The following newsletter went out to all 2018 Cotswold113 competitors today:

Just over a month to go 🙂

Good afternoon all, I hope this email finds you all out enjoying the sunshine now the Summer’s finally decided to turn up ?
We’re just over a month away from this year’s Cotswold113, so I wanted to drop you all an email and bring you up to speed on the race.
As you will have got used to from me, I can waffle on a fair bit, and this one’s going to be a double long one, but there’s some important info in it. With that in mind, please get yourself somewhere comfortable to sit and a strong coffee before going through it all.

In this email I’m going to cover the following :

Race Information Pack
Race Conditions update
Tri shop at the race
Available transfers to the August race
Marshals requests
Waves and numbers
Local Accommodation
Getting your bike dialled in before the race day

Race information pack
You can find the 2018 race information pack here:
https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/1132018-–-Race-Information-Sheet.docx
Please can I ask that you take the time to read this, as this contains everything you could need to know about the race weekend, from when we rack bikes to where to park, and where spectators can watch from etc. This is your info pack on the race weekend, so if you feel there’s anything missing from it, just let me know and we’ll update it.

Race conditions update
Although we’ve had a pretty rubbish spring in terms of Sunshine, the lake water temperature has now picked up to around 17-18deg. I fully expect the water temperature to be around 19-21deg on race day, which puts us firmly in the ‘Wetsuit Optional’ category. For those of you unsure as to what this means, it basically means everyone will wear a wetsuit bar maybe 1 or 2 nutters that prefer to Swim without. I can’t see this drastically changing between now and the race, but of course, I’ll keep everyone updated if we suddenly get 3 weeks of 40deg heat wave or another round of snow.
The run course is around 50% tarmac and 50% hard packed lakeside paths with a  couple of hundred meters of grass. The lakeside paths handle rubbish weather pretty well, so unless we get heavy rain for a few days before the race day, I’d suggest you wear road shoes all day long. Again, I’ll keep everyone updated on this, just in case.

Tri Shop at the race
As some of you might already know, the Triathlon shop in Bristol, who’ve attending our races for the last few years, unfortunately, have appeared to have gone kaput in the last few days. This leaves us without a Triathlon shop to attend our race weekend and show off all their goodies, and sell to you guys all the last minute bits and bobs that people generally forgot to bring, or didn’t even know they needed.
Therefore, if any of you have any contacts in any triathlon shops that would be interested in setting up stall at our races this year (June 9/10th and August 4/5th), then please can you ask them to get in touch.
We don’t ask for anything from the shop to set up shop a the race, and I feel it’s a great thing to have for you all to be able to buy last minute bits or plan your next expensive carbon purchase.
They won’t need to do any mechanical support, as we already have that covered.

Transfers to the August race
We’ve had a pretty reasonable take up of the free transfers over to the August race for those of you that have just not been ready in the last couple of months to race in June.
However, I’m afraid that although transfers are still (just about possible), we can no longer do it for free.
The fairest way that we can do it for those of you that do actually still need a couple more months, is to establish a fee that basically covers the value of the items that are not interchangeable between the two races now that we’ve fixed the June 10th race, and can’t now change names or draft in from the waiting list.
If you are still thinking of requesting a move, we can still do it as there’s still around 60 of the 1000 slots left for that race, but we would now have to ask that you pay for the none exchangeable elements, which is around £40.
The August 5th Cotswold Classic Middle Distance tri is identical to the June 113 in every way bar name and shirt/medal colour. It’s on exactly the same course with the same team running it, just two months later.

Marshal request
We have around 200 paid marshals positions on the course for this year’s race, and we’re still to fill a few
If you have anyone coming down with you on race weekend, or anyone that would like to be involved, we’d welcome them to the team.
We pay our marshals too, and they’ve get paid either £20 cash or a £40 113 Events voucher (that you can use if you wish), and all our marshals get an event shirt and we keep them in hot food, drinks and ice creams all day.
They don’t need any experience at all, and we’ll provide them with everything they need and take them through a full briefing
We can’t, unfortunately, pay under 16’s, but they’re welcome to come along and help an adult marshal if you’re supplying one, and still get an event shirt and free ice creams
Anyone that’s ever been involved in organising races will know that getting marshals is one of the hardest bits of setting up the races, so any help you can give us by press ganging people in would be greatly appreciated
Please email graeme@113events.com

Waves and Numbers
For those of you that have raced with us before will know, you now have a window to request (if you want) a specific wave and/or a specific race number (or a group of numbers to be racked with your mates)
Just to front load any requests we might get: The race will start at 06:00 and go off in 8 waves at 10 minute intervals, and the racking layout is not set until race weekend, so I’m afraid I can’t give people special numbers to be on the end of a row of racking (as we just don’t know which numbers are at the end yet until we set it out). All the positions in transition are roughly equidistant from Swim in to Bike out and Bike in to run out as we enter and exit our transition at opposite corners each time, so no positions get an advantage over any other positions.

If you wish, you can choose any wave between 1 and 8 and we have race numbers available from 10-1000inclusive (relays can select a wave, but not a number as they’re racked separately). If you choose not to select a wave and/or number, you’ll be allocated a number at random as per any other race, and the remainder of competitors that have not chosen a wave, will be filtered to be youngest off first, and oldest off last, and it’s not gender specific as male/female/undisclosed are mixed together.
Note: If you have entered through the Police (PSUK) entries, you will automatically be in wave number 3 and in a preset group of numbers so you’re racked together in transition. I have also grouped in a few other  (8 in total) entries that have listed Police teams against their tri club but didn’t enter through the PSUK route, but if you’re one of these and not happy with going off with the PSUK race, please just give me a shout.

