The following email went out to all our newsletter subscribers tonight

2020 races are now go…. Good evening all Firstly, thanks for either racing or marshalling with us in the past, or subscribing to our newsletters Although it seems like the summer of 2019 is still in full swing, I wanted to drop you all a quick email to let you know we’ve now fixed the dates for the 2020 races and when entries will open for them both : Cotswold 113 Middle Distance Triathlon – Sunday June 7th 2020 Cotswold Classic Middle Distance Triathlon – Sunday August 2nd 2020 Online entry will open for both races online at 00:01 on Saturday August the 24th at www.113events.com and both races have early bird discounts for the first 150 sign ups. To give you all a heads up on how quickly they fill, the 2019 June 113 was full by early October 18, and the August Classic was full by early Spring this year, and both races are filling quicker every year. Please book early to avoid disappointment, as once they’re full, they’re full We hope to see many of you racing with us again next year Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team graeme@113events.com

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

Cotswold Classic – August 4th 2019 Good afternoon all I hope everyone’s well, out training lots and starting to think about race weekend in a little over a month ? Over the next few weeks, I’ll send out more and more info on the race in digestible chunks, but in the meantime I wanted to get some early bits out about the day to get you started on your final preparation and planning. The race start list is now fixed and frozen, so we’re getting closer to setting you all off in the water, and we hope you’re all as excited about racing as we are to welcome you all to our start line. This could end up being a pretty long email, so please grab a coffee and perhaps some matchsticks for your eyes before reading as there’s some important info in here. In this email I’ll cover the following : Weekend info and planning your trip Marshal Request Waves and numbers Kit Choices Weekend Info and planning your trip Hopefully by now you’ve all taken the time to download and read the race info pack ? If not, then shame on you, and you can find it here : https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/CC2019-–-Race-Information-Sheet.docx The weekend will start with registration taking place on the afternoon of Saturday the 3rd between 12:00 and 17:00 We will run 2 briefings on the Saturday also, which are identical and will be at 13:30 and 16:00. These will each take around 45mins, and we’ll go through the race in full detail from start to finish, and there’ll be loads of chances to ask any questions you might get. They’re not compulsory, but they’re worth attending. We’ll even try and make them a bit entertaining as I’m very conscious that I’m pretty boring when I talk, so we’ll try and throw some rubbish dad jokes in and some examples we’ve seen at our races of what not to do. All our racking is done on the Sunday morning, so you won’t need to bring your bike on Saturday unless you really want to. If you genuinely can’t make registration on Saturday, in a later mail, we’ll give out some instruction on how you can get someone else to register for you, or how we can arrange another time to collect your pack (We cannot post them unfortunately as the magnets used in the postal system play havoc with the timing chips) as we’ll have them ready at our house by around Wednesday night of race week. On Sunday morning, our transition opens at 4am and will shut again at 6am. Later on in this mail, I’ll go through the wave sequences If you’ve still not booked accommodation, there is a campsite literally next door to the lake, and you can find info on that place at http://www.go-by-cycle.co.uk/camping.htm Alternatively, if you want a hotel, the nearest and by far the best hotel in the area is called the Devere Cotswolds Hotel, and is on the spine road around 3 miles from the race start. I can’t seem to add a link for the Devere, but a quick google search will find them, and they serve and early breakfast on race day and you can keep your bikes in your rooms as long as they’re clean. Many of our regular competitors stay there and report on how good it is. Alternatively, if you google hotels around the race location, which is GL76DF, you’ll find a load of alternatives within a 10-15minute drive. Marshal requests We still have around 23 unfilled Marshal positions of the 200 we require for the race that we’d love to have names against. If you have anyone coming along with you, or can bring someone along with you that wants to be part of the team, please get in touch We’ll make sure they have a good day too, as happy marshals are good marshals, and they’ll get the best seat in the house to