team, we’ll all meet back up again later this week and debrief on every race we do from start to finish in minute detail, and it’s that debrief that forms any changes or tweaks we make in time for August 5th, when we effectively re run exactly the same race again, so let me have your thoughts in time for that and I’ll bring it all up in the discussion. Although I’m having to go back to my normal day job on Tuesday and probably Wednesday this week (boo), I’ll be back down the lake all day tomorrow clearing up if anyone needs to come and collect something or just wants a coffee, and again later in the week on Thursday and Friday to finish up cleaning up all the kit, counting it all in and getting it back in Storage. We’ll undoubtably have a load of lost property too, so let me know if you’re missing anything once you’ve found the energy to unpack your kit bags, and I’ll see if we have it and get it posted off. Fancy racing with us again this year  If you fancy having another go at today’s race (although I’d imagine that’s the last thing on your mind right now), we still have around 25 slots of the 1000 available in our August 5th Cotswold Classic Middle Distance, which is basically identical to todays race in every way but name, shirt colour and medal design. Details are at https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/ Alternatively, if you fancy a nice flat, closed roads Half Marathon on Sept 9th, our 113 team are involved in the organisation and running of the New Swindon Half Marathon starting and finishing in Swindon’s town centre – www.newswindonhalf.co.uk Don’t fancy racing again, but wouldn’t mind being part of our team Alternatively, you may well have enjoyed our marshals on the course today, and fancied having a go at that yourself ? If so, then we’re always after new marshals and we’d love to have you on the team for the August 5th race. Hopefully this reflected in how our marshal team was today, but we always try and make sure the marshals with us have fun, and we try and look after them as well as we can so they enjoy their day, as a happy marshal team makes for a great race for you guys. You’d get paid too, and you can choose from either £20 cash or a £40 113 Events voucher to use with us next year Next year’s Cotswold 113 We haven’t fixed the date for Cotswold113 2019, but it’s not likely to change much from this year’s race date (ie 2nd Sunday in June), and entries are planned to open on Sept 1st. As soon as dates are fixed, we’ll post them up on facebook, twitter and our website, and we really hope to see lots of you back racing with us again Right, anyway, that’s it from me. I had less than 2 hours sleep last night, and I’m battered, so I won’t ramble on much longer as I really need a hot bath and my bed (probably just like you all do too) Thanks again for choosing to race with us, and we hope that everyone enjoyed the day, achieved what they wanted, and got home safely after the race. We’re always here to help, so if there’s anything you want from us, please just ask and we look forward to welcoming many of you back to our start line again another time Cheers and happy recovery Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team Tel 07595 591612 Graeme@113events.com