In order to make your decision a little easier, I thought I’d give you a few examples and some facts on the race, to help you choose why you might want to choose a specific wave or number
1) If you feel you’re at the slower end of the field, and want more time on the course with other people around you, you might want an earlier wave
2) Wave number 1 will include many of the very fast swimmers who want clear water ahead of them, but they will only account for about 10-15% of the wave, and the waves average swim time will be similar to the other waves, as it will also include many of the much slower swimmers that want to get the swim over and done with – All the other waves are roughly the same as each other in terms of pace
3) The race has been won not only by competitors in wave 1, but previously competitors from wave 2,4 and 7 also.
4) You might want to be finished early so you can get back in time for Songs of Praise on a Sunday afternoon, so would want an earlier wave
5) You may not want to be get up at silly o’clock and fancy a relative lie in, so might want a later wave
6) You may like to watch other waves come out the water and go through transition before you swim yourself to get an idea of how it all works, so might want a later wave.
7) You might want to have your club or friends all grouped together in transition and in the same wave, so we can arrange sequential numbers so you’re next to each other, and you can have that smug smile when you get out of the water and all their bikes are still there 🙂

Of the 1000 competitors we have at our races, I get around 8-900 requests for waves and/or numbers, and as you might imagine, this is a massively time consuming job for me to try and accommodate all the requests ( I literally block out about 4 whole days, so about 48 hours, to sit at my laptop and do this), so please can I ask that you make my life a little bit easier and follow the guidelines for requests below :

1) Some of the numbers will go very quickly, so please put a 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc option in to avoid disappointment. The year’s of birth (typically 60-90) and double/triple numbers (22, 444 etc) go the quickest, as do numbers 13 and 69

2) If you’re asking for a group of mates to be together and don’t want specific numbers, don’t ask for specifics as I can just find you a group of numbers somewhere random where you’ll all be racked together, as often the group will ask for, for example, 450-490, but 473 will have already been taken

3) When asking for groups of people, please can you follow these guidelines:

– Please give me each persons full name, registered email or DOB so I can ensure you don’t get racked next to the wrong Andy Brown or Julie Smith. Even the most seemingly unique names can have duplicates at our races, so let me have a bit more info on that person so I can find the right one, and you’re not racked next to a confused person with the same name as your club mate.
– Please use their proper name rather than nick names as I will have no idea who ‘Chalkie’ or ‘Chugger’ is
– Please clarify it with them first before coming to me with the requests,as most of my time doing this is correcting people who’ve been grouped with a bunch of mates, who it later turns out they want to be as far away from as possible, or have just been grouped with another bunch of mates or team previously . There’s no immediate rush on day one to mail me to get the whole group together, and I can sort that later this week if you spend the time to clear it with everyone first please
– Please don’t CC everyone in your group into the email to me, as invariably someone hits reply to all to start a conversation not related to the race, and as much as I’m intrigued by where you’re going on holiday, or why your wife has suddenly started wearing perfume to work and spends more time with her boss (this was an actual email conversation I got stuck into last year for one of the races), it just means I have more emails to pick through that aren’t relevant to me
– It’ll be easier to place you if you just ask for an earlier, middle or later wave rather than specifics (ie we want wave 4). I can get you all in the same wave, but if it’s a massive group, it’s sometimes hard to accommodate a specific wave, and typically not possible to get big groups into wave 1

To make your request, please email me at graeme@113events.com and use the email title ‘Waves/Numbers’
The deadline for requesting waves and/or numbers is end of play Friday the 11th May
I won’t be able to reply to confirm every email, so please be patient as I’ll publish the start list on Saturday/Sunday this coming weekend

Local Accommodation 
For those of you that have not yet booked your accommodation, and fancy a lakeside house for the weekend to make a Cotswold Break of it, there is the Lower Mills estate based around 750m from the start of the race, and on the side of the run course. They’ve come up with a promotion for our competitors and their families, which you can read about here:
Where to stay when you visit
Habitat Escapes https://www.habitatescapes.com
Located only a short distance from the start of the race, Lower Mill Estate, a stunning space that celebrates unspoilt nature, offers superbly appointed self-catering accommodation with access to its exclusive award winning spa.

Book a stay using the voucher code 113JUN and receive a complimentary Luxury hamper full of locally sourced goodies.

Getting your bike dialled in before the race day
We will have our friend Joe from VeloWorks at the lake on Saturday during registration and first thing Sunday morning during the race doing last minute bike repairs and servicing/Tuneups.
Joe is an incredible bike mechanic, and it’s well worth getting your bike booked in for Saturday to make sure it’s in top shape for the race on Sunday. Joe will also be based at the Aid station on the bike course during the race in case anything needs sorting during the race.
You can see the services Joe offers, and more about Veloworks here http://veloworks.co.uk

Right, that’s it from me today, so I hope that I haven’t sent you all into a boredom induced mid afternoon sleep, and you’re still alive and kicking ?

