Cotswold 113 June 2nd – Competitor Newsletter #3

Good afternoon all
Although it really doesn’t feel much like the summer yet, we’re now just 5 weeks away from this year’s Cotswold 113 on June 2nd.
The good news is that the weather is finally due to improve in the next couple of weeks, and that still leaves us a few weeks of [hopefully] good weather for you all to get outside and enjoy enjoy training in something other than the cold and wet.
As we’re getting closer to the race, I’m going to start now going through the final details and get some more info out to you all
If you’re one of the entries that have come in since out last newsletter at the end of March, you can catch up on all our previous newsletters at www.113events.com/news 

In this email I’ll cover the following :

Race Information pack
Swim, Bike and Run Course conditions and advice
Last chance to make any changes
Get involved and be part of the day
Familiarisation day 12th May
What’s coming up soon

Race Information pack
Below you will find a link to the race info pack for the June 113
This pack has all the information for the race from where to park, what to bring for registration, what’s at the aid stations, and how to pick your stuff out of transition once you’ve finished
You’ll get this sent to you over and over again in the next few emails, but it’s really important that you please take the time to have a read through it and digest it
The race info pack can be downloaded HERE
This is the pack for you all as competitors, and we’ve tried to include everything you need to know for the weekend. If there’s anything you want to see in there that isn’t, please just ask and we can update it as we go along

Swim, Bike and Run Course conditions and advice 
Although a good chunk of you will have done our races before, or are experienced in Middle or longer distance tris, we get a good sized percentage of our competitors that have never done Middle Distance tri before, or even triathlon before, so I wanted to give you all some info on conditions of the three courses, and what to bring or look out for.

Swim
Our course is a single lap of Lake 32. In the race info pack, you’ll see there’s a series of wave types and times. On around May 10th, when entries are closed online, you’ll get a chance to choose which type of wave or wave time you’d like.
How it works roughly, is a few people want to head off in a single Mass Start wave, which normally has around 75-100 competitors in it, but the remainder want to head off in a rolling start format where we set swimmers off every 2-3 seconds.
We operate within the BTF rules on water temperature. Currently, it’s bloody freezing at around 13 deg as thew Summer’s not really turned up yet. However, due to the fact that lake 32 is actually very shallow at around 5-7foot for 90% of our course, it warms up very quickly with the weather as the surface area to volume ratio is way higher than most other lakes. That’s good news for anyone not keen on super cold (me included) and realistically, I’d expect it to be around 18-20deg by race day, maybe even a little more.
The BTF rules say that between 13-23deg that Wetsuits are optional, and above 23deg, Wetsuits are not allowed. There’s a fair bit of adjustment on the upper limit for air temp etc, so it’s not super clear cut that above 23 is a ban, and we’ve never had a race over 23deg at that lake in the 13 years we’ve been running events there..
We’re almost certainly going to be in the Wetsuit optional range, which means that 99.9% of you will wear a triathlon wetsuit. However, if, like me, you’d rather swim without a wetsuit, then you’re perfectly welcome to do so.
You can do Front Crawl, Breastroke, doggy paddle or even Fly for the course, but we ask that you don’t swim backstroke please
The reason for this is that if you get into any trouble in the water, then the way to signal distress to the water safety crew is to roll onto you back and raise your arms. As you might imagine, doing backstroke can easily create confusion in this case.
There’s a couple of points around the lap where you can stand up, and you’re more than welcome to do so to gather your breath and compose yourself ready to get going again. Unfortunately, there’s no floating cocktail or coffee bar out in the lake, but you’re welcome to stop where you need to get your breath back and compose yourself, we have no issue with that at all.
We will provide you all with a Swim cap, so you don’t need to bring one of those, and you’ll collect that at registration on the Saturday along with your timing chip/strap and bike sticker.
I’m conscious that we’ll have a handful of very nervous swimmers amongst you all, so we will also have a limited volume of ‘Nervous swimmer’ hats that you can collect by the swim start on race morning. Anyone wearing one of these will get an extra bit of attention from the water safety crew to ensure you get around safely.
We will have around 40-50 canoeists on the water at any one time, and they’re all very experienced in dealing with swimmers. You can also signal to any of these to ask if you can hang onto their canoe for a minute to get your breath back also, and they will be happy to help out. If you do this, please grab either the front or rear tips of the canoe, as if you grab the side, they’ll be in the water with you, and probably not best pleased 🙂

Bike Course 
The bike course is 2 laps of 28miles / 45km each
The road surface for 99% of the course is pretty decent, and I will go out in the days before the race with a brightly coloured paint and mark up any potholes so you can easily avoid them. it’s the UK, and there are a few potholes on the course, but they’re all really easily avoided as long as you’re paying attention. Largely, the surface is decent for most of the course, and I have ridden the course a few times in the last few weeks without any issues.

If you are one of the lucky racers that has the luxury of choice between a Triathlon style bike or a road bike, it’s a TT/aero course all day long as it’s very flat.
If you’re a tyre size nerd like me, for reference, I weigh around 80kg, and on a road bike run 28mm Tubeless tyres with around 70Psi in them, and I find that ideal for the roads around here.
There’s an Aid station on each lap, and that Aid station has 750ml Bike bottles on it with either water or High5 as well as High5 Water energy  Gels (previously called ISO Gels). You can dispose of your old bottles before the aid station, and grab a new one on the go.
As the Aid station is towards the end of each lap, it’s well worth starting out with your own bottle and a couple of gels or bars on the bike to keep you fed until you reach that point.
If you’re a GPS computer user, you can find the course and download the .GPX file at https://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/5479670401
We don’t a huge amount of turns, and around 200 direction Arrows that go out on the day marking the course as well as 50+ bike course marshals, support riders etc, so you really cannot get lost*
*We’ve had over 20,000 people do our bikes courses over the years and we’ve only person get lost in that time, when they took an of course detour for an emergency number 2 in a field (we do have toilets on the course also, but he couldn’t wait) and went the wrong way out of the field, and ended up a few miles away where we went and retrieved him
We have Police and Traffic Management officers on the main junctions controlling traffic to give our competitors right of way, and you can expect a largely uninterrupted ride for the duration on very quiet roads.
The bike course comes back past the lake at the end of each lap, so spectators can see you go by unless they fancy a trip out on the course to spectate from

