Only 2 and bit weeks to go…..

Good evening all, I hope everyone’s well ?
We’re on the home straight now in the run up to the race, so this instalment of the Competitor newsletter will bring you some more info on the race and give you a chance to make some choices.
If you’ve entered recently, or not read our previous Cotswold Classic Newsletters, you can find them all at www.113events.com/news

You’ll be getting a couple more emails from me between now and race day, but in this instalment, I’ll cover the following :

Get your friends and family involved
Race info Pack
Planning your kit for race day
Swim Waves / Racking with your mates

Get your friends and family involved
Without the marshal team, this race simply wouldn’t happen. We have around 140 paid positions on race weekend, and we still need to fill about 20 of them.
If you have friends or family that are coming down, and fancy seeing the race from the easier side, we’d absolutely love them on our team for the day please.
We pay all our marshals too, and they can choose from either £20 cash or a £50 113 Events Voucher (that can be transferred from one person to another), and get free Camping/Parking on site right near the swim start/race finish and we’ll keep them in ice creams, Burgers and coffee’s all day as well as giving them a team shirt to keep
They don’t need any experience at all, and we’ll take them through a full briefing
Please drop me an email at graeme@113events.com

Race info pack
You can find the race info pack HERE
This tells you everything you need to know about the race weekend, and is super important that you do please all take the time to read it.
I’m pretty sure it covers everything from registration requirements to Aid station menus etc, but if you get any questions, please just ask

Planning your kit for race day
I suspect you’ll now be well into the stage where you’re planning what kit to bring on race day, so I wanted to give you a heads up and some insight into the courses.

For the Swim, the Water temperature is currently around 20-21 deg, and I’m very confident that on race day we’ll be well within the Wetsuit optional water temp range.
We’ll provide you with a swim hat too, so you won’t need to worry about bringing one of those along.
The sun does rise over the far side of the lake, which you swim towards from around 300-800m into the lap, so if you have lightly tinted goggles, these are a good option (Assuming it’s going to be sunny)

For the bike course, if you have the luxury of choosing between a TT style bike and a road bike, it’s a TT bike course all day long. The road surface is really good for 99% of the new loop, and there’s only a couple of sections near the lake that have any potholes. I do go out the week before the race and spray paint them, so they’re easy to spot and you can easily avoid all of them.

We have moto Support riders and a mechanic on the course for emergencies, but ultimately, it’s the competitors responsibility to be able to change a puncture, and although our guys will, of course, help you, they may take some time to get to you. Most of our competitors carry a spare tube and a pump or a canister for this very reason as punctures do happen unfortunately and as most of you will do your training on UK roads, I’m sure you’re all very used to getting punctures 🙁
We have an aid station on the bike lap, but it’s a reasonable way into the lap, so it’s worth having enough drinks and energy bars/gels/cake to get to that point if you’re planning on using the aid station.
It can be pretty cold first thing in the morning, and you’ll get lulled into a false sense of warmth when you get out the swim, and we often have to recover competitors, that 5-10miles into the ride, get very cold. For this reason, we’re really relaxed with the rule that says you must finish the bike course carrying or wearing what you start off with, and we have no issue with you putting on an extra layer and leaving it with a marshal or spectator out on the course.
It’s well worth packing more kit than you need, than needing more kit than you have – You can always leave it in transition unused.

The run course is around 50% Tarmac, 45% hard packed lake paths and 5% Grass. The non tarmac sections deal with any rain really well, and for 99% of weather conditions, it’s a road shoe course. If the weather is very wet at the lake in the days running up to race day, I’ll keep everyone posted by email
There’s a good amount of shade on the run course too, but some bits are quite open, so worth having a cap, visor or glasses / sunscreen if the weather is anything like our June 113 was.
Some of our competitors will make a full kit change in transition, and it’s totally fine to do this under a towel or swim robe.
The BTF rule says you can’t be naked in transition, and we ask that you try and be as discreet as you can. We’re pretty relaxed as it’s not always possible to completely cover yourself if you are getting changed
But, and I’ve seen both of these actually happen at our races, Naked Lunges down the racking, and big naked see saw motion undercarriage towel drying are not acceptable please as lots of competitors bring their families along to watch them race.

The swim start is about a 100m from the transition in the morning, and is on a stone surface walk. If you don’t fancy walking barefooted, you’re welcome to bring along some old flip flops, trainers, hotel slippers etc and leave them on the waterside where you get in, and you can either collect them after the race, or leave them there and we’ll dispose of them.