The next email from me will be in a couple of weeks, where I’ll go through some hints and tips for the race weekend, and get out any further info on the race as it becomes available.

We’re here to help, so if there’s anything we can do for you all in the run  up to the race, please just get in touch

Thanks and happy training

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

The following email went out to all those that have signed up to our Cotswold 113 Course Familiarisation day:

Cotswold113 Familiarisation day on April 22nd

Good afternoon all, I hope everyone is well ?
We’re fast approaching our first Familiarisation day of the year on April 22nd, and I wanted to thank you all for signing up to it, and to get some information out about the day.

The familiarisation day is held at the lake we use for the races, which is at the following address:
Waterland Outdoor Pursuits
Spratsgate Lane
Ashton Keynes
Glos
GL76DF

You will find the lake as the 2nd gate on the right on spratsgate lane if approaching from the South on the Spine road, and I’ll put some Red 113 Events Flags up on the gate so it’s easy to spot on the day.
Parking will be through the main gate and out onto the grass parking area they have there.

Due to the somewhat rubbish spring weather we’ve been having, we’ve felt it was safer for all to change the guided lap of the Swim course to an open Swim in the lake. The water temperature is currently at around 10deg, which although perfectly fine for a normal swim, is blimming cold if you have a big group of swimmers regularly stopping in the water to regroup and waiting around rather than keeping warm constantly swimming. We hope you all understand, and we’ll still have Jason Tait, who’s our resident OW swim coach on hand to answer any questions you might have about open water swimming and race starts.
The lake guys have 400meter and 750meter loops marked out, and you’ll be free to do any many or as little laps as you like.
We’ll be on hand also to describe how the single 1,900m lap works on the day.
The lake is very shallow, and as a result of this is quite a small body of water compared to it’s surface area, so will warm up very quickly when the Spring/Summer does finally arrive. With this in mind, I still fully expect the lake temperature to be around 15-19 deg by race day.
We were planning on starting the guided lap at 08:00, but as this is now going to be a free swim in the lake with the swim meters, you are free to start and finish anytime you like before 10am, when we kick off the lap of the bike course.
If you did want to swim, as with the guided lap there’s a £5 guest membership charge applied by the lake guys, and this is payable on the gate in cash.
The bike and run are ran by us and are, of course, completely free of charge.

If you’re not swimming, the please allow yourself time to get parked up and on your bike ready to head out at 10am. We will group together by the cafe at the lake (opposite the gate as you come in) and will head off a few minutes after 10am.
As it’s a group ride, we would ask that you don’t ride on your aero bars, although you’re more than welcome to come along on your TT bike or road bike with Aero bars and ride somewhere behind the group.
We will have a few regrouping stops on the bike to explain how the police closed crossings on the day, and where the aid stations are etc, and we generally average about 14-15mph.
The bike will take around 2hours, and once we’re back at the lake, we’ll have around 15-20minute break to get into our run kit and head out for a lap of the run course, which will be around 12:30. Like the bike course, we’ll have a few regrouping stops, and will run around 10min mile average pace.
A single lap of the bike course is 28miles, and a single lap of the run course is 4.3miles
Myself and the team will lead the bike and run course laps, and will be hand the whole time to answer any questions you might have.
Hopefully, by the some of the Spring will have arrived, and we won’t all be shivering our way around in full winter kit

We will have Joe Wood of Veloworks there on the day doing any repairs of servicing you need for your bikes. Joe is a superb bike mechanic, so please get in touch with him if you need anything done to your bike on the day or in advance of the day.
www.veloworks.co.uk

If anyone has any questions, or needs anything from us before, please don’t hesitate to get in touch
We look forward to seeing you all on April 22nd

Thanks

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team.
Tel 07595 591612

The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold113 2018 Competitors today

Cotswold 113 – March newsletter

Hi all, I hope this email finds everyone well ?
Not that you’d know it looking outside your front doors today, but the race season is just around the corner and the spring is officially here.

I’ll try and keep this one brief as I’m conscious that many of you are trying to find your ways to the gym to do your run workouts on the dreadmill, and I’d guess that most of you are tired of the sight of your turbo trainers too.
If any of you are brave enough to be training outdoors, then hats off to you as I had to fight my way past a polar bear and three penguins just to get to my garage earlier.

Anyway, the things I’ll cover in this email are :

Familiarisation day – April 22nd
Race info Pack
Transfers to the August Classic
Recruiting marshals

