Only 3 sleeps until the weekend….

Hey all
We’re almost at race weekend now, so in this last instalment of our competitor newsletters, I wanted to bring you the final few points and a link to the briefing before we see you all in a few days :
I’ll keep this one brief as I’m sure you’re all pretty tired of my mails by now.

In this email, I’ll cover the following :

1) Video Briefing
2) Course conditions and weather
3) Swimming on Saturday
4) Live results on the day
5) FAQ’s

Video Briefing 
As you’ll see, my face for radio looks pretty tired, but hopefully the content of this video comes through ok.
Unfortunately, there’s no Noisy Dave in the the briefing video, or will there be this weekend, as he’s flying off to Germany on Friday on Family duties. I do get the pleasure of him with me tomorrow though as we get more of the course built and ready – And I’m sure he’ll be there in Spirit on Sunday (or constantly on the phone to me to check how it’s all going)
You can find the link to the Compulsory briefing video HERE

Course Conditions and Weather 
The water temperature today was 20deg, and I don’t expect the to change much between now and Sunday, so this puts us firmly within the Wetsuit optional range.
We’ve been out today and painted any potholes or surface imperfections, and other than around mile 1 and mile 3, it’s all actually pretty decent.
I’ve painted stripes in front of the problem bits, and all of them are really easy to avoid -For example at mile1, the highways guys have repaired a cable trench that’s about a foot and a half wide and goes for about 100m. It’s completely on the left side of the lane, so really easy to avoid, but pretty horrid if you ride through it (it’s like they’ve filled it with chewing gum instead of tarmac)

You’ll see a few more of these stripes on the course, so just keep your eyes open and avoid them

The run course is now all mowed and cut back and ready for you, and the 50% or so which isn’t tarmac is in good condition. It handles any rain really well, and unless we get 4 solid days of downpours, will be a road shoe course all day long.

The Weather forecast for the weekend looks reasonably ok, but there’s a good chance we might get some rain on Sunday at some point, hopefully later in the afternoon. With this in mind, please make sure you pack reasonable kit for the bike, as whenever we get wet races, we do always pull a lot of people off the bike course 5-10 miles in where they’ve just got too cold and don’t want to carry on.
We’re totally fine with you leaving a jersey or arm warmers with a marshal if you later get too warm, but you’re better off to be wearing more kit than you need, than need more kit than you’re wearing.
We might be ok and it stays dry, but you never know, and this being the UK forecasting, it could be either 30deg or snowing

In terms of kit prep, I’ll remind you all again that the bike course aid station is a fair way into the bike lap, so please ensure, if you’re planning on using the aid station, that you have enough drinks, bars, gels, burgers or cake to get you to that point.

Swimming on the Saturday 
If any of you are coming down for registration and fancy a dip in the lake at the same time, the lake guys have their booking system open.
It won’t be on our course, as ours isn’t marked out until later in the evening, but it’s a good chance to get a taste of the water. I’ll pre-warn you though, as this is the lakes own session, they have mandatory tow floats for Swimmers (they obviously don’t on Sunday as we have water safety crew etc)
You can book through them at https://lake32.co.uk/product/payg-swimming/

Live results on the day
We will have the results up live HERE
It’s kind of like a tracker in that it will show instantly the moment you get into the water, out of the water, onto the bike course, each bike lap, and then start the run course and each lap before showing your final finish time

FAQ’s
I’ve had a few emails over the last few days with questions, and there’s becoming a theme, so I’ll try and answer these now incase any of you were wondering the same thing :
Can I wear headphones on the bike and run ? – No, they’re against the rules and a rule we have to be strict with as you need to be alert on the bike to other cyclists and road users as well as marshals, and the same for the run, especially, as you cross the road a few times and need to be aware of instruction, so sorry, no headphones, not even bone conducting ones.
Can my kids cross the finish line with me ? – Absolutely, yes. You can bring your grandma and your dog too if you like, but please be mindful of other people finishing the race and don’t impede their finish line sprint
Can my spectators bring a dog on site ? – Yes. All we ask is they’re kept on a  lead around the finish area as often dogs do chase competitors down the finish chute or run out in front of runners on the course
My Partner wants to drop me off for the swim, and then go back to bed and head back in later, can they still park up ? Yes, but they’ll need to be mindful that the’ll be driving in later through a live bike course. if they’re dropping you first thing, don’t go into the car park as it’s one gate in/out and they won’t get out for some time until maybe after 6:30 when everyone else has arrived. They can drop you by the entrance to lake 32 or the entrance to the beach and country park

Right, that’s it from me for pre race emails. You might get another from me later this week if anything changes and it’s urgent to update, but other than that, we’ll look forward to seeing you all Saturday for registration and at either of the two (non compulsory) briefings at 13:00 and 16:00 – Saturday does look like their might be some rain, and the briefings are outside, so bring a coat or a brolly

Cheers and happy tapering

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

1 week to go….

