2025 Competitor newsletter #1

Hey All
Firstly, thank you very much for choosing 113 Events for your Middle Distance racing this year. As much as it doesn’t look much like it out of the 113 Office window right now, Summer really is just around the corner and will sneak up on us soon.
Planning is well underway for this year’s races, so in this first instalment of what will be around 6 competitor newsletter emails per race, I wanted to welcome you all in with some info on what’s coming up for you in either June or July.
From now on, the next newsletter emails you will recieve will be specific to either the June 1st Cotswold 113, or July 13th Cotswold Classic V2.
This email is likely to be quite a long one, so I’d suggest that a strong coffee and a comfortable seat would be a good next move for you.
In this email, I’ll cover the following :

What to expect over the next few months
Staged payment entries
Training plan
Familiarisation days
Getting involved
Capacity Update
Not sure you’ve done the right thing
Basic Outline of race weekend
Apex
Accommodation near the lake

What to expect over the next few months 
Although this email is likely to be the longest one, each races competitors will get a series of email newsletters over the next few months drip feeding in information about your upcoming race days, at hopefully, about the right time you need it.
If you happen to miss one (ie the next email you get is newsletter #3), we always also post them up on our facebook and twitter pages (Both @113events) and also under the news section of our website – www.113events.com/news
The next email you will all get from me will be in a few weeks time, and it’ll include a link to the race info pack which has all the details on the race, course maps, spectator info, feed station menus etc.
We will also have the dates for the familiarisation days fixed by then, and I’ll cover more on them later in this mail
For those of you that have raced with us before, we are looking at putting together a revised bike course for the June 113. The planning is very much underway, and has been since last sept, but we are just awaiting some council approvals and planning confirmations for roadworks and repairs to currently crappy surfaces on the revised course – Which they’re promising for Spring.
I’ll cover a bit more about changing races, categories etc in a later section of this email, but around 6 weeks out from the race, we freeze the start list, and at that stage you will get an opportunity to choose a specific wave time/type as well as a race number, or a group of race numbers so you can be racked with your mates. In order to keep things fair, we cannot accept any requests until that stage once the race is fixed and the start list finalised. This will be around 6 weeks out and you will get an email about it at the time.
Nearer race time, I’ll also give some updates on course conditions and some kit recommendations in detail, but of course, you can email or phone me any time if you need any advice or guidance

Staged payment entries
If you’ve entered and paid in full, or are up to date on your staged payments, you can skip this bit.
The staged payments were new to us last year, and account for around 40% of our entries, which is great.
However, there’s some confusion amongst many of you, which I must apologise for:
The staged payment system is not a direct debit, but you need to manually go into the unique link that’s in both your original entry confirmation email, and the payment reminder emails that go out automatically around a week before your stages are due, and physically make payments 2/3. The date of those stages is listed in your entry confirmation emails and reminders.
If you can’t find those emails, don’t panic, and just drop me an email and I can regenerate them for you
95% of you are up to speed roughly with your payments, but there’s still a fair few which aren’t. If you’re one of those that aren’t, please can I ask that you bring yourself up to speed on the payments as soon as possible please.
Don’t worry, we’re not withdrawing anyone yet, and if you’re struggling with payments, or can’t work out how to do it, just drop me an email or give me a ring and we’ll come up with something for you

Training plan
I’m sure many of you have a good handle on your training already, but for anyone that doesn’t, and just wants a little bit of guidance, our friends at MCA Coaching have out together a 16week training plan to lead you into the race nicely.
I appreciate that everyone is very different, but this is a good outline guide for anyone that wants a little structure in their training and is designed with the 113 in Mind
It’s totally free and you can find it HERE

Familiarisation days
As we always have done since the start of our races in 2011, we’ll be holding free of charge familiarisation days for both races around 4-6 weeks before the race dates.
In the next newsletters for each race, we’ll have the dates fixed and published and available to book. I apologise that we can’t publish the dates yet, but in order to keep them free of charge, we have to await the lake guys to fix all their other paying bookings/dates before we can squeeze them into their calendar and get them out to you all.
They’re typically 4-6 weeks before, happen on a Sunday, and are a lot of fun and very informative.
They’re basically a chance to come down and meet myself and the team, and we’ll take you for a guided single lap of the bike and run courses (those are two laps and three laps on race day respectively). They’ll be a chance to have a swim too, but given the varying speeds and abilities, we don’t guide that.
We do them at a super relaxed pace so that they’re suitable for everyone, and we’ll have a fair few stops to show you where aid stations etc are on the day, and great places for spectators to watch and support from.
They’re also a cool opportunity to meet with other competitors and ask any questions you might have.