Familiarisation day – April 22nd
Our free of charge familiarisation day that we’ll be holding on April 22nd is now open to book up online
You can book that up at www.entrycentral.com/113events under 113 fam day
The emphasis on the day is very much leisurely and social, so if you’re one of the faster guys/girls, you might want to schedule this in as a recovery day rather than a training day as we’re going to keep the pace nice and low and make sure that everyone is comfortable going around (think 15-16mph av on the bike and 9-10min miles on the run)
On both the run and the bike, we’ll cover just a single lap on the day (it’s 2 for the bike and 3 for the run on race day) and we’ll have regular regrouping stops and a few stops to point out where the aid stations are etc.
This is a great chance to meet the 113 events team and many other competitors, and of course, we’ll be on hand to answer any questions you might have. It’s also a great chance to us to meet you guys as invariably everyone has their race faces on over race weekend, and we’re lucky to get more than a grunt out of any of you lot.
The bike and the run are completely free, but if you wanted to Swim a lap of the course lead by our Swim Coach Jason Tait, the lake guys will ask you for £5 for a day membership on the gate. You don’t need to swim a whole lap if you don’t want (the swim is a single 1.9km lap), and they have 400 and 1500m laps marked out on the day too, and this will give you a chance to get a taste for the water – Although not literally, I hope.
Jason’s a great OW swim coach too, and he’ll be on hand to answer any questions you might if you’re new to OW swimming or just have somethings you’ve always wanted to know.
The Swim will kick off with toes in the water at 08:00, the bike will head off at 10:00 and the run generally starts around 12:30. You can, of course, do all or any of the three disciplines, and you’re free to dip in and out as you see fit.
We only ask that you book on so as to get some idea of numbers on the day, and so that we can keep in touch with you nearer the time with final instructions etc by email.
The familiarisation days are always a lot of fun, and they’re a great chance to meet some other competitors and to ask any questions you might have about the races.
If you have friends or club mates that want to come along, and are not signed up to the race, they’re more than welcome to join in too.
We hope to see lots of you on April 22nd, and it might have even stopped snowing by then with a bit of luck 🙂
If you do want to see the bike and run courses, and can’t make the 22nd, I live pretty local to the lake and work from home on my day job, so I welcome the chance to skive off for a couple of hours and show people around. I’m generally not available on weekends as I have various other family things and kids that do a million sports, but can generally be free on a weekday morning if you fancy a trip to the lake. You will need to put up with my slow pace though as my racing days are long gone now, and I’m more your tortoise than your hare, so don’t expect a 300w average bike or 6 min miles, and don’t expect much chatting on the go as I’ll probably be blowing out my backside trying to keep up with you 🙂

Race info pack
You can download the race info pack here – https://www.113events.com/11318-competitor-pack/
Please take the time to read this as it contains important information about the race weekend.
I’ve purposely not made it too colourful, so you can read it at your desk and pretend you’re working if your boss walks past, or perhaps you can print it off and put it next to the toilet at home so you can read it in some peace and quiet.
Anyway, this is your info pack and we’ve tried to include everything you could possibly need. If there’s anything we’ve not covered in this, please just let me know and we’ll add it in.
I’m going to email you this link at least 50 times between now and race day, and it’s genuinely important that you read it please 🙂

Transfers to the August 5th Cotswold Classic
Our other Triathlon is identical to the June 113 in every way bar name, shirt colour and medal.
I know I harped on about this in my last newsletter, but I get so many emails a few weeks out from the June race asking if they can possibly move to the August race instead. This race normally sells out around April/May, and once it’s full, we just can’t swap entries over I’m afraid.
With that in mind, if you are having any doubts that you may be fit enough to race in time for June, or you’ve forgotten it’s your Daughters graduation on that day, or far any other reason that we don’t even need to know about, please ask now as once that race is full, we can’t then transfer you over. It’s completely free to swap over, but a limited time offer until that race is full up.

Recruiting marshals
Anyone that has raced with us before, knows we have a really good reputation for having some of the best, most numerous and most enthusiastic marshals in the sport, and we’re very proud of that, so really look after anyone that helps out on the day.
We always need more marshals on the race weekend (or on August 5th if you fancied doing it yourself), so if you have any friends, enemies, crazy fan club members, or just passers by that you can press gang into helping out on the day, we’d welcome them to the team.
Our marshals get paid too, and you can choose from either £20 in cold hard cash or a £40 113 Events voucher, and all marshals get an event team shirt and we’ll keep you in food, drink and ice creams all day.
All we ask is that you’re over 16, know your left from your right and are enthusiastic, and we’ll give you everything you need, a lift out to your spot if required and take you through a full briefing. We partner up our marshals too, so there’s very few spots where you’d be on your own.
We have a load of roles from early morning guiding, transition, bike and run courses
You don’t need any marshalling or triathlon experience at all, and our course managers will brief you fully on what you need to be doing on the day.
Please get in touch at graeme@113events.com

Right, that’s it from me. This has been the shortest newsletter email I’ve sent so far, so i can’t promise the next one isn’t comparable to war and peace
I’ll email out again in around 6 weeks, but in the meantime, if there’s anything you need from us, we’re here to help so please just get in touch

We hope to see many of you on April 22nd at the Familiarisation day

Thanks and please enjoy the snow in safety this weekend if you are braving some outdoor training

Cheers

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

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

Cotswold Classic 2018 – Feb newsletter

Good morning all, I hope this email finds you all well on this cold February Monday morning ?

Although it certainly doesn’t feel like it outside today, race season is actually just around the corner, so I wanted to send you all out an email to bring you up to speed on this year’s Cotswold Classic race on August 5th, and to get you out some info on the event
Those of you that have raced with us before, know I can type for England, and my mails can waffle on a bit, so if you’re feeling very much like a Monday, I’d suggest you get yourself a strong coffee and a comfy seat as this mail could be a long’un 🙂

In this email, I’ll cover the following :

What to expect from us in the next few months
Familiarisation day – July 1st
Race information pack
Being part of our team
Race Sponsors