Hey all, I hope everyone’s well ?
We’re 1 week out from race day now, so in this latest instalment of the newsletter, I’m going to cover a few more points in the run up to the race to get you all ready for next weekend in the Cotswolds.
Hopefully by now you’ve all read the race info pack HERE

I’ll keep this newsletter reasonably brief, and today, I’ll cover the following :

1) Weekend plans and registration requirement
2) Swim starts & Waves
3) Marshals

Weekend Plans and Registration requirements 
Registration is next Saturday between 12:00 and 17:00 at the lake.
In order to register, you will need the following :
Photo ID or a 2023 BTF Membership card with a photo (A pic of either on your phone is fine)
If you’re not a BTF member, you will need £5 cash to buy a BTF day license (signal at the lake is patchy, so we can’t take card I’m afraid).
You can register for someone else, or a group of people, and for each person you will need a photocopy or print off of their photo ID or BTF photo card with a note on it from them to say it’s fine for you to register for them. If they’re not a BTF member, you’ll need the cash to buy a day license for them too please
We have to retain the print off with the note, as our BTF referee then holds on to these and checks in transition on Sunday AM that the person registered for is actually the person racing.
We’ll then shred these after the race to ensure confidentiality of your data or ID.
If you’re in a relay team, you can register for the whole team without them all being there, and the same rules above apply please
Parking is around 200m from the lake, and is owned by a local farmer, who charges £5 per car to park each day (he does often donate a good chunk of parking fees to a charity)
It’ll save you a load of time on Sunday morning, if you can buy your Sunday parking pass on the Saturday from either the car park team or at registration

On Saturday afternoon, we will hold a couple of briefings by the swim exit, and these will be at 13:00 and 16:00
These aren’t a compulsory briefing, as a link to a video for this will come out to you later this coming week, but is a more informal talk through the race from start to finish and will take about 45mins. It’s outdoors, so if it’s looking to be wet, bring an umbrella.
I’m no stand up comedian, but I will try and make it quite entertaining, and we’ll talk through in detail everything you need to know from when you first arrive in the morning on Sunday to when you cross the line at the end of the race as well as a few examples of what to do, or in some cases, what not to do.

We don’t build transition until overnight Saturday, so we’ll do all our racking on Sunday am – The timings for which, I’ll cover in the next section.

When you arrive on Saturday afternoon, you’ll be able to walk through the Beach and Country park to get to registration so you can avoid having to walk down the road. For this purpose, you’ll be given a yellow wrist band in the car park.
It’s super important please, that you just walk through the Beach and Country park, and that you and your friends don’t try and use any of the facilities there as they’re super tightly controlled on numbers in there, and if our guys and girls decide they’re going to go into their area, they’ll soon go over their maximum number and run the risk of getting shut down.
We have a good relationship with them, which is why they allow us to walk through, and take our run course through there on Sunday, but we do not want to risk ruining that relationship by spectators sitting on their beach of using any of their facilities please
If you have spectators that are turning up later on Sunday (or even Sat afternoon), they can book in advance to go in there and can literally park up against transition as well as using their beach, or inflatable water park etc
Their website to book is https://www.cotswoldcountryparkandbeach.com

Swim starts & Waves
If you haven’t already seen it on our website, the start list with waves and numbers can be found HERE
I had around 500 requests for waves and numbers, and I’m confident that we have managed to satisfy 99.99% of requests
The start list is now fixed, and we now cannot change numbers as they’re printed a ready to be made up into your registration packs
Car Parking opens at around 04:15 and transition opens at 04:30 on race morning for you to arrive and rack your bike.
Transition will close for all check in’s at 06:30, and we will aim to have transition completely clear of all competitors other than relay members at 06:40 before the first swimmers come in from the lake
The Mass start wave will be at 06:25, and at 06:20 you will be able to get into the water for a warm up before being called back towards the start area ready for the buzzer at 06:25
For the remaining rolling start waves, you will each have a ten minute window in which to start :
Wave 1 06:30-06:40
Wave 2 06:40-06:50
Wave 3 06:50-07:00
Wave 4 07:00-07:10
Wave 5 07:10-07:20
Wave 6 07:20-07:30

