The following email went out to all Cotswold Classic Familiarisation day entrants today:
Cotswold Classic Familiarisation day – July 1st 18
Good afternoon all, I hope everyone’s well and has been out enjoying training in the sunshine ?
Our Cotswold Classic familiarisation day is this Sunday, and as you’ve all signed up to attend, I wanted to drop you all out a quick mail with some info on the weekend.
The day will be held at Waterland Outdoor Pursuits, which is Spratsgate Lane, Ashton Keynes, Glos, GL76DF.
We will have Jason Tait (http://southwestswim.co.uk) leading a guided lap of the Swim course starting at 08:00, but you don’t need to attend this if you don’t want to, and there’s also 400m, 750m and 1500m courses laid out in the lake if you just wanted to get in to get a taste for the lake (Not literally).
The guided Swim will start at 08:00, and will be at a nice leisurely pace with several regrouping stops.
The lake water is currently measuring in at around 22deg, which is pretty warm, so whether you choose to wear a wetsuit is entirely up to you, especially as the forecast for this weekend is very hot, so could be even warmer by then.
These last couple of weeks have been unusually warm, and to date, we’ve run 17 races from the lake over the summer and have not had to ban wetsuits yet where it’s gone over 24deg, so this is unusually warm for the lake.
The familiarisation day with us is completely free of charge, but as the lake guys need memberships to swim, if you wanted to get in the water before the bike and run, they’ll charge you £5 day membership on the gate.
The bike will be a single lap (28miles as it’s two laps on race day), and will head off from the lakeside Cafe (Next to where you’d have started/finished the swim) at 10am.
As we’re around 90 signed up, we’ll head out in a single or maybe 2 groups, and like the swim, we’ll have a few regrouping stops. As we don’t have police and marshals out on the bike course, this is a lead group ride and everyone will be expected to ride in a courteous manner and to give other road users plenty of space
This is the UK, so there’s a number of potholes on the course. On race day you, obviously, won’t be riding in a pack, so they’re easy to spot and avoid, but please be mindful to call them out when riding in a group.
You can of course ride on a TT bike, but when riding in a group, please don’t sit on your aero bars as group rides and aero bars are not a great combination, and I’ve seen a fair few accidents over the years where a group has stopped and someone on Aero bars can’t get to the brakes in time. If you want to ride on your aero bars, please hang back and ride off the rear of the group with a decent gap to the rider in front.
For the bike route, we’ll aim to average around 15mph
Once we get back in from the bike, we’ll have a 15-20min break to ask any questions and get your run kit on, and we’ll then head out on a single lap of the run course (4.3 miles – 3 laps on race day) at around 12:30 ish. This will be one group, and is a great chance to see the course. Like the bike course, this is a lead group run, so there’ll be sections that aren’t fenced off as they will be on race day, so there might be areas we need to walk through as a group so as not to bump into people having BBQ’s etc as the Waterpark gets mega busy on a sunny day.
We’ll have plenty of stops to regroup on the run course to point out where aid stations and various other bits of the race will be
For the run course, we’ll aim to average around 10min miles.
Race support & pre race tune-ups
For this year’s triathlons, we have Joe from VeloWorks offering pre-race servicing and providing our on-course mechanical race support. Joe will be on site during the Familirisation day on 1st July in case anyone needs any last minute adjustments ahead of setting off on the bike lap.
During race weekend itself, VeloWorks are offering a pre race tune-up service throughout Saturdays registration period for £20 that can be booked in 30min slots by visiting their website www.veloworks.co.uk. On race morning, they will be located near transition to provide any last minute support before heading out onto the bike course in case anyone needs mechanical assistance to get back into T2.
Finally for those of you local to the area, if you need any help with your bike between now and August’s race, check out the VeloWorks website to see the full range of services offered to ensure your bike is race-ready.
If anyone gets any questions or queries, please feel free to get in touch with me.
I’m going to be away for three days on my day job this week Tues-Thursday, so give me a call if it’s urgent as I’ll only be picking my mails up in the evening (07595 591612)
Look forward to seeing you all on Sunday, and please bring plenty of water and sunscreen as it’s looking to be a hot one.
Thanks
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events Team
Tel 07595 591612
Email graeme@113events.com