What to expect from us
Over the course of the next 22wks, we’ll keep you updated on various things about the race as they become more pertinent nearer the time.
Those of you that have raced with us before, will know that you can choose your own wave and/or race number if you so choose.
Around 5 weeks out from the race, once the start list is finalised, I’ll send an email out to you all asking if you wanted to choose the above. Please can I ask that you await this email around July 1st before making the request as we work the numbers on first come first served basis, and in the interest of fairness to those that have not entered yet (the race is still open and we have around 150 entries left), we do all the waves and number fixing once the start list is fixed. For info – We start the race in 8 waves, and they go off at ten minute intervals starting at 06:30.
The first thing we have coming up is our Familiarisation day, which you can read about later in this mail.
Also, we’ll keep you up to date on water temperature etc much nearer the time, but just to put anyone at ease that’s not confident about racing without a wetsuit, we’ve run our races 17 times from the lake now, and we’ve never yet had to ban wetsuits due to the water being too warm and we normally race over the summer with it around 20deg.
I’ll try and keep the emails out to a minimum as I’m aware that you’ll all get tired of my rambling on, but if you need anything from us, please just ask as that’s what we’re here for.

Familiarisation day – July 1st
On July 1st, we’re holding a free of charge course familiarisation day for the Cotswold Classic, which is a great chance to come down to the race location and get a guided tour of the courses.
The bike course and run course laps are completely free of charge, but if you wanted to Swim, the guys that own the lake will charge you a £5 day membership fee for the pleasure.
The emphasis on the day is very much leisurely, and this is more a chance to have a look around a single lap of the courses ( on race day, swim is 1 lap, bike is 2 laps and run is 3 laps), and let us point out where the Aid stations and various things will be on the day.
Also, it’s a nice chance for us to meet many of you before race day, as I’m well aware that on race weekend you’ll all have your race faces on and we’ll be lucky to hear anything other than a grunt out of you, rather than a proper conversation 🙂
Like I said above, the pace will be very leisurely and no-one will get left behind – Think 15-16mph average on the bike and something like 10min/miles on the run with regular regrouping points.
The laps will be guided by me and the team, and of course, we’ll all be on hand to answer any questions you might have.
Typically, the Swim lap will start around 8am, the bike lap around 10am, and the run lap around 12:30 and you can duck in and out of all or any as you see fit.
So we can keep a tab on who’s coming and who isn’t, we ask that you book yourself in through the following link please :
https://www.entrycentral.com/113events
It’s free to sign up, and if you want to Swim, you’ll need to pay the lake guys £5 on the gate on arrival.
Once you’re booked in, we’ll keep in touch with specific instructions nearer the time via email.
If you have friends that are perhaps thinking about the race for next year or just want to see where you’ll be racing on the day, then please feel free to bring them along too, as they’re more than welcome to join in.
If you want to see the course over the summer, and can’t make the day on July 1st, it’s not the end of the world. I live fairly near to the lake, and work from home on my day job, so am always happy to skive off for a few hours on a weekday morning and show you around at another time. My Tri racing days are long gone now, so as long as you don’t mind my current ‘overweight and undertrained’ riding and running pace, I’m happy to meet up and show you the bike and run courses. It’d need to be weekdays though as generally my summer weekends are taken up with other stuff, or my kids racing.

Race information pack
You can download the competitor information pack here – https://www.113events.com/cc18-competitor-info-pack/
This race information pack contains everything you need to know about race weekend for both competitors and spectators, and has some important info in it, so please can I ask that you all take the time to read through before race weekend.
We’ve tried to make it as comprehensive as possible, but let me know if you think we’ve missed anything and we can update it as we go along. I’ll email this out to you all a few times as it’s important that you all know what happens when and where
It’s worth taking the time to read this, so my suggestion is always to print it off and keep it somewhere that you’ll get time to read it.
We’ve made it in a word doc and not too colourful, so you can pretend you’re working and read it at your desk, or if like me, the only place you ever get any peace and quiet is on the toilet, print it off and leave it next to the magazines in the bog so you can read it without interruption 🙂

Being Part of our team
We have around 150 paid marshal positions over race weekend, and we’re always looking for more. Typically, our marshal team is made up around 50% of regulars, and the other 50% are people who are there supporting friends and family racing.
Our races have a great reputation for having some of the best marshals in the sport, and we’re very proud of that, so we really look after all our marshals on race weekend.
They all get paid too, and you can either choose to get paid £20 cash or a £40 113 Events voucher to use with us at another race.
All marshals get hot and cold food, hot drinks, cold drinks and free ice creams too, and we’ll provide you with an Event team technical t-shirt and everything you could possibly need to have on the day, plus a full briefing by our course managers.
Marshals don’t need any experience at all, and all we ask is that they know their left from their right, and are enthusiastic.
We can only pay official marshals over the age of 16, but if you have a family coming down, the kids are welcome to assist the marshalling adult, and we have team shirts down to a 2year old’s size, and of course they can still take advantage of the free ice creams. They will, of course, need to be supervised at all times, and if you have kids with you, you’d be largely limited to the run course so that you’re not near a road.
The main roles we have are:
Pre-race guides / transition
Bike course
Run course
The bike course roles will mean you’d be finished in time to see anyone other than the very fastest racers finish, and the run course roles will mean that you see the start of the race.