Run Course
Our run course is 3 laps of 4.33m/7km each lap and is around 50% Tarmac, 45% Hard Packed lake paths and 5% Grass.
The Hard pack deals with the wet very well, and it’d need a good couple of weeks of heavy rain to make it anything other than a road shoe course. It offers a reasonable amount of shade, but there are some parts that are exposed to the sun (that might be a welcome thing or an unwelcome thing depending on the weather on the day)

In line with the BTF rules, and general safety rules, I’m afraid you’re not allowed to wear any type of earphones whether in ear or bone conduction type during our race. We have to be strict on this rule as there’s a couple of points on the course where you need to cross roads, and it’s super important that you can hear marshals instructions or other competitors around you.
There’s 3 aid stations per lap on the run course, and the Aid station menu is in the race info pack so you can plan your feast

I’ll get more spectator info in the later newsletters, but there’s a couple of really good spots by the lake where the runners pass twice per lap as well as the run course coming right past the finish line each lap too, so your fan clubs and will be well treated to lots of views of you on the course.
There’s more info on the Familiarisation day later in this email, but it’s a great chance to come and see the course for yourself before the big day

Last chance to make any changes
The point where we can offer free deferrals has now passed. However, we do still have a few more days in which you can either swap your entry to July 14th, or change names or race types against your June entry.
I’m very conscious that we always get lots of late requests where people haven’t quite got into the swing of their training, or picked up and injury and want to move back to the July 14th race, so now’s your chance that if that’s you please let me know now and we can sort it for free rather than leaving it later and it potentially carrying some cost.
In the interest of transparency, the reason we offer swaps between the races this late on and not deferrals is that we have to commit to providing to numbers at both races, and this carries significant financial outlay to us. Lots of the things that we buy for both races are largely interchangeable between the two (obviously other than medals and shirts) so we can swap you between them, but not now defer you – Hope that makes sense
That’s not to say we can’t now defer you, but there’s going to be increasing cost to do so as we get closer to the race, so rather than just applying a blanket no from a certain amount of weeks out, the fairest way to move forward is to ask you to share some of that cost if you do want to still defer, and didn’t take the third party injury/illness insurance policy offered by the entry system at sign up (it’s easy to check if you did take it as it’ll show as XCover.com on your entry confirmation and would’ve been around £10)

Get involved and be part of the day

We have around 150-180 paid Marshals at our races, and we’re still pretty short on getting them signed up this year with about 25-30 slots still required.
The marshals are a massive part of our races, and they’re the heart of the competitor experience
We have around 50% of our marshals as regulars, and the remainder tend to be friends and family of competitors
If you have anyone coming along with you that can be part of our awesome team, we’d welcome them in with open arms
We pay all our marshals too, and they can choose between either £20 cash or a £50 113 Events Voucher, and we’ll kit them up with everything they need including a team shirt to keep, take them through a full briefing and keep them in ice creams, burgers, coffee and cold drinks to make sure they have a fun day
Marshals also get free parking and camping around 100m from the race start/finish too, so if you wanted to stay close by, just bring a marshal with you
You might also have friends that are thinking of racing with us in July, so if they came on the team for a shift in June, they can earn £50 off, or if they bring someone else with them, can earn £100 off etc.
The two shifts we need numbers for are :
Bike team – 05:45 briefing, finish around 11:45ish (some spots earlier)
Run team – 07:45 Briefing, finish around 14:45ish (some spots earlier)
All they need is to be over 16 please, and know their left from their right and we’ll pair them up so they’re not stuck on their own.

Also, we’ve had a couple of 113 Marshal weddings now where they’ve met marshalling for us and gone of to get married, so although I’m not guaranteeing anything, if you have a friend that needs to find that special someone, marshalling could well be the avenue they’re not exploring yet and hadn’t considered  😉

Familiarisation day 12th May 
Our course familiarisation day is due to be held on May 12th, and you can still book places for it online until this Friday
It’s totally free for our bits of showing you around the bike and run courses, and a cool way to meet the team, other competitors and see the course before race day
All the info on that, and the booking link, is in our previous newsletter : https://www.113events.com/cotswold113-competitor-newsletter-2/

What’s coming up soon
Other than those that have signed up for the familiarisation day on May 12th, who’ll get joining instructions towards next weekend, the next you all will hear from me will be around May 10th, when entries are frozen and I have the start list in a manipulatable format on Excel. From that point onwards, you will have a window and a route to use in which you can choose a specific race number and/or a swim wave, or be grouped with your mates in transition and off in the same wave.
Please can I ask that you don’t put your request in until that point, as A) I can’t do anything with that request until the race is fixed, and B) in the interest of fairness, it’s first come first served once that mail comes out – Around May 10th

Right, that’s it for me for today
I’ve waffled on a bit and it’s ended up longer than I’d planned, so hopefully you’re all still awake
I’m here to help, so please get in touch if there’s anything I can help with or you need any advice on anything

Enjoy the last few weeks of training, and fingers crossed the better weather turns up soon

Happy training and we look forward to seeing you all soon

Cheers

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