Getting involved
As anyone that has every organised races will fully understand, getting marshals is one of the hardest bits of the job of race direaction.
We have around 200 Paid positions on race day that we fill, and these range from a team to help in transition and pull people out the water, as well as bike teams and run course teams and a final tear down crew.
We pay all our marshals too, and they can choose from either £20 cash or a £50 113 Events voucher, and we give them free camping 100m from the start line, and event shirt and keep them in hot food, drinks and ice creams all day. Marshalling is a good laugh too, and we pair people up so they’re not stuck alone, and really look after them.  A Happy marshal is a great marshal and our race has built a fantastic reputation, which i’m exceptionally proud of, of having the best marshals in Triathlon.
If you fancied being involved in the other race to the one you’re racing in, or you have friends or family coming down for the day, then being a marshal is a great way for them to be able to support you out on the course and to make sure that everyone else is smiling and having fun.
All we ask is that they know their left from their right, and are over 16. Under 16’s can help an adult marshal and get an event shirt and ice creams, but we can’t officially employ them due to insurance restrictions
If you’d like to get involved, or have people that could, please just email me at graeme@113events.com and we’ll welcome them in with open arms.
It’ll also mean if you want to camp for free 100m from the start, and are sharing a tent or motorhome with someone, they can marshal and you can stay close by with them in the marshals camping

Capacity Update
If you’ve got friends or club mates that haven’t quite pulled the pin on entering yet and are still undecided, a quick heads up on capacity
June 1st Cotswold 113 – Around 80% full
July 13th Cotswold Classic V2 – Around 50% full
The July Classic is always a slow burner for entries and doesn’t normally pick up until spring, but the June race is looking increasingly likely that it will fill up earlier this year

Not sure you’ve done the right thing
Think of this as a kind of amnesty. In the 14years we’ve been running these races, we always get people that very close to the race, decide they just aren’t ready as life has got in the way ( or, like me, just haven’t shed the winter pounds yet) etc etc, and have known for some time, but just put it off
We will always try and accommodate everyone, but the earlier you make the request, the easier it is to sort.
We can very easily, and happily, swap people between the two middle distance races, or move entries from Triathlon to Aquabike or Bike run etc, but it’s definitely better to do it earlier whilst we still can at a touch of a button rather than doing it a week before the race, when is just might not be possible as easily.
In reality, if you wanted to swap from Triathlon to Aquabike/BikeRun categories, or vice versa in the same race, we can even sort that race weekend generally, but moving between the two races is a little more involved
If you’re unsure, just ask or give me a call and we can have a chat and go through some options. We genuinely will always try and be as flexible as possible, but earlier is definitely better than later

Basic Outline of race weekend
The race info pack in the next newsletter will have more info on this in details, but in summary, this is the basic outline of the race weekend.

Saturday :
Registration is open between 12:00 and 17:30
Swimming practice will be open 10:00-17:00 and we’ll email links on how to book that nearer the time
Briefings will be at 13:00 and 16:00

Sunday :
04:25 – Car Park opens
04:30 – Transition opens
06:30 – Transition closes
06:25 – Race start – Mass Start wave
06:30-07:30 – Race Start – Rolling start Waves 1 to 6 – Each wave has a 10 Minute window 

If you can’t get there on the Saturday, we can sort something out for someone else to register for you etc, and we’ll send info on that out closer the race. The two Saturday briefings are not compulsory, but a good chance to understand everything about the race and to ask any questions you might have. They’re very informal, and we’ll go through everything you and your supporters need to know for the following day to get the most out of the race.
I’ll cover more info on how the waves work in a later email, but in summary, you will get a chance nearer race date to choose whether you want to start in a Mass Start format, or a more relaxed rolling start format, and what time wave you’d like.
The rolling start is based around a competitor starting every 3-4 seconds, and if you have a small group of 2-3 people that still want to start at the same time, but don’t want the Mass start, our starting team can still sort that in the rolling start waves.

I’ll also send out more info nearer the time on how the Aquabike and Bike/Run Categories work, but they run alongside the main race and you’re all racing on the course at the same time, but are differentiated by different colour bibs and get the same goody bag, but a different medal etc.

Apex
113 Events have partnered up with the guys at Apex Insurance going forwards. Tim from Apex is a good friend of Nicci and I, and also a Triathlete. He’s doing the 113 this year too, so you’ll see him out there
Anyway, Apex offer a wide range of Professional Indemnity and Commercial Policies, and if you let them know that you came through 113 Events, they’ll do you a free full review and look after you with a 5% commission discount.
Click on the image below to find out more.

Accommodation near the lake 
Now’s about the time lots of you will be thinking about how to plan out your weekend.
The postcode for the start/finish location of our races is GL76DF.
There’s dozens of airbnb’s etc near by in Somerford Keynes, Ashton Keynes and South Cerney, but if you are after a hotel, the best and closest hotel is the Devere Cotswold Waterpark Hotel. It’s 3miles from the lake, and actually on the June Bike course.
The website for them is https://www.devere.co.uk/cotswold-water-park-hotel
They tend to book up pretty quickly around race time as it’s also summer Holidays, so worth getting in quick.

If you like a bit of camping over race weekend, there’s a campsite a few hundred meters away, which although not run by us, is used uniquely for triathletes on race weekends. You can book through them at https://cotswoldlakescamping.com/

Alternatively, like in the earlier segment of this mail, if you have a marshal with you in your tent or motorhome, you can camp for free around 100m from the race start/finish 🙂

Right, that’s it from me for today
I apologise that this was such a long waffle, and I hope you’re all still awake ?

We’re here to help, so if you have any questions at all, or we can help with anything, please just ask

Cheers and Happy training

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