Each wave will line up within their window and swimmers will be started at around 2-3 second intervals. There’s no particular order for swimmers within each wave, and as long as you start within your ten minute window, you can start in any order you like. If you have a small group who want to start together, just let the swim starter know and they’ll allow your group to start together over the timing mat.
The timing mat is located at the end of the chute as you get into the water, and your race time will commence the point you cross the mat.
In the wave start chute, there is an area next to the lake about 30m before you start where you can plunge yourself into the water up to your waist to get yourself used to the water temperature before getting in from the end of the chute and starting.
It’s important that you only use this area for dunking please, as if you try and swim there, you’ll swim into the course and other competitors who are racing.
For reference, the water temperature was around 21 deg when I was at the lake today and won’t change much from this between now and next Sunday, so we’ll be firmly within the Wetsuit optional range.

As the walk from transition to the swim start is about 100m and is over grass and gravel, you’re welcome to bring along an old set of trainers, flip flops or slippers and leave them by the water’s edge to collect after the race (the swim start is right next to the race finish)

Marshals
We could still use a few more marshals as we have around 125 of our 130 paid positions filled now
If you have anyone coming along with you that would be able to get involved, we’d absolutely welcome them to our team with open arms and ensure they have a fun day
Drop me an email at graeme@113events.com

Right, that’s it from me for today’s newsletter
The next you’ll hear from me will be towards the middle of this week with some more info on the race, an update on conditions and a link to the race briefing video

I’ll be down at the lake all week getting the last few bits ready and will have limited access to my emails until the evening, so if you get any urgent questions, please just give me a call – 07595 591612

Happy tapering and see you all in 6 days time

Cheers

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

Just 1 Month to go…..

Good morning all,
I hope everyone’s well and out getting some training done in this spell of good weather we have ?
We’re exactly 1 month away from the race now, so I wanted to get the next instalment of the race newsletters out with some info on the race to get you all ready to line up ready to go in a month’s time
For those of you that have entered in the last few weeks, you can see the last competitor newsletter with all the info on the race HERE

In this newsletter, I’ll cover the following :

Updated race info pack
Still spaces left
Race weekend outline
Familiarisation day – 25th June
Marshals
Cool stuff from HUUB 

Updated race info pack
Please can you all take 10mins to have a read through the race info pack, which you can find HERE
This has everything you need to know about the race weekend
If there’s anything that you think needs adding, or would help, please just ask

Still spaces left
We still have spaces left in the race, and entries are open for another week until 16th June.
If you’ve got mates that want to race, we can rack them next to you and start you off in the same wave too so you can race with them, or smoke them, it’s up to you
Entries open at www.113events.com

Race weekend outline
Now’s about the time that I’m sure you’re all starting to think about planning your weekend, so I wanted to give you a brief outline here

Saturday 8th July
Registration 12:00 – 17:30
Briefings 13:00 & 16:00
Swimming 08:00-17:00

Sunday 9th July
Car park opens 04:15
Transition check in opens 04:30
Transition check in closes 06:30
* Mass Start Wave 06:25
* Rolling start waves 06:30-07:30

We hold our registration at the lake on Saturday the 8th July between 12:00 and 17:00
I’ll go through registration requirements etc in a later email, but if you can’t get there, don’t worry as we’ll explain in a later mail how someone else can register for you if you have club mates or friends down to race also.
We will email out a link to a compulsory video briefing during race week which will cover all the safety aspects of the race, and will be about 10mins long
However, also on the Saturday, we’ll hold two full (non compulsory) briefings where we’ll talk through the race in detail and go through all the little bits that you might not have thought about with where to be and when and what to do and what not to do. We’ll try and make it quite entertaining and it’s a great chance to ask any questions that you might not have thought about until race weekend – These briefings are both the same, you won’t need to attend both, and will be held by the Swim exit at 13:00 and 16:00
The lake guys will have their own Pay As you go Swim sessions bookable on the Saturday also, and they open for bookings 7 days out from the day through the following link
https://lake32.co.uk/product/payg-swimming/

* In the next couple of weeks, you will all get an email from me with a window where you can request a specific wave and/or race number or group of numbers to be racked with your mates or club. Please can you await that email before requesting a wave and/or number, as they’ll be on a first come first served basis following that mail, and I cannot allocate waves until then.