cheer you on Our marshals get paid, and they can choose from either £20 cash or a £40 113 Events voucher to use with us on any of our other future events, and we can find them somewhere to put up a tent on the site on the Saturday night too if they want to stay over. All we ask is that they’re over 16, enthusiastic and know their left from their right. Please email graeme@113events.com Waves and Numbers Our race will start in 6 waves going off at 10 Minute intervals starting at 06:00 : 06:00 Wave 1 06:10 Wave 2 06:20 Wave 3 06:30 Wave 4 06:40 Wave 5 06:50 Wave 6 By default, the start list is filtered by youngest first and oldest last regardless of gender, and the waves are filled roughly in that order. In the past, the average swim time in each wave is roughly the same, with only a minority of the really fast swimmers opting for wave 1, and in many cases, some of the slower swimmers also opting for wave 1 to get more time in the water with other people around them, so they all generally average out. The race is rarely won from wave 1 too, and we have had the fastest time of the day set from wave 6 in the past. We have an ‘Official’ overall cut off of 7.5hours from the start of the last wave (8hours 20mins from the start of the first), and no cut offs for either the Swim or the Bike. We’re pretty flexible with the overall cut off, and our take on it is that as long as you’ve not stopped for a 2hr roast dinner at one of the pubs out on the bike course, within reason, we’ll keep the finish line open for as long as it takes as long as long as you’re still making some form of progress, If you so wish, you can now choose a specific wave and/or race number. Or you might want to get your club mates together in transition with a group of numbers. The window to this is now open, and will shut at Midnight on Sunday the 7th July. I’ll explain how to get a request in later, so please read the following first. Here’s some examples of why you might want to choose a specific wave : 1) You might think you’re the next Michael Phelps, so want wave 1 to have completely clear water in front of you when you start 2) You might want to see a couple of waves go off before you start so you can get an idea of how it all works, so could want wave 3-4 3) You might want no one getting in the water behind you and swimming past you, so would ask for wave 6 4) You might not want to be the last person on the run course as you feel like you’re one of the slower overall competitors, so would want an earlier wave, say 1-2* 5) You might have forgotten it was your wedding anniversary on race day, so want to be finished early to avoid divorce, so would want wave 1, a tailwind on the bike and a downhill run. 6) You might not fancy having breakfast at 4am, so would want a later wave 7) You might not want to have to be out of transition by 6 and stood around for too long, so would want an earlier wave * For more nervous Swimmers, we always recommend to people that they get in the water and line up, but when the wave starts, they give the others 15-20seconds to clear off, and then start off at their own pace without having a large group of other swimmers around them. We get 3-4 people always do that in each wave, and in the scheme of what could be an 8 hour race day, what’s 20-30seconds for the sake of a clear swim start ? We also often get swimmers that swim the whole 1.2miles doing breaststroke with their heads out the water, and we have no issue with that. It’ll mean you’ll have to talk with the canoeists, who are pretty boring to be honest, but we don’t have a swim cut off at all – We’ll allow you as long as it takes as long as the water safety crew don’t think you’re a danger to yourself or others around you. You can also choose a lucky number if you so wish, or if you have a club or a bunch of mates racing, we can get you in a random set of sequential numbers as our transition works sequentially numerically, so you’ll all be together in the racking. Typically, for each race, we get about 7-800 requests for waves and/or numbers, and as you can imagine, this is hugely time consuming for me to do (I literally block out 4 days/40hrs to do these). I like that we can offer this out to you, but please please please make my life easier by following the guidelines as below : 1) Please email me from your registered email address and include your full name and date of birth 2) Please request not only a specific lucky number, but also a 2nd and 3rd choice if you have them as the numbers can go very quickly (69 and 13 both seem to be very popular, as do your typical years of birth – Ie 68, 82 etc) 3) If you are asking for a group together in transition, please make sure you do the following: Please list out full names, emails and dates of birth – You’d be surprised how many duplicates of seemingly