If you have club mates, friends, family, fan clubs or even enemies coming down that you can press gang into being on the team, please drop me an email at graeme@113events.com and we’ll welcome them to the team.
You also might want to see how the race works from the other side before August, so we’d welcome anyone to the team on June 10th for the Cotswold113 Middle Distance Tri, which is identical to the August Classic in all but name

Race sponsors
We now have a vacancy for a race sponsor, so If you fancy having your company logo on the back of our shirt, branding on the course and info in our race packs, please drop me a line to discuss the options we have. We can also provide you space to have a gazebo up during registration and during the race too if you so wish.
Info: graeme@113events.com

Right, that’s it for me today. Hopefully, I’ve not put any of you to sleep and you’re currently snoring away at your desk or on the train ?
We’re here to help, so if you have any questions at all, or just want to chat triathlon, please get in touch

Look forward to meeting many of you at the familiarisation day

Thanks and happy training

Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
Graeme@113events.com
07595 591612
@113events
#113events
facebook.com/113events
www.113events.com

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

Cotswold113 Middle Distance Triathlon – June 10th

Good afternoon all, I hope this email finds you all well, and a happy new year also
We’re around 5 months away from the race now, and as the race is now full up, I wanted to send you all out a quick email to bring you up to speed with the event, and a few things that are happening in the run up.
Those of you that have raced with us before will know I tend to waffle on a bit in my emails, so I’d suggest you grab yourself a large coffee and a comfortable seat before continuing 🙂
There’s some important information in here, so please take a few minutes to have a read.

In this email I’ll cover the following :

Familiarisation day
What to expect on race weekend, and the run up to the race
Transfer window
Marshals
Sponsorship opportunities 

Familiarisation day
For those of you that haven’t raced with us before, or just those that want a reminder of the course, we will be running a free of charge familiarisation day before the race.
In the next couple of weeks, we’ll have the date set for this (we have to work around any other events that the lake might run), but the Familiarisation days are generally 4-6 weeks before the race day itself.
These are a great chance for any of you to come down and we’ll take you on a guided lap of the Swim course, the Bike course and the run course (On race day, it’s 1 swim lap, 2 bike laps and 3 run laps).
The emphasis on these days is leisurely paced, and we’ll go at the pace where you can see the courses and have various things pointed out to you, so no one gets left behind.
Also, this is a nice chance for me and the 113 team to meet some of you guys before race weekend, as generally race weekend is a tense time for you all, and we barely get a grunt out of anyone, let alone a decent conversation.
We’ll all be there to answer any questions you might have too
There’s no charge at all for the bike or run, but if you want to Swim a lap first, the lake guys will ask you for a £5 day membership on the gate. The swim course will be lead by our Open Water Swim coach Jason Tait too, so he’ll be around to ask any questions you may have
Once we have a date set in the next few weeks, I’ll drop you all out an email, and we hope to see many of you there.

What to expect on race weekend, and things you’ll receive in the run up to the race.
A visual is possibly the easiest way to see the race, so please take a couple of minutes to watch an aerial video we had made of the Cotswold113 2017: https://youtu.be/QJO_kFb-KZs
Our race is on June 10th, and we do all our racking in transition on the Sunday morning.
Registration will be on Saturday the 9th between 12:00 and 17:00, and during this time we’ll run a couple of briefings, which are not compulsory to attend, but take around an hour and we’ll talk you through the whole race bit by bit. Each wave will have a compulsory briefing before they get in the water on Sunday morning, and this will take around 3 mins and cover the various safety aspects of the race.
If you can’t get to registration on the Saturday, don’t worry. Nearer the time we’ll put out the information on how you can get someone else to register for you, or you can even come to our house and grab your packs in the days before the race.
The postal system uses magnets which play havoc with the chips, so we can’t post any packs out Im afraid.
The race will start at 06:00 on the Sunday morning and go off in 8 waves at ten minute intervals. Around 5 weeks out from the race, once the final start list is fixed, I’ll send an email out to you all asking if you want to choose a specific wave and/or race number, or a group of sequential race numbers so that you’re racked with your mates in transition. We cannot accept requests earlier than that, so please wait for that email a month or so out from the race before asking for a certain wave or number and they’ll then be strictly first come first served.
You will get a race information pack by email around 3 months out from the race. This contains everything you could possibly need to know about the race for both yourself and your spectators/ fan clubs
For you advanced info, you can find last year’s race info pack here – https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/1132017-–-Race-Information-Sheet.pdf

Transfer Window
I’m conscious that many of you would’ve entered the June race on Sept 1st when the race first opened, and now that you’re 5 months away from the event, you’re starting to wonder what you let yourself in for.
We get loads of emails nearer the race time asking if you can defer your entry to the August 5th Cotswold Classic Middle Distance race that we also run (which is identical to the June 113 in every way other than finishers Shirt Colour, Medal and date). When the August race becomes full, which it generally does around end of March, these requests are impossible to do as there simply isn’t space in that event to move people over to it.
If you are currently feeling like you need another 10weeks to train, or you (like me) ate way too much over Christmas and haven’t quite got around to starting your training, you’re better off biting the bullet and asking for the transfer sooner rather than later, as that race is filling up quickly, and once it’s full, there isn’t going to be a chance a transfer.
Think of this current window as an amnesty, and we won’t ask any questions why you want to transfer, but you can if you wish. We often get people who were so wrapped up in entering a race, they forgot June the 10th is actually their wedding anniversary, or you may just have found your partner has booked you a holiday in early June. Either way, please just ask now if you want to swap races rather than waiting until later and risking disappointment.

