It’s race week…….
Afternoon all, I hope everyone’s not getting too tetchy during taper week, and is feeling ready for Sunday ?

This will likely be the last of the newsletters before the big day, so I’m going to cover the last few points to get you all ready for hitting the start line on Sunday.
By now, hopefully you’ve all fully digested competitor newsletters numbers 4/5 as these have all the info on the race, as well as a link to the race info pack. If you’ve not read these yet, you can find all the previous newsletters at www.113events.com/news
These also include links to the start list, as well as all the information on registration and the Race pass (the new name for the BTF Day license)
I appreciate a tapering triathlete is generally a grumpy bugger, so I’ll keep this one relatively short (or as short as my waffle allows)

In this email, I’ll cover the following :

Video Briefing
Competitor Parking & Spectators
Course conditions, Tips and Weather
Tracking/Results link

Video Briefing
Although we’ll have two non compulsory full briefings on Saturday at 13:00 and 16:00 where we’ll go through the whole race in detail, this 20minute video is your compulsory video briefing for the race where you can see mine and Dave’s faces for Radio talk you through the main safety and information points of the race – Dave actually had lost his voice at an event on Sunday, so says very little much to my amusement 🙂
It’s really important than everyone please watches this as it has all the important safety points about the race, as well as the info on how the starts, and Aquabike and Relay classes work on the day
You can see the video (and random appearances from Mine and Nicci’s dog and cat) HERE

Competitor Parking & Spectators
Hopefully you’ve all read the race pack (HERE), but just to reiterate about parking.
Parking is a couple of hundred meters along Spratsgate lane in a field. It’ll be marked ‘Event Parking’ on signs along Spratsgate Lane
The What3words reference for the Parking entrance is ///masks.oblige.terribly
The parking is a field that we hire in at an extortionate rate from a local farmer. The grass is cut short, but it is a field, so please be mindful if you are lucky enough to own a Ferrari and you were planning on coming in that
The farmer charges £5 a car for Saturday and £5 a car on the Sunday. To speed up Sunday’s process, I’d strongly suggest that you buy Sunday’s parking on ticket on Saturday. The parking team will have those available, and we’ll have a few in registration too.
Getting a ticket in advance means you’re not trying to fumble for change at 5am Sunday.
The farmer does donate a few hundred pounds of the takings to charity, and this year, it was to the Team True Spirit group of injured servicemen, who race with us every year and will be racing on Sunday too, so it’s not all just going straight into his pocket.
The Signal at the lake is pretty pants, so our card machine doesn’t work, so this needs to be cash only pleaseWhen you arrive on Saturday to the car park, you’ll be given a wrist band that gets you in the gate at the Beach and Country park, and you can make your way through there to Lake 32 where the registration is (it’s about a 300m walk)
The same will go for Sunday, and anyone you have coming along later that uses our carpark will get the same type of wrist band, so they can walk through the beach and Country park to the race start and finish area
The important bit to this is that the Beach and Country park have very strict control of numbers in their area for waterside activities, such as the beach itself and the kids beach adventure area.
Subsequently, please can you ask any spectators that are coming along to watch you, that of course they’re welcome to go through the B&CP area, but it’s super important that they don’t try and head down onto the beach or the kids beach area, as they operate their day tickets based on their own safety capacity rules, and if we start having people using those areas too, they could get into a world of trouble, which in turn gets me into a world of trouble.
It’s a really cool place to go though, and contains about 30% of our run course, so if you have people that want to book into there, to not only use their facilities, but also park literally against the edge of our transition, they can do so by booking in advance at https://www.cotswoldcountryparkandbeach.com/
The weather forecast for the weekend is decent, and being the start of the peak holiday period, it’ll be busy, so you’ll want to book in advance

Spectators, can of course spectate anywhere else on the bike and run courses, just won’t be allowed onto the beach area please, unless they’ve booked in with the B&CP.
There is a cafe in the beach and country park, and the Lake 32 cafe right next to our start/finish area, which will be open from around 5am Sunday.
The Beach and Country park opens from 10am both days

Course conditions and Weather 

The forecast for the weekend looks favourable, but as we know, UK weather forecasting is somewhat hit and miss, so it may well snow, who knows

The lake is currently (as of Today) at around 19.5deg, so that puts us Firmly in the ‘Wetsuit Optional’ range
There’s a slim chance that we might have to make a slight change to the bike course due to flooding under a railway bridge about 6 miles in, but we’ll monitor that over the next few days, and keep people posted if it’s still a problem on Saturday PM. It’s not a massive change and really only affects a few miles of the course. I’m pretty confident that it’ll be nothing more than a puddle by Sunday, and is currently only actually a few inches deep.
We’ll also go out in the next couple of days now it’s dry, and spray paint potholes on the course too

The run course should be in good condition and the rain we’ve had recently hasn’t effected it too badly at all as most of the bits that can suffer are largely unused by anyone other than us.
The Run course is around 50% Tarmac, 45% Lakeside paths (as below pic) and 5% grass

A couple of tips :
Our transition is on grass, and although we’re not forecasted rain over the weekend, the grass can often be covered in dew in the morning.
With this in mind, I’d strongly suggest that you bring a plastic bag (bin bag, Ikea bag etc) to put you kit either on (to keep it off the wet grass) or in (to keep it dry from any rain or drips from a wetsuit hung over the racking)
Plastic or any kind of rigid boxes are not permitted in the BTF rules, so a bag to keep your dry kit in for post race, and you run kit in is well worth having
Lots of people use soft rucksacks, shopping bags etc and these are all fine.
Transition is for competitors only, and we control that with your race bibs, so it’s as safe in there as can be.

The walk from transition to the Swim start is about 100m, but is on a mud path and gravel car park. You may have the hardened feet of Zola Budd (a reference only the older amongst us will get) but for most people, it’s not a particularly comfortable walk barefooted, so I’d suggest bringing an old pair of flip flops or trainers to wear from the Transition to the swim start, and you can leave these along the shore by the start and collect them after the race (the swim start is right next to the overall race finish)
Don’t worry if they’re a really old pair and you don’t want them back, as any that are not collected after the race will be collected up by us and put in the skip Sunday PM

Tracking/Results link 
We operate a live results/tracking system on the day, and the point you start the race and cross various timing mats in transition, and on the bike and run courses will upload within a few seconds.
We will list that link at https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/results/ over the coming days so that it’s ready for Sunday

Right, that really is it from me for today
We’re looking forward to seeing you all this weekend, and can’t wait to get you all lined up on our start line
I’ll be largely at the lake between now and Saturday, but will endeavour to respond to any emails in the evening when I am home at my desk

Cheers and happy tapering

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