unique names we have, and that I have no idea who ‘Big Ring Steve’ is or ‘Chalky Brown’, so please use registered names rather than what you might know them as Please clear it with all members of your group first, as we often get requests to be racked with Joe Bloggs, and this person has already requested to rack with another group already or has asked for a lucky number. Please don’t CC in everyone when you put your request in as invariably someone clicks reply to all, I get roped into all your personal messages, and I have no interest in reading 50 emails about how Swim lane etiquette in your tri club is deteriorating, or how your garage extension is coming along Please check your friend that you want to rack with is actually racing 4) Please title your email ‘Waves and Numbers’ and send it to Graeme@113events.com 5) You can only request numbers 10-900inc Relays have a separate numbering system, so cannot request numbers, but can request waves Please get your group right first time, as it’s a real pain to try and squeeze more people into a group that are racked together from a request already as often the numbers at both ends of the group are not available, and in many cases I won’t be able to do it if you try and add more at a later date – You have 5 days in this window to get it right, so please don’t rush in and try and make changes later All number requests are strictly first come first served. To make things easier, and to give you all a chance to see who else is racing, I’ve uploaded an early start list for the race, which you can find here : https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/cotswold-classic-start-list/ Please can you also take 5 mins to check your own name and to ensure that the spelling of your name or the club name are correct, as beyond Monday, the numbers will be printed with your names and we then can’t change that. The deadline for getting these request in is Midnight on Sunday the 7th July At some point next week, I’ll publish a new start list with all the waves and numbers listed. I won’t be able to respond to all your emails individually as there’ll be several hundred, so please await that start list to confirm (We can normally accommodate all wave requests and groups) Kit Choices  For those of you that have the luxury of choosing between a road bike or a TT Bike, it’s a TT bike course all day long. Apart from one small hill, it’s pancake flat for the whole 56miles, so prime conditions for Aero Wheels, Helmet and bike. Largely, the course is quite sheltered from cross winds with only a few gates exposing the roads to any side wind, but there are a couple, so if you’re a lighter racer and it looks like it might be a windy day, I’d think twice about using a disc wheel. The run course is around 60% tarmac, and the rest is on hard packed lake side pathing with only about couple of hundred meters on grass. As long as we don’t get a fortnight of heavy rain, it’s a road shoe type of course. We will, of course, keep you updated on conditions nearer the time, but I’d be aiming for a road shoe if I was still racing. The swim is Wet and flat (hopefully), and the current temperature of the lake is around 20deg. I’m pretty confident it won’t change much between now and August 4th unless we have 4 solid weeks of 30deg sunshine, so I fully expect race day to be within the ‘Wetsuit Optional’ range. I swam in the lake last week both with and without a wetsuit, and it’s about the right temperature for both in my opinion (although I am getting increasingly fatter, so better insulated) We often get questions about what you can and can’t have in transition at our races, and we follow the BTF rules for this, so you won’t be allowed plastic boxes in your spot at the racking. Our racking is pretty tight, so we recommend that you bring a soft bag or a plastic bag to put your stuff in/on. The transition area is on grass, and if there’s been any rain, it does hold some amount of water, so a bin bag or a large plastic bag to put your stuff in/on is perfect. We don’t have changing tents, so if you like to make a full change between swim/bike/run, then I’d suggest you bring a reasonable sized towel with you to get changed under. The official rules say no nudity, but we apply that rule with an amount of common sense – I.e. if you’re towel is hard to hold and something slips out, that’s fine. If you’re doing naked lunges up and down the racking, that’s not so fine. Right, that’s it from me for now I’ll get a couple of emails out between now and race day with info as it becomes available or more important nearer the time. We’re here to help, so please get in touch if there’s anything we can help with or you need from us Thanks and happy training Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team graeme@113events.com 07595 591612

