The following pre race newsletter went out to all Cotswold Classic 2022 Competitors this morning
Cotswold Classic Middle Distance Tri – 10th July 22
Morning all. We’re just over 3 weeks out from the race now, so it’s now getting closer.
Hopefully by now, you’ve all read the last newsletter and digested the race information pack
If not, you can find that here : https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic-2022-pre-race-newsletter-1/
In this latest instalment of the pre race newsletters, I’ll cover the following:
Start List with waves and numbers
Getting your pack in the post
Course conditions, rules/regulations and kit advice
Marshal Request
Start List with waves and numbers
Up until the selection window closed on Monday, I had around 700 requests for waves and numbers, and I think I’ve managed to get about 99.9% into their selected groups, waves and numbers
The start list with your waves and numbers is now fixed, and you can find it here : https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/cotswold-classic-start-list/
I’m afraid that now this is finalised, we can’t change things around
Getting your pack in the post
The master list is now also with the printing and posting company, so packs will start to get posted out in about a week. In your pack will be your race bib (race number) and a bike sticker. The bike stickers have a habit of getting lodged in the bottom of the envelope, so please can you make sure you fish it out before throwing the envelope away.
They get posted out in batches, so don’t worry if your mates have theirs and yours hasn’t arrived yet as the arrival will be spread out over 10 or so days
They should all be with you by Wednesday of race week (Wednesday 6th July), but if they’re not, please email mary@dbamx.co.uk and she can arrange a replacement to be waiting for you race weekend.
If you have a non UK address, or you’ve arranged this with us already, your pack will be available to collect on race morning also.
Course conditions, rules/regulations and kit advice
You’re probably now all at the stage where you’re starting to consider your options of what to bring on race weekend, so I wanted to spend a short amount of time explaining the courses etc so aid those decisions.
Transition is on grass, so with that in mind, it’s worth having a large plastic bag to keep your stuff up off the grass as it’s possible it’ll either be wet with morning dew, or if we’re unlucky, raining.
The BTF rules don’t allow plastic boxes in transition, and it has to be a soft bag of some description (a large rucksack is fine). If you have a plastic box that you always bring your stuff into transition in, we can still find you somewhere in the corner where you can stash it, but you won’t be allowed to have it by your bike and kit in the racking area. I normally recommend that people bring something like a bin bag, sports direct/ikea bag to keep their stuff in as it’ll mean if it does rain, you have somewhere to keep your bike and run socks and shoes in whilst you’re racing as I know from poor experience that coming back into T2 and having to tip water out your running shoes and squelching for the first mile really does suck.
We get about 5% of our competitors that do a full change in T1 or T2, and that’s totally fine too. We don’t have changing tents as there simply isn’t space, so what most do is get changed under a towel or a swim robe. The BTF rules say that you’re not allowed to expose yourself or get naked in transition, and how we interpret that is that if you’re attempting to be discrete, that’s totally fine. If you’re doing naked lunges down the racking or a big front to back sawing motion with a towel, that’s really not (I’ve seen both at our races in the past)
The weather this week has been pretty scorching down at the lake as we enjoy this short heatwave, so the water temperature is now around 21deg, which puts us firmly within the Wetsuit optional range.
I appreciate us triathletes love a Wetsuit, so this will mean that you all pretty much wear one, so I just wanted to let you know that based on current temps, you can opt not to wear one if you don’t want to wear one.
The run from transition to the mount line is about 60m and we’ll carpet it so that you can run either barefooted or in cycling shoes without the worry of mud/stones clogging up your cleats.
The bike course is two 28mile laps. The road surface is largely pretty decent, although being England there are a few potholes around the course, which you can quite easily navigate around as long as you keep your eyes open.
We had our Cotswold 113 race a couple of weeks ago, so we went out and marked them with Yellow Paint, and will do this again just before the July Classic race (a few examples as below)
If you’re considering tyre choice, I’ll give you my suggestion as an example as I live/ride in this area a lot mainly around our course: I weigh 80kg, and on my road bike, I run a 28mm tubeless tyre inflated around 70psi.
If you’re lucky enough to have both road and TT bike options, this is a TT bike course all day long. It’s relatively well sheltered from the wind so is perfectly suitable for a deep rim or disc rear if you have that option available to you (most don’t, but I appreciate that those that do want to know if it’s ok for the course style or not)
The bike Course aid station is about 24miles into the lap, so you’ll want to bring enough nutrition and drink to get yourself to this point if you’re planning on using the aid station on either or both laps.
The race is non drafting, and we’re going to be very hot on issuing penalties for this as I’ve read on a facebook group about a certain club planning on working together to get a fast time, so please bear this in mind and remember to follow the rules please.
The run course is three laps, and around 50% tarmac, 45% hard packed lake paths and 5% grass. It deals with rain really well as the lake path sections are under trees and very hard packed, so unless we get 2 weeks of rain running up the race, it’s a road shoe course rather than an off road shoe course. I’ll keep everyone posted on this nearer the time with condition updates in the following pre race newsletters
Marshal Request
We can really do with a handful more paid marshals on the day please, so if you have anyone coming along with you that could get involved in the fun side of the race, we’d welcome them to the team.
Marshals can camp for free very close to the race start, we’ll keep them in free icecreams, hot food and hot drinks during the day, and they get paid too (£20 cash or a £40 113 Voucher)
If you have anyone coming along that could be part of our team, please just drop me an email at graeme@113events.com
Right, that’s it for me for this newsletter
We’re looking forward to welcoming you along to our start line in a few weeks, but please just get in touch if there’s anything we can help with in the run up to the race, it’s what we’re here for
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sending out a couple more pre race emails, which will include info on swimming on race weekend before the race day, non compulsory briefing and early registration window on Saturday the 9th, as well as a video link for the compulsory briefing.
If you didn’t read it from the last newsletter, please please please read the race info pack : https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/CC2022-–-Race-Information-Sheet.pdf
Cheers, and happy training
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
graeme@113events.com
07595 591612