Familiarisation day 25th June
We will hold our free of charge familiarisation day on Sunday June 25th where we’ll take you out for a guided lap of our new bike course and a lap of our run course if you fancy coming along.
The emphasis on these days is super leisurely, so they really are suitable for everyone
The bike lap is 28miles (it’s 2 laps on race day) and the average speed on the day will be circa 13-14mph with a few stops to regroup and point out aid stations etc.
The run lap is 4.3miles (it’s 3 laps on race day) and we’ll average about 11-12min miles with a fair few stops
These days are a great chance to see the course in a nice and relaxed environment and to meet our team and ask any questions you might have
In order for us to be able to get a handle on numbers and communicate with you directly in the run up to the familiarisation days, please can I ask that you book in through the following link :
https://www.entrycentral.com/CCfamday
If you have friends that aren’t racing, but want to come along and see the course etc, they’re welcome to book in and join too.
The day will start on the 25th at 09:00 with the bike lap, which will take a little over 2hours, and then we’ll have a 15-20min break before heading out on the run at around 11:30 ish – You can choose to do both or either.
If anyone wants to swim on the same day, the lake won’t have our course marked out, but do have their own 1,500m course, which is broadly similar to ours, albeit a little bit shorter – I’ll email everyone signed up to the Fam day nearer the time with a link to Swimming booking through the lake guys own website

Marshals
Anyone that’s ever been involved in organising races will understand that getting marshals is one of the hardest parts of the job.
We have around 140 paid marshal places for our races, and we could still do with around 20 more heads to fill these spots.
We pay all our marshals too, and they can choose from either £20 cash or a £50 113 Events Voucher, as well as free ice creams, hot/cold drinks, burgers etc for the day.
All we ask is that they’re enthusiastic, know their left from their right and are over 16 please (you can bring under 16’s with you to help you marshal and we’ll get them a marshal shirt and they can take advantage of the free ice creams too, we just can’t employ them as marshals due to insurance issues)
Marshals also get free camping on site and free parking for the weekend
All marshals roles start with a full briefing from our course managers and we’ll kit them up with everything they need
If you have anyone coming along with you that would like to be involved in the race, please drop me an email at graeme@113events.com and we’ll welcome them into the team with open arms

Cool stuff from HUUB 
We’ve partnered up with the guys from HUUB for our races this year, and they’ll got a really cool offer for 40% off for our competitors on new Wetsuits, Tri Suits etc
https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/HUUB_113-Events-Flyer_April-2023-copy.pdf 

Right, that’s it from me for today
You’ll get another email from me within the next couple of weeks with a chance to choose which wave you want and/or a race number, but in the meantime, if you get any questions or there’s anything we can help with, please just ask

Cheers and happy training

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

Hope you’ve got your feet up ?

Hey all
Firstly, thank you for coming racing with us today. The weather didn’t play ball today with a super cold start and then a really hot finish, but on the positive it didn’t either snow or rain.
Hopefully, you all now have your feet firmly up. Sport scientists will have you believe that recovery is created by gentle exercise, protein and carb replenishment. However, I’m a firm believer in the Pizza and beer method 🙂

Anyway, you were all amazing today, and we saw some really stand out performances all across the field and lots of smiles so we truly hope that you all had an amazing day.

I’ve bored you all to death with newsletters over the last few months, so I’ll keep this final one reasonably brief, and cover the following :

Enjoyed it so much, you fancy another go in 5 weeks ?
2024 race date, opening time & easy ways to race
How fast you went and how cool you looked doing it
Race directors debrief and feedback request
Lost property 

Enjoyed it so much, you fancy another go in 5 weeks
As many of you will know, we run another Middle distance race in 5 weeks time from the same lake called the Cotswold Classic v2. It has a completely different bike course, but the run and swim are the same, pretty much.
The bike course heads West instead of East is what’s best described as gently rolling rather than pancake flat.
Personally, I’d say it’s actually a faster course as although it does have a small amount of elevation, it has far more flow and much less turns, so you can concentrate more on enjoying the scenery and keeping up a good average pace rather than making lots of turns and out and back sections
Anyway, if you’d entered the June and July race together through our combo entry system, you’d have saved £40
If you’d now like to race again with us on July 9th as a 113 Competitor, just send me back an email and I’ll send you a £40 discount voucher to use for the next 12 days whilst entries are still live.