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

Cotswold113 Post race mail Good evening all, I hope everyone had a great time today and now has their feet firmly up and a glass of something other than High5 in their hand ? I suspect you’re all very bored of my emails by now, so this will be the final Competitor newsletter you will receive from me, but I wanted to get out a last bit of info, and get a couple of small requests in from ourselves please ? Firstly, and most importantly, thank you very much for choosing to race with us this year. You were all a great bunch, and we had some laughs with many of you along the route today. You all kept Dave motivated enough to keep shouting, which is great for me and my ears as he’s now lost his voice and I get some peace and quiet tomorrow down at the lake working with him on the clear up 🙂 In this email, I’ll cover the following : How fast you went and how you looked doing it Fancy racing with us again this year A chance to win one of 3 free entries to next year’s 113 Feedback request Next year’s races How fast you went and how you looked doing it I know this is the only important thing for many of you, so I’ll get the links up first You can find the results at http://dbmaxresults.co.uk/results.aspx?CId=16421&RId=2252 You will be able to find the photos from the race in the next few days at https://www.charleswhittonphotography.com/cotswold-113-tri-9619 It typically takes the photographer a few days to sort through all the pics, and upload them, but normally they’re ready by around Tuesday PM Fancy racing with us again this year Enjoyed today, and fancy having another race with team 113 this year ? We still have two more races in 2019, which are : August 4th – Cotswold Classic Middle Distance Tri This is effectively a re-run of todays race, but 8 weeks later. We will be back on our normal bike course as we’re told the Badger set road will reopen Mid July. We have around 80 of 1,100 slots remaining for that one: https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/ Sept 22nd – Nationwide Building Society Swindon Half Marathon This is the 3rd year 113 have been running the new Swindon half, and it’s very much run in the style of all 113 events, with an emphasis on fun, and on a flat and fast course. Starting and finishing in the town centre with completely closed roads for a single 13.1mile loop it takes in the Magic Roundabout and Swindon Outlet village as well as the Oasis Leisure centre and Railway museum. Plus, we have 16 charity atmosphere stations around the course, and last year got a Silver in the prestigious ‘Running Awards’ www.newswindonhalf.co.uk A chance to win one of 3 free entries to next year’s 113 This is our favour to ask of all of you please, and will take you literally 2 mins We’re in a good position with the councils for the 113 race today, but as with all councils, they tend to work purely on numbers. In order to give ourselves better leverage on getting them to fix roads on our course etc, I’d like to be able to present to them some tangible figures for economic benefit to the area and some info on good causes from the race. We, of course, have all our own data for a million different things, but what we don’t have a handle on, is what you guys are spending during your visits, or any money you’re raising for charity in the process of racing with us. I’ve put together a very short survey, that will literally take you two mins to complete based around whether you and your group of supporters etc. spent any money on hotels, food, petrol, taxi’s or anything else in the area as a direct result of today’s race (or, in some cases, if you came along to our familiarisation day, and stayed or ate in the area then too) I appreciate that completing surveys is boring, so as an incentive to get you all to take the time, I’ll pick 3 names at random out of all those that completed the survey and give them a free entry to either of next year’s Triathlons (I’ve set the Survey deadline to June 16th please) You can access the survey here : https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/9QNLZRZ Feedback request We get to see lots of the race, and we get a lot of feedback from our marshals. However, you guys see the race from the sharp end, you get to see it all with a completely different set of eyes and perspective, and your opinion is massively important to us. Later this week, we’ll get together as a team and debrief on the whole race bit by bit (as we do with all our events) and we’ll pick through it in minute detail to see what worked that we can do more of, or what didn’t work and what we can do to change those things. This is where you guys come in as what you see, what you enjoyed and what you didn’t is exactly what we want to hear. Please can I ask that you all take a few minutes to email me back and let me know what you thought of the race today, whether that be out on the course, in the run up to the race or even the post race experience. It’s really important for me to know in an honest fashion, what you liked or didn’t like, and I’ll feed that back into our meeting this week so we’ll see what we can tweak, scrap or do more of. Over the last few year’s, the competitor feedback is exactly what has shaped this event into being what we hope you all want from a Middle distance race, so please help us to improve it further, and please be brutally honest if you need to as that’s exactly what we need in order to continue to improve. Next year’s races We’ll have the dates for next year’s Cotswold113 fixed and published within August of this year after the Classic race, but we’re not expecting to change weekends from this year for the 113, so 99% fixed as June 7th 2020 Entries will open at 00:01 on Sept 1st, and we have an early bird discounted rate for the first 150 sign ups Right, that’s it from me now. It’s been a long day for me (my alarm went off at 2am after going to sleep just before 1am), so I’m going to leave you all to get on with your recovery (Sports Scientists will have you believe that hydration and gentle exercise is the best recovery, but I always preferred whiskey and Pizza). Myself and Dave will be working down the lake on the clear up all day tomorrow, so if any of you have left anything behind or just want to come and say hello, please drop in or give me a ring during the day Thanks again for choosing to race with us, and being such a fantastic group of competitors. It’s you guys that make our races what they are, so thank you for trusting us with your race today, and we sincerely hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did having you racing with us. We look forward to welcoming many of you back to our start lines another time, as I’ll even try and book today’s weather again for future races. Cheers Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team Tel 07595 591612 Email graeme@113events.com

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

Only a few days to go…..

Good evening all, I hope everyone’s well, and getting to grips with their tapers in readiness for June 9th ?
We’re less than two weeks to race day, so i wanted to get you all out a bit of information before the race to give you something to read, as I’m well aware that a tapering athlete can be a grumpy athlete and probably quite bored too.
I’ll put out a few emails before the race as I’m conscious you won’t read it all in one go, so in this first instalment I’ll cover the following :

Race info pack
Bike course update
Lake Temperature
Race morning tips and car parking
Saturday Briefings
Can’t get to Registration on Saturday the 8th ?