You can find the start lists for the race by clicking on the ‘sign up’ tab here : https://www.entrycentral.com/cotswold113
It’ worth taking a couple of minutes to check you’ve spelt your name right on here, as the Christian name you’ve registered will be the name that is printed on your race number. In a previous race, we had a lady by the name of Virginia who entered her name (either by spell check or miss typing) as a very specific Medical female term. It was only when our printer was proofing the race numbers that it got picked up, so please double check to save yourself the embarrassment of racing under a misspelt version of your own name 🙂

Marshals
We have around 190 paid marshal positions on race day, and we’re always looking to expand our team. If you have friends, family, team mates or just about anyone else that’s coming along and wants to be part of the team, we’ll welcome them onboard.
Our marshals all get paid too, and you can choose from either £20 cash or a £40 113 Events voucher to use with us, and we’ll give everyone a free event team shirt and keep you in hot food and drink during the race too.
We genuinely really look after our team, and having an enthusiastic and well briefed team is a big part of what makes our events so good.
You don’t need any experience at all, and all we ask is that they’re 16 or over, know their left from their right and are enthusiastic. We will take them through a full briefing beforehand and provide them with everything they need.
We have loads of jobs from early morning car parking/Swim Start guidance, right through the helping with the course tear down once the race has finished, with every Swim, Bike and Run course role in-between.
Please get in touch at graeme@113events.com

Sponsorship opportunity 
We have the opportunity for a company to be involved in sponsoring our event or events. You’d get the rear of the shirt for your logo, info in the goody bags, a presence on our website, and space on our finish line for your branding and space for a stand if you wished. You’d also get a few free spaces that we have reserved to this sell out event.
If you’re interested in being part of the race, please drop me a mail at graeme@113events.com

Right, that’s it from me. Hopefully, I’ve not put you all to sleep with my rambling, and no one’s snoring away at their desks when they should be working ?

Over the next few months, I’ll be sending out more info on the race as it becomes available, along with the dates and details for our familiarisation day

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

Cheers and happy training

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

2018 Races are opening soon

It seems like the 2017 race season is barely over, but we’re already looking ahead to 2018’s races, so I wanted to give you all a heads up on dates, and to let you know they’re opening for entries on Sept 1st.

Next year, we’ll only be running our two middle distance races, and the dates for these are as follows:

10th June – Cotswold 113 Middle Distance Tri
5th August – Cotswold Classic Middle Distance Tri

Online entries will open for both races at 00:01 on Sept 1st 2017 at www.113events.com

We have a couple of changes for the races next year too:

Insurance
We’ve spent some time this year looking at Competitor refund protection/cancelation insurance, that will be optional at the point of entry.
The cost of the Policy is around an £11 option (8% of the entry cost of the race), and it’ll mean that if you injure yourself, become ill, are involved in an accident, get posted away with work or lose a member of your immediate family etc etc, and can’t race, you can claim 100% of your entry fee back right up to the day of the race.
There is obviously some conditions to this, such as needing a doctors note, or letter from your employee, but we found this company to be far easier to deal with that many of the others and their terms are pretty decent.
We’ve looked at various insurance companies for this policy, and Booking-Protect, who will provide the policy for our two Triathlons, have a good reputation, and we’ve spoken to people who’ve made claims on events through them and been paid out without issue very quickly.
Taking this up is entirely optional at the Checkout stage of the race entry, so it’s up to you if you decide to take it or not, but we thought it to be a nice option to have as we all know how easy you can get injured or things happen that are entirely out of your control meaning you can’t race.
Unlike other races, we will, of course, still have our standard withdrawal terms if you choose not to take it, which operate on a sliding scale of refund amounts based on how far out from the race we are.
We’re confident that offering this policy as an option will save lots of competitors who, perhaps twist an ankle four weeks out from the race, losing their money as we’re then too close to race day to be able to offer a refund.
It’s there if you want it, and it’s 100% optional to take or not.

Race Capacity
Over the last few year’s, we’ve been fortunate enough to have created races that sell out in large numbers, and previously, we’d capped the numbers for the 113/Classic at 1,200 wth an allowance for transfers and cancellations, meaning that on race day, we’ve had around 1,100 numbers on the start list.
However, although the course, with its new teaks, and new parking infrastructure can take that amount of competitors and more, it’s just got too big for us to deal with and become less fun. We all have other jobs, and the time it takes to make sure the race is amazing for everyone has become massive, so with that in mind, we’ve decided to reduce the two middle distance races down by around 20% to be capped at 950 online entries.
What this means to competitors is that you get even more of our full attention, a little more space in the swim starts as we’ll be sticking with 8 waves, and you’ll get a shorter queue for a burger after the race.
However, on the other side, it’ll mean that unfortunately the cost per entry will need to increase by around 10%, but is still significantly cheaper than other comparable Middle Distance triathlons.
We hope that everyone understands our decision to do this, and we genuinely think that moving from around 1,100 to  around 900 competitors on race day, won’t make one bit of difference to the Atmosphere on the course.