2024 race date, opening time & easy ways to race
We have now fixed our 2024 dates, and next year’s Cotswold 113 is going to be on June 2nd
We will get entries open in the next few days, and we have a couple of new ways of entering that will hopefully help out everyone through this current cost of living crisis when people have a few less quid in their pockets :
1) Early bird rates – £25 discount for the first 150 entries
2) Staged payments – This is completely new for us, and how it will work is that on a full price entry, you can pay 33% on entry, followed by 33% payable later this year, and the final 34% payable early next year interest free*

* you will have to pay normal price though, and this isn’t available for either early bird rate entries or club entries, but you can choose the staged payment option from the 1st day entries open

I’ll email everyone on our database as soon as we have a date for entries to open – Hopefully later this week or early next week once we can firm up final costs with all our suppliers and stakeholders (it won’t be much different in price to this year)
We will also have our club entries open again as we did this year, and was super popular

We are also looking at ways in which we can make the logistics of an aquabike option work, as I can see from the amount of emails we get that this is becoming increasingly popular – We’ll hopefully have something on this ready by later this year

How fast you went and how cool you looked doing it
I appreciate this is probably the only bit of this email that most of you are interested in.
The provisional results can be found at : https://dbmaxresults.co.uk/results.aspx?CId=16421&RId=421
Please be aware that these are the provisional results, as the timing guys still have a couple of anomalies to edit out, and will be sorted by tomorrow AM.
In terms of prize giving, then you will have noticed that we don’t have one on the day, and I’d like to explain why quickly please :
In order to make our race as inclusive as possible, we don’t want anyone still running on the course whilst prize giving is going ahead as it can give them impression that the race has finished without them. Subsequently, pre covid we did our prize giving later in the afternoon, and that was also not realistic to expect the people that finished at 10am-10:30 to be hanging around for maybe 5 more hours. Subsequently, we now post our prizes out
You will see that we publish result age groups in both the BTF format of 5year age cat’s, and our own of 18-49 and 50+ Male / female, which is the category we send out trophies for, and I will do this week along with the prizes from the race sponsors

I know many of you will also want to look and see how cool you looked, and the race photographer will have the pics from the event up in the next day or so, and these can be found here : https://charleswhittonphotography.photohawk.com/galleries/cotswold-113-middle-distance-tri-4623

Race directors debrief and feedback request 
I appreciate that some of you like to know how it went from our side, so I’ll try and summarise.
Competitors today were one of the best groups we’ve had for a long time, so thank you all for being part of that. The amount of unintentional littering around the course was absolutely minimal, and we picked up far less bags than normal from the bike and run courses, as we always try and leave the area cleaner than when we arrive.
From our side, we had a few issues behind the scenes, and hopefully you didn’t see much of any of that (A disproportionate amount of marshals simply didn’t turn up today, and due to issues outside of our control, we had 2 less Police officers on the course than we had planned for)
The only thing you perhaps would have seen initially is that we didn’t perhaps control the flow of swimmers into the water as well as we could have, and this meant that the density of bikes on the course was higher than we would have liked, which leads naturally to drafting. This is an easy fix for us for next time, and something we won’t let happen again, but was something that hopefully went unnoticed by the majority of you

We would like your feedback on how you throught the day went though, as we’re always looking to improve. So, if you get 5 mins, please let me know what you liked and anything you didn’t like about the day, and I’ll take all the feedback into the team debrief  that we’ll do later this week once everyone has recovered from sunburn and earache from Dave’s voice.
We run through our races as a full team from start to finish in minute detail post event, and there’s always little bits that have worked very well in the past, that now don’t work as the sport is evolving and people want different things.
These debriefs are super important for us to understand how to keep improving, so please, if you can, let us have some feedback as we only see snippets of the race from our side, whereas your experience on the day means you see far more than we do, and what you guys and girls think is always going to be more important than how we think it went.

Lost property 
We have an amount of lost property that was handed in to us at the lake today. Myself, and a few others from 113 will be down there tomorrow from about 9:30am to about 15:00 to get started on cleaning everything up, counting and checking everything and getting it ready to go back into storage for a few weeks until the classic in July
I’ll also be down there for a few hours on Tuesday too
If any of you that have lost anything are staying in the area tonight, you’re welcome to head on down and say hi and have a rummage through our lost property box.