Race info pack
This went out to you all in a previous email or two, but it still seems that out of 1050 competitors, it’s still only been downloaded around 600 times. That means that over 40% of you are so confident you know what you’re doing that you don’t bother to read it.
There’s some important info in here, so please please please take a few mins to download it and digest it
You can download the pack here : https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/1132019-–-Race-Information-Sheet.docx

Bike course update
If you’ve been following our social media, you would have seen that following Badgergate, we now have an amended bike course to avoid the now collapsing section of road over the Badger sets.
You can see a map of the amended bike course for June here : https://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/2511529435
This amended course now has the whole section with the one hill of the course removed, and is replaced by a couple of out and back sections. I appreciate it’s not perhaps as picturesque as our normal course, but on the positive, it’s exceptionally fast and now includes a few miles of one of the UK’s fastest 10mTT courses.
We’re aiming to have pro maps drawn up by race weekend, so will have these up in the registration tent, but the more computer savvy of you will be able to extract a map and a GPX file from the above link

Lake temperature
The recent spell of good weather has picked the lake temperature up nicely, and it’s now sitting at a near perfect 19deg. I ventured into the water a few days ago for a swim (I say swim, but as this was the first swimming I’ve done of any form since last summer, it was more of a ‘Sink’) and it was lovely.
I’m not expecting that to change massively between now and next weekend, so I fully anticipate our race to be firmly within the Wetsuit Optional range.

Race morning tips, and car parking
We rent a field from a local farmer around 400m from the race start to use as a car park for the race weekend.
As such, there is a car parking charge for both days or £2 on the Saturday and £5 on the Sunday.
Sunday morning is always a bit nuts to get into the carpark, so please can you A) arrive in plenty of time, and B) try and buy Sunday’s carpark pass on Saturday as it saves a big queue of cars trying to buy entrance passes on the morning in the dark.
It’s cash only payments, and you can buy Sunday’s pass either as you arrive at the car park on Saturday, or in the registration tent whilst you get your pack.
In fairness to the Farmer, he does donate a percentage of car parking fees to a local charity, and last year this was Wiltshire Air Ambulance.
Being a field, it’s reasonably uneven, so if you were planning on coming along in your Ferrari, I’d suggest you reconsider please. It’s totally fine for normal cars, but just to make you aware it is still a field.
When you arrive in the car park, and this is especially important for Sunday morning, please make sure you park in the lines as directed on the morning by the parking team, and please park nice and close to the car next to you as we can very easily run out of space in there if everyone decides to leave 8foot between them and the car next to them or park at 45 deg. This might not effect you at the time, but it’ll mean that spectators who arrive later won’t have anywhere to park and will be turned away. Even better if you can car share where possible.
Morning tips – Our transition will open at 04:00 for you to rack your bike and all the racking will be labelled up with your names and numbers. We follow the BTF rules in transition, which basically state, you cannot bring in plastic boxes and should use a small soft bag for any kit to be left by your bike. The transition area is on grass, so I’d recommend you bring something waterproof to put your kit in or on top of as if it rains the night before, the grass will be wet (We do cut it short, but it will still hold some water). A bin bag or a large shopping bag would be perfect.
You’ll see a couple of Toilets in Transition, but these will not be open until the race starts, and the 40 pre race toilets are located around 200m from the transition on the other side of the start area. The walk between the transition and the toilets is a hard packed gravel, so although ok to walk on bare footed if you have feet hardened it, for most people it involves a walk that looks like you’re taking on a line of hot coals. If you have some old trainers, flip flops, hotel slippers or thick socks you want to bring along, you’re of course welcome to do so and just leave them in a line near the swim start as you get into the lake, and you can grab them again once you finish as you’ll be finishing around 10m from here.
The reason we don’t put the toilets near to the start or transition is that these ones are also part of the run course, and as anyone that has encountered race toilets will know, they’re properly minging on a hot day and you don’t want them anywhere near where people congregate out of choice.
As part of being able to offer everyone to be able to choose their own wave and/or race number, it means that the transition area is very mixed up of people in different waves in different parts of the racking. What this means to you all, is that we absolutely have to have everyone racked and out of transition before the first swimmer is in the water, and to make sure it’s completely clear when the race starts. So, the transition will be shut from 06:00 onwards.
If you’re in one of the later waves, and don’t fancy standing around for 40mins in just a wet suit, please feel free to bring a coat or a jumper along with you, and your can put them just inside the massage tent near the start, and grab them after the race. Please don’t bring anything of any value outside transition to leave by the start, as that area will be unattended for some time, so anything you dump there is at your own risk.
Also, if you’re staying in any of the local hotels, please don’t leave your bikes on display in your cars or vans in remote car parks, as a couple of year’s back, we had a competitors car broken into overnight at a hotel not a million miles away, and he woke up to no bike and a smashed door lock.
The area we race in is typically super low crime, but with the rise of bike theft in the UK, you can really never be too safe, and I keep reading of people’s bike’s disappearing off car roofs or out of boots at various other races around the UK, which is a sad state of affairs.

