The following newsletter went out to all 113Cotswold Classic 2017 Competitors today
Cotswold Classic 2017 – March newsletter
Good afternoon all, I hope this email finds you all settling nicely into this year’s training ready for a summer of racing ?
We’re only 5 month away from this year’s 113 Cotswold Classic Middle Distance tri, so I wanted to send you all out a quick email to bring you up to speed on a few things.
I waffle on a bit in my mails, so grab yourself a coffee before starting to read this 🙂
In this mail, I’ll cover the following :
Lake Swimming
Familiarisation day
Marshal recruitment
Race numbers and Waves
Entry Update
Race Information
What you want to see at the race
Lake Swimming
The venue we use has now reached an almost tropical 10.8deg Water temperature. Whilst this is still at least 10deg too cold for me to even consider trying to get into my wetsuit (that’s probably ‘Shrunk” over the winter) I know many of you hardened bunch will now want to start open water swimming practice, and we often get requests.
Anyway, the guys that run lake have day memberships where you can swim any day before 10am, and a couple of weekday evenings for £5 a visit. Our 1.9km course won’t be marked out until race days, but you can get a taste (not literally, I hope) of the water, and it’s a pretty nice place to run and cycle from too.
You can get more details from those guys at http://www.ukwatersports.co.uk/triathlon_training.htm
Familiarisation day – July 2nd
As with all our races, we’ll be holding a free of charge familiarisation day for you, as competitors, to come along and see the course and meet both the team and other competitors alike.
Both the bike and run are completely free of charge, but if you want to swim, then you’ll need to play the lake guys a £5 day membership on the gate.
The swim will kick off at 08:00 with a slow paced guided lap (1.9km as we use a single lap on race day). There’ll be regrouping stops, and there’s a couple of spots you can stand up in too.
After that, we’ll head out on the bike at 10am for a single lap of 28miles (2 laps on race day), which again will be very leisurely paced at around 14-16mph average, and we’ll have a few stops along the way to regroup and point out aid stations etc.
Once the bike groups are back in, we’ll have a 15-20min break before heading out on a single run lap of 4.33miles (3 laps on race day). This will be 9-10min miles and like the bike course, we’ll have regrouping stops to point out aid stations, race day parking and camping etc.
These are fun days, and it’s a great chance to come along and see the course in a much more relaxed environment that race weekend, and there’s loads of chances to ask as many questions as you like.
Also, for us, it’s a nice chance to meet the competitors before race weekend, when you’re all much less friendly and have you races faces on 🙂
The emphasis on the day is leisurely paced, and no one will be left behind. This is a very informal day, and is much more of a group of friends going out for a ride and a run.
The day is completely free (other than swimming) and in order to get a handle of numbers and to have a way of communicating with attendees before, we have a booking form here: BOOK HERE
If you have friends or family that want to come along, they’re more than welcome so that they can see what the race is all about, but we would ask them to book on too
If you can’t make this date and really want to see the course, I live local to the lake and welcome the chance to put down my lap top for a few hours, so as long as you don’t mind my now very slow pace, I’ll happily meet you midweek and show you around (My weekends are generally full of other events and various sports my kids do)
Marshal recruitment
Our races have built up a great reputation over the years, and much of that surrounds the point that we have some of the most enthusiastic and most numerous marshals in Middle Distance racing.
We always need more marshals and the race simply cannot happen without them, so if you have friends, colleagues, enemies or team mates that are coming down for the day, we’d welcome them to the team. We have around 180 paid positions on the day from Saturday bottle Filling and course build, right through to Sunday Swim exit helpers (if you don’t mind getting wet) and course take down teams.
We pay our marshals too, so our package is;
£20 Cash or a £40 113 Events Voucher
An Events Team Technical t-shirt
Free Hot food, drinks, ice creams and anything else you can eat on the day (we even have a team that bring coffee and bacon rolls out to the marshal posts)
It’s a fun day being a marshal and you’ll get to see the race from the best seats in the house and be part of the team.
Marshals don’t need any experience at all, and we’ll take you through a full briefing beforehand, pair you up and get you everything you need to have a fun day helping out.
We can’t, unfortunately, pay under 16’s, but we have Team shirts down to a 5year old size if they wanted to come along and support the adult marshal, and you can bribe them with your free ice creams
If you’re interested in helping out, please drop me a mail at graeme@113events.com
Race Numbers and waves
As those of you that have raced with us before will know, you’ll be able to choose your own wave and/or race number nearer the race date.
Around 5weeks out from the race, once the final start list is fixed and frozen, we’ll send an email out to all competitors asking them if they want to choose a specific wave and/or lucky number. You can also, if you’d like, ask for a group of sequential numbers so that you and your mates are racked next to each other in transition (We rack numerically)
Please can I ask that you await this mail in early July before starting to make requests, as race numbers and waves go on a first come first served basis, and it’s not fair on those that are yet to enter if we start dishing out numbers now.
Entry Update
We are now at around 650 of the 900 slots now taken, so if you have club mates or friends that you fancy racing with, there’s still some slots left – www.113events.com
Race Information
Around June, you’ll get a link to the full race information pack emailed out to you, which tells you everything from what you need for registration, when the waves start and where to spectate from, right through to how you get out the carpark after the race.
Very little will change from 2016, so in the meantime, please see a link to last year’s race pack HERE
What you want to see at the race
This is your race, as competitors, so if there’s anything you’d like to see at the race that would make it a great day for either yourself or your supporters, now is the time to ask.
It might be something you’ve enjoyed at another race, or just that you like Jam sandwiches on the Aid stations, but please let us know
Right, that’s it for my rambling on today, so I hope that you’re all still awake
We’re here to help, so if you get any questions at all, or just want to talk triathlon, please get in touch
Cheers and happy training
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
graeme@113events.com
07595 591612