Right, that’s it from me. I’m battered having had just 1.5hours sleep last night, so I doubt I’ll pick up any emails again tonight, but will be back at my desk tomorrow early AM to respond to anyone before heading down to the lake

Thanks again to you all for racing with us, and for being such a great group, and well done again for all of you that smashed it today

Cheers

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

Only 4 more sleeps….

Good evening all
We’re only a few days away from this year’s Cotswold113 on Sunday, so in this last instalment of the newsletter, I wanted to get some final info out to you all in readiness for Sunday
If you missed our last newsletter a week or so ago, with all the info on the race, you can find it here : www.113events.com/news 
I’ll keep this brief, and In this newsletter, I’ll cover the following

Race Video briefing link
What to remember on the weekend highlights
Final Conditions and Weather
Rule and regulations
Relay team instructions 

Race Video briefing link 
Today, down at the lake, myself and Dave put our faces for radio in front of a camera to record the safety briefing for the race. Please take 10mins to watch it below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1dObOZ3HV8
This is the compulsory safety briefing for all competitors, and we’ll hold a couple of non compulsory, but quite useful, full briefings at the lake at the Swim exit on Saturday at 13:00 and 16:00 where we’ll go through everything in detail.

What to remember on the weekend highlights
We always get a fair few people that don’t come prepared, so I wanted to quickly go over the highlights as a reminder of the main bits.

1) When you come to register on Saturday afternoon between 12:00 and 17:00, you will 100% need either a 2023 BTF Photo License, or another form of Photo ID and £5 cash for a BTF day license to cover you on Sunday. This is a BTF rule, and our BTF ref likes to watch registration very carefully to ensure we follow the rules.
Phone signal at the lake is patchy, which is why we have to insist on cash as the remote card machine can take ages, if it works at all, so we can’t use it I’m afraid
I did a whole section on registration requirements in the last newsletter HERE

2) The transition area is a carpark on Saturday for the Beach and Country park customers, and we build it overnight on Sat evening. This means that we do all our racking on Sunday AM, so no need to bring your bike on Saturday unless you want to spin your legs out around bits of the course – It’ll be largely marked out by Saturday mid afternoon, but I wouldn’t recommend a full lap to anyone the day before racing

3) Please affix the bike sticker that you collect in your registration pack on Saturday onto your bike before you arrive on Sunday for Transition check in – It doesn’t matter where on your bike you put it, as we only use it to check your bike against your bib number when you come to collect your bike after you’ve finished the race so that everyone takes home their own bikes, and not someone else’s super posh TT machine by accident.

4) The car park on Sunday AM is a single gate into a field, so please, if you can, buy your Sunday parking pass on Saturday as it’ll save time Sunday morning. Also, please allow a short period of time to queue to park, as although the parking is only a 5min walk to transition check in, it can take a while to get several hundred cars through a single gate and into the parking area. Also, the car park is a field, and although it’s pretty flat and the grass cut back, it is still a field incase you were planning on coming along in your Lamborghini
We use the same carpark on Saturday, but the flow in tends to be over 4-5 hours, so is not so time critical.
Car Parking is £5 cash each day please. We get stung quite a few thousand pound by a local farmer to use this field (it’s a sore point with us) so this helps cover this cost, and he does also donate a good chunk of the field rent to local charities from time to time

5) Not that it makes a huge difference to you all, but we’ve decided to give out goody bags and shirts at registration now on Saturday rather than at the finish line, but medals will, of course, be given out at the finish line when you complete the race.
If you’ve ordered, for example, a large shirt, but have lost a load of weight training for the race and now need a medium. Bring back your large to us after the race and we can exchange it

6) Don’t forget to enjoy yourself. You do this for Fun, right, so remember to smile and enjoy the day

Final Conditions and Weather
I, Like I’m sure many of you, become obsessed with Weather forecasts in the run up to the race.
Typically, they’re pretty inaccurate, but all forecasts this week seem to agree that we’re going to get some ok weather this weekend (fingers crossed)

What I will say, is that having been down the lake all week, although the Sun has been warm, the wind from the North has been very cold. With this in mind, I would suggest that you start off the bike course with clothing on that will keep you reasonably warm. We often get lulled into a false sense of temperature when we’ve got warm in our wetsuits and we see the Sun shining, and our team really don’t want to be picking people up that have just got too cold on the first few miles of the bike course where, at 7:45 in the morning as you’re peddling along, it’s still actually a lot colder than it looks and initially feels when you get out the water.
In the interest of getting people around safely, we have no issue that if you put a jersey over your tri suit, and want to drop it with a marshal if you get too warm, we’ll turn a blind eye to the ‘finish with what you start wearing rule’ so that no one gets too cold, and the marshals will bring anything back to the HQ tent after the bike course has finished