Saturday Briefings
We will hold two briefings on Saturday during registration
These will be 13:30 and 16:00 and will be by the Swim exit next to transition. I’m hoping we don’t get any rain, as these are outdoors, so bring a brolly if it does hammer it down
Each briefing takes about 45mins to an hour and we’ll go through the race bit by bit
They’re not compulsory, but well worth coming along to if you’ve not raced with us before or are new to the distance.

Registration on Saturday
Our registration is on Saturday the 8th June between 12:00 and 17:00.
When you come to register, you will need either your valid 2019 BTF card, or a form of photo ID and £5 cash to buy a BTF day license. All competitors must have either a membership of the BTF, or buy a day license during registration. These day licenses are provided to us by the BTF and cover you for personal liability amongst other things.
It’s not the end of the world if you can’t get there, you can still get someone to register for you.
They will need a photocopy of your BTF license, or a photocopy of your photo ID, and this must have a note on it to say that they are fine to sign and collect your pack on your behalf. It must be a photocopy not an original as we have to retain these and pass them onto the BTF referee marked up with your number so that he can check competitors are who has signed up for the race, and not someone random that has your pack.
Sorry to be strict on this, but it must be a photocopy of your Photo ID or license as this is the BTF rules, and they will be checking in transition when people turn up
We will, of course, shred all your photocopied ID after the race so no one can get hold of your personal ID details.
The chips we use for the race are rented in, and we hope to get those next Monday, and will then start building the packs over a few days. This means that we’re hoping to have them ready by around Wednesday night of race week, so if you’re passing Swindon on the M4 and fancy popping to our house to register before the day, you’re more than welcome and the kettle is always on here. Generally evenings work best as I’m largely at the lake during the day on race week, and although Nicci works from home, tends to be in and out a bit. Either way, the offer’s there.
Your registration pack contains your chip, strap, bike sticker, and your swim cap, the colour of which dictates your wave. You will also collect your shirt and goody bag.
If you’ve not already found it, the start list with waves and numbers on is here : https://www.113events.com/cotswold-113/start-list/

Right, that’s it for this instalment of the pre race info.
I’ll get some more info out to you all over the course of the next 12 days, and we hope you’re as excited to be racing with us as we are to be welcoming you all to our start line to kick our triathlon season off.
We’re here to help, so if you get any questions at all, or there’s anything we can help with, please don’t hesitate to either give me a call or drop me an email

Thanks and happy tapering

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

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

Bike course update

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

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

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

Thanks for your understanding.

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

The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold113 2019 Competitors today

Cotswold113 – 9th june 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks and happy training

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

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

Cotswold Classic – 4th August 19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks and happy training

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

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

Cotswold113 June 9th 2019

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

In this email I’ll cover the following :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks and happy training