Want to earn £40 off one of the 2018 races ?
113 Events are part of the team that are organising the new Swindon Half Marathon on Sept 3rd, and we’re looking for more marshals to help out on the day.
If you can get to Swindon on Sept 3rd to help, you can earn a £40 113 Events Discount voucher to use against next year’s races ?
You don’t need any experience at all, and we’ll provide everything you need as well as a pretty cool Team shirt.
I appreciate it’s short notice, but we’re desperate for a few more hands on deck
If you happen to be Streetworks/Chapter 8 Qualified, then we pay £15 cash per hour (or £100 code to use for 113 2018), and we could really use another few marshals with that ticket that can help us cross cars over runners on the course.
Email me back by replying to this mail or Leigh@newswindonhalf.co.uk

Right, that’s it for me for this year.
We hope to see many of you racing with us in 2018, and if you need anything from us, or just want to pop round for a cup of tea and to talk triathlon, you know where we are
If you still have more races to compete in this year, then best of luck and may every breeze be a tailwind

Cheers

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

The following mail went out to all of yesterday’s Cotswold Classic competitors this morning

Post race mail

Good morning all, I hope everyone got home safely after yesterday’s race ?

This morning I’ve woken up with a forehead about the same colour as our 113 team shirts, so hopefully you all were a little more sensible with sun cream application than I was yesterday, and that everyone had a great time ?

I’ve bored you all to death with my mails over the last few months, so I’ll keep this one fairly short, and in this mail I’ll cover the following :

How fast you went and how you looked doing it
RaceCheck reviews
Next year’s races
Lost property
Team debrief

How fast you went and how you looked doing it
I appreciate this is probably the most important bit for you all, so here’s the fine results from yesterday:
http://dbmaxresults.co.uk/results.aspx?CId=16421&RId=2187

And here will be the link to the photo’s, which will be up in the next 24hours or so I’m told by the photography company
https://www.charleswhittonphotography.com/group25673.html

We’ve prepaid for the first few downloads, which are in a resolution good enough to use as a Facebook picture or something similar, and Charles will have higher resolution pics available to buy on his site should you wish to blow your pics up massive and have them printed on the side of a bus or something equally as extravagant such as a T-shirt, Pillow case or any of the other places you’d want a pic of yourselves racing.
He normally gets these up in around 24-36hours after the race, so please keep checking back to his site as they appear.

Racecheck reviews
Fancy winning a free entry to the Cotswold Classic 2018 ?
If you could please leave us a review on the racecheck website:
https://www.racecheck.com/races/cotswold-classic
The guys at Racecheck will pick one review from this year’s race, and award a free entry to the Classic race in 2018, so worth taking 5 mins to give us a review if you could please.

Next year’s races
The provisional dates for our 2018 races are as follows:
June 10th – Cotswold 113 Middle Distance Tri
August 5th – Cotswold Classic Middle Distance Tri
These dates will be fixed in the next 10 days or so, and entries to both races will open online on Sept 1st
It’s worth noting that next year’s Tri’s will reduce in size somewhat. Were very lucky in that our races have become very popular over the year’s and both sell out at 1,100 entries. However, although the course and the race site can accommodate this amount of competitors, it’s just become really quite manic, and this year, it’s started to verge on being more mental for us than fun. Next year’s races will see a reduction in numbers of around 20%

Lost property
We have our normal pile of lost property at the lake, and if anyone has lost anything, we will be down the lake clearing everything away today if you want to come and grab it.
I also counted 360 pairs of shoes, flip flops and slippers down by the waters edge last night too (And randomly, one welly boot)
These will go in the skip later today, so if you have a pair down there that you want, this is your last chance to grab them before they’re gone. The smell of that many sweaty feet isn’t pretty, so we can’t hang onto these like we do general lost property.

Team Debrief
On Wednesday this week, we’ll get the main of our core team together, as we always do after each race, and debrief on how everything went during the day, and what we need to tweak or change for next year’s races.
We’d love to have your feedback to into this debrief, as you guys/girls see the race from the other side, and there’s awlways things you all see that we don’t
Please can you let me know your thoughts on the race, and what you thought worked or didn’t work.
I’m conscious that we have some changes for this race that we haven’t tried before, such as the parking field, so I’d be interested to hear what you thought about how it all worked.
To front load one request I know I’m going to hear back, and we do for every race, and that’s including the cost of parking in the entry fee. The reason we don’t do this (And this year was maybe slightly exceptional as the parking was arranged close to race day and we didn’t know what the cost was going to be until around 2 weeks ago) is that not everyone parks on the day, as we’d typically have around 200 people camp in the local campsite so don’t need to drive in, and quite a few of you either get dropped off, cycle in or share cars, so we don’t include it in the entry fee as I’ve never considered it to be fair to those that don’t drive, to have to help pay for parking for those that do.
Also, the narrowness of the short two way section and the overall hectic-ness of the Spratsgate lane Junction, I believe, will be largely resolved with a reduced entry amount.
Please let me know what you thought worked or didn’t works and if you’re in the Swindon Area on Wednesday night, we’d welcome you along to our team debrief at 7pm at the Devere in West Swindon. Beers are on me, and if you’re lucky, Dave will still have lost his voice as he’s as loud in the team meetings as he was pulling you out the water yesterday or shouting at you around the run course near the finish 🙂

Right, that’s it from me for this year’s Tri races.
I have a handful of medals left over from yesterday, so if you have kids or family that were as much a part of your journey as you were, that want one, please drop me an email and I’ll post one out.

Hope to see many of you back racing with us again next year, and thanks again for choosing to race with us and being such a great group of competitors to organise races for

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