The lake is now a nice 19.3deg today, and this will likely increase a degree or two before Sunday if the forecast for the next few days is correct. This will put us firmly in the ‘Wetsuit Optional’ range of temperatures – Which ultimately means you’ll all wear wetsuits anyway

I’ve spent the last 3 days out cutting back the somewhat overgrown run course, and the conditions under foot are very dry and hard, so it will be a road shoe course all day long unless we suddenly get hit by a super storm.

As a final note on kit, it’s always worth bringing more options to transition than you might need as it’s better to have and not need an item of clothing than not have it and suddenly wish you had. There’s plenty of space in everyone’s transition spot and it takes no space at all to bring a jersey or a set of arm warmers that you might then decide you don’t need.

Rule and regulations 
We run our race under British Triathlon rules and it is a strictly non Drafting race
You can find the full set of rules and regulations HERE
I’m also going to have a quick mini rant and reminder, so please bear with me
I go and watch and help at a lot of Triathlons in the UK and sometimes around Europe. Over the last few years, and other organisers of middle distance races will, I’m sure, agree, the standard of riding behaviour in our sport has deteriorated pretty badly. Seeming really calm and reasonable people seem to have a little switch that changes once they get a race number on are against a clock and the red mist can descend.
We, luckily, get very little of this at our races, but it does creep in from a minority from time to time. How riders treat other road users and how riders treat other competitors must be with respect, and an understanding that not everyone is there for you to save 1-2 seconds on every turn by undertaking other bikes cutting corners, drafting or just general bad behaviour out on the course. We will simply not tolerate any bad riding, abuse of other road users or general bad behaviour, and if any of our team see any of this, we will simply DQ that offending rider or runner, they’ll be pulled from the course and will not be able to continue.
The roads around our course are typically very quiet and you’ll likely encounter very few other road users, but, and it’s an important BUT, they have as much right to use that road as you do.
Local resident relationships are super important to me and the future of our races, and it’s me that gets dragged up in front of Parish Councils to explain why cars have been undertaken by angry cyclists or people have hopped onto paths with people walking as they want to cut a corner.
This type of behaviour may be tolerated at other races, but it definitely won’t be at any 113 Event, and we’ll be keeping a very sharp eye on everyone for this reason

Littering is also a big problem in the area, and as we attract a significant amount of cyclist to the region over the summer, the spotlight tends to get shone on them quite often. All of our marshals have a bin bag, and there’s bins around the courses and at the aid stations. Like bad behaviour, we won’t tolerate any form of intentional littering out on the courses, and this will also result in an instant DQ. Please keep your gel or bar wrapper in your pocket or tucked up your shorts leg and drop with a marshal or in/near a bin. The bike aid station has a bottle drop area just before, and a bin after it, so throw away your used bottles there before grabbing a new one, or keep until you see a bin
Sorry, rant over

Relay team instructions 
Relay teams are issued with 3 race bibs at registration. The swimmer does not need to wear their bib in the Swim, and we only issue them with a bib so that they can come and go from transition as they need.
Lots of relays swap members about between elements of the race, so please can I ask that all bike and run members write their name and any relevant medical info on the reverse of the bib with a marker pen.
Relay teams have a separate area in transition and are in race numbers 800+
The timing chip is the Batten for the relay change over, and this needs to be swapped over between the swim and the bike and the bike and the run at the spot for them in transition.
All three (or two) members of the relay team do not need to be there for the Swim start, but the team’s bike must be racked before transition closes at around 06:30 (ie, the runner can rock up later if they fancy a lie in, but will need their bib to get into transition)
Each person competing each element must do the full distance of that element (ie the cyclist needs to do the complete bike distance, and cannot, for example, swap for the second lap)

Right, that’s it from me for the run up to the race emails
I’ll be down the lake all day now up to race day, so although I can pick up my emails on my phone, there might be a delay in me getting back to you
Please feel free to call me instead on 07595 591612 if you get any questions or there’s anything we can help with

See you all at the weekend, and enjoy your last few days of your taper before the action happens

Cheers

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