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

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

Cotswold Classic – Post race email Good morning all, I hope everyone’s feeling nice and relaxed today after yesterday’s race ? A sports scientist once told me that when I used to race, the best way to recover from a hard event was to ensure I took in plenty of fluids and get out and do some gentle exercise, and to keep myself busy by sorting all my kit out and checking my bike over. However, I preferred to order a pizza, have a beer and sit in the bath until my fingers looked like raisins, so I’m hoping that many of you are sat at home surrounded by beer cans and your bikes are still in your car with a pile of smelly kit. Yesterday was a tough day of heat for you all, so I hope that no-one’s too red today, and that everyone has got home safely. Firstly, and most importantly, thank you all very much for choosing to race with us, and for being the best bunch of competitors we’ve had to date. The residents committee of Castle Eaton Parish Council have already emailed in to say how happy they were with the race and the courtesy of the competitors yesterday, and they respect that June was just a blip on an otherwise faultless record, and it’s you all that have made that possible, so thank you. I appreciate you’re probably all bored to death with my emails by now, so I’ll keep this one fairly brief In this mail, I’ll cover the following How fast you went and how you looked doing it Race debrief and feedback request Next year’s races Lost property Still a chance to race with our team again this year How fast you went and how you looked doing it I get that this is the only bit most people are interested in, so I’ll cover it first You can find the results and download your certificates here : http://dbmaxresults.co.uk/Results.aspx?CId=16421&RId=2226 The photo’s from the event will be available in the next couple of days here : https://www.charleswhittonphotography.com/cotswold-classic-tri-5818 How the photo’s work is that we pay Charles Whitton photography to be there so that he provides a number of images per competitor that are free for you to download. These are of a resolution high enough to use as a facebook pic etc. If you wanted more pictures with a higher resolution, these can be purchased from his site should you wish to have them blown up and printed. If any of you have a picture of you looking in worse condition than one I have of me having a pukey meltdown on the run at Ironman Switzerland, I’ll be most impressed 🙂 – Pic HERE Race debrief and feedback request After each race, we get back together as a team and debrief on everything that happened on the day, the registration day before and all the things that go on in the run up to the race. In those debriefs, we literally go through everything and make changes to see what we can improve next time. We get to see a fair amount of the race from our side, but you all see everything from a totally different perspective, so it’s your feedback on what worked and what didn’t work that I’m really keen to hear. There’s a few things we’ve already identified, some of which were in our control and some weren’t, and we’ll look at sorting that out for next year’s races straight away. The main ones we know about were the stretch of new surfaced road you all hit in two directions yesterday that wasn’t great, and we recognise that. We have a reasonable amount of leverage with the local councils and we get at them almost weekly on the state of the roads (I think they’re pretty consistent with most UK roads now). The council called me on Thursday to report that they’d completely resurfaced one of the poor sections and were very proud that they’d found budget to do it. However, as you saw, it was with the stone chip surface, that although will be great to ride on in a couple of weeks when it’s been run in, was less than ideal yesterday, and we apologise for that The second one was the new water station we put out on the run course due to the heat yesterday at around 0.8miles into the lap. Because of how crazy busy the beach end of Waterpark was, we simply could not get to it to service it as frequently as we’d have liked with water top ups and extra cups, so we have already agreed that if we use that location again on a hot day, we’ll hire in a 2000ltr water bowser rather than trying to continually top up 10 x 60ltr coolers. We’d love to hear your feedback though, and we’re interested to hear on all aspects of the race from pre race communication, the registration process, the familiarisation day that we held a couple of months back right through to everything yesterday. All your points will be fed back into our meeting and we’ll see what we can change for next year, and for the things that you all liked, we’ll see what we can do more of. We appreciate your feedback massively, and it’s hugely important to know exactly what you thought of the whole process You can also leave us a review at our friends at race check at : https://www.racecheck.com/races/cotswold-classic Next year’s races We will have the dates fixed for next year’s two Middle distance races in the next couple of weeks (they’re not going to change much from this year’s dates), and the entries will go live online on Sept 1st Once the dates are fixed in a couple of weeks, I’ll publish them on our facebook/twitter pages as well as our website. Lost Property We have a few bits of lost property from yesterday that have been handed in including a fairly posh front wheel that someone had left in the car park. Myself and Dave will be down the lake today from around 11am to finish off the clear up from the event, so if you’re still in the area, you’re welcome to come along and grab anything you may have left If not, just drop me a mail and I’ll see what we can do about getting stuff posted out later this week. Still a chance to race with team 113 again this year As some of you will already know, the 113 team are also involved in the organisation of the Swindon Half Marathon that runs on Sept 9th this year. Entries to the Swindon Half are still open, and you can find them at www.newswindonhalf.co.uk Right, that’s it from me for this year’s Triathlons. It’s a been a pleasure to welcoming you all to our start lines, and we hope to see many of you back racing with us another time, or if you fancied seeing the races from the other side, joining our marshal team for a race or two Thanks again for coming to race with us, and I wish you all a speedy recovery Cheers Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team Tel 07595 591612 Email Graeme@113events.com Ps, Obligatory post race / pre beer team pic.

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

Cotswold Classic Newsletter – Edition 6

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

Water Temperature Update
Race Morning Planning

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks

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