Swim Waves / Racking with your mates
The swim will start with an initial mass start at 06:25, followed by 6 waves of ten minute windows in which you can start in a rolling start format and get into the water in your own time on your own – You race time will start as you cross the mat getting into the water. We’ll start people from the chute and in to the water in the rolling start waves every 2-4 seconds :
06:25 Mass Start
06:30-06:40 Wave 1
06:40-06:50 Wave 2
06:50-07:00 Wave 3
07:00-07:10 Wave 4
07:10-07:20 Wave 5
07:20-07:30 Wave 6
All of the Mass start and rolling start waves are competitive and are timed, so you can win the race, or your age group from any start format.
The mass start is available by request by email to me
By default, the waves are set by youngest first and eldest last regardless of gender or entry type.
However, you can now choose a specific wave and or race number.

Please read the following before emailing me a choice if you have one.

You can choose any start wave and or format. You don’t need to if you don’t want to and you’ll be allocated a wave based on your age regardless of gender (youngest first, oldest last)
You can also choose a specific number from 10-500inc or a group of random numbers in numerical sequence to be racked with your mates (relays have a separate pen, so cannot choose a number I’m afraid as they work on a different number sequence, but can choose a wave/type)
Typically, when we’ve run this format over the last few years, the mass start has a much faster average swim time. Waves 1-6 tend to have a pretty similar average swim time and no wave is faster or slower

I’ll give you some examples of why you might want to choose a wave.

1) You want to be back in time for songs of praise or a Sunday roast, so will want an earlier wave
2) You might want to have a bit more time in transition / pre race toilet duties, so will want a later one
3) You might want to watch a few waves go off to settle your nerves, so might want a middle one
4) You might be at the less competitive end of the field, and not want to be the last person on the run course, so will want an earlier wave
5) You might be the next Michael Phelps and want clear water in front of you, so will want the mass start

We tend to get about 90% of our competitors choose a wave and/or number, and it’s a really time consuming job for me, so please can you read the following guidelines before getting your request in.
If you are asking for a wave and/or number, please give me your full name, email address and date of birth so I can work out who you are as we often get duplicates of seemingly unique names, not just your John Smiths and Jane Browns.
If you want a specific number, these are first come first served based on the email time stamp, so please give me a 1st choice, a 2nd choice and maybe a 3rd choice if you have one as the numbers get snapped up very quickly (number 69 always seems popular too, but I’ve no idea why 🙂

if you are part of one of our many tri club groups that entered through the group entry system (ie you paid the club and the club paid us in exchange for free entry codes), please can you coordinate the wave you would like with the lead person for the booking – By default, I will put all the group entries together in transition and in the same wave with their groups, unless you have already requested to be in a different wave or number individually.

If you are asking for a group of people to be together in transition and in the same wave, please follow these guidelines.
1) Please ensure everyone in the group actually wants to be in your group before requesting as we very often see a request for a group of names, and half of them have already, or later, then request to be in other groups.
2) Please give me the name, email address and date of birth for everyone you wish to be racked with – This one’s important as it’s often not easy to find someone by their nickname or they have the same name as someone else racing
3) Please ensure that the person you’re requesting to be with in your group is actually entered and is racing (this also happens quite a lot and I spend hours scratching my head trying to find an entry for someone that has not actually entered or later withdrew)
4) For groups of more than 4-5, it’s generally impossible to get you in a selected group of numbers requested (ie you want numbers 205-209), so groups will be allocated a random group of sequential numbers to be racked next to each other.
5) Please get your group requests right first time as we can’t then add another person into your sequence of numbers as the next number up will have been allocated to another group

Please mark any emails requesting waves and numbers with the email title ‘Waves and Numbers’
The window for requesting waves and/or numbers is from now until end of Play on Friday June 23rd  -After that, the start list will be fixed and we cannot accept any more requests
You don’t have to request a wave and/or race number and you’ll be allocated a wave and a random number, but if you do, please follow the above guidelines and rules for requesting
I will get around 5-600 request emails in the next 4 days, so please accept that I cannot respond to them all confirming your wave and/or number choice, and you’ll have to await the start list being published next week
This is a hugely time consuming job for me (think 3-4 days solid), and I like that we can offer it, so please make my life easier and get your requests correct first time rather than trying to chop and change, as this makes me lose more of the little hair I have left.

Right, that’s it for me for today’s newsletter

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

Cheers and happy training

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