The following email went out to all Cotswold Classic 2019 Competitors tonight :
Cotswold Classic – August 4th 2019
Good afternoon all
I hope everyone’s well, out training lots and starting to think about race weekend in a little over a month ?
Over the next few weeks, I’ll send out more and more info on the race in digestible chunks, but in the meantime I wanted to get some early bits out about the day to get you started on your final preparation and planning.
The race start list is now fixed and frozen, so we’re getting closer to setting you all off in the water, and we hope you’re all as excited about racing as we are to welcome you all to our start line.
This could end up being a pretty long email, so please grab a coffee and perhaps some matchsticks for your eyes before reading as there’s some important info in here.
In this email I’ll cover the following :
Weekend info and planning your trip Marshal Request
Waves and numbers Kit Choices
Weekend Info and planning your trip
Hopefully by now you’ve all taken the time to download and read the race info pack ?
If not, then shame on you, and you can find it here : https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/CC2019-–-Race-Information-Sheet.docx
The weekend will start with registration taking place on the afternoon of Saturday the 3rd between 12:00 and 17:00
We will run 2 briefings on the Saturday also, which are identical and will be at 13:30 and 16:00.
These will each take around 45mins, and we’ll go through the race in full detail from start to finish, and there’ll be loads of chances to ask any questions you might get.
They’re not compulsory, but they’re worth attending.
We’ll even try and make them a bit entertaining as I’m very conscious that I’m pretty boring when I talk, so we’ll try and throw some rubbish dad jokes in and some examples we’ve seen at our races of what not to do.
All our racking is done on the Sunday morning, so you won’t need to bring your bike on Saturday unless you really want to.
If you genuinely can’t make registration on Saturday, in a later mail, we’ll give out some instruction on how you can get someone else to register for you, or how we can arrange another time to collect your pack (We cannot post them unfortunately as the magnets used in the postal system play havoc with the timing chips) as we’ll have them ready at our house by around Wednesday night of race week.
On Sunday morning, our transition opens at 4am and will shut again at 6am.
Later on in this mail, I’ll go through the wave sequences
If you’ve still not booked accommodation, there is a campsite literally next door to the lake, and you can find info on that place at http://www.go-by-cycle.co.uk/camping.htm
Alternatively, if you want a hotel, the nearest and by far the best hotel in the area is called the Devere Cotswolds Hotel, and is on the spine road around 3 miles from the race start. I can’t seem to add a link for the Devere, but a quick google search will find them, and they serve and early breakfast on race day and you can keep your bikes in your rooms as long as they’re clean. Many of our regular competitors stay there and report on how good it is.
Alternatively, if you google hotels around the race location, which is GL76DF, you’ll find a load of alternatives within a 10-15minute drive.
Marshal requests
We still have around 23 unfilled Marshal positions of the 200 we require for the race that we’d love to have names against. If you have anyone coming along with you, or can bring someone along with you that wants to be part of the team, please get in touch
We’ll make sure they have a good day too, as happy marshals are good marshals, and they’ll get the best seat in the house to cheer you on
Our marshals get paid, and they can choose from either £20 cash or a £40 113 Events voucher to use with us on any of our other future events, and we can find them somewhere to put up a tent on the site on the Saturday night too if they want to stay over.
All we ask is that they’re over 16, enthusiastic and know their left from their right.
Please email graeme@113events.com
Waves and Numbers
Our race will start in 6 waves going off at 10 Minute intervals starting at 06:00 :
06:00 Wave 1
06:10 Wave 2
06:20 Wave 3
06:30 Wave 4
06:40 Wave 5
06:50 Wave 6
By default, the start list is filtered by youngest first and oldest last regardless of gender, and the waves are filled roughly in that order.
In the past, the average swim time in each wave is roughly the same, with only a minority of the really fast swimmers opting for wave 1, and in many cases, some of the slower swimmers also opting for wave 1 to get more time in the water with other people around them, so they all generally average out. The race is rarely won from wave 1 too, and we have had the fastest time of the day set from wave 6 in the past.
We have an ‘Official’ overall cut off of 7.5hours from the start of the last wave (8hours 20mins from the start of the first), and no cut offs for either the Swim or the Bike. We’re pretty flexible with the overall cut off, and our take on it is that as long as you’ve not stopped for a 2hr roast dinner at one of the pubs out on the bike course, within reason, we’ll keep the finish line open for as long as it takes as long as long as you’re still making some form of progress,
If you so wish, you can now choose a specific wave and/or race number. Or you might want to get your club mates together in transition with a group of numbers. The window to this is now open, and will shut at Midnight on Sunday the 7th July. I’ll explain how to get a request in later, so please read the following first.
Here’s some examples of why you might want to choose a specific wave :
1) You might think you’re the next Michael Phelps, so want wave 1 to have completely clear water in front of you when you start
2) You might want to see a couple of waves go off before you start so you can get an idea of how it all works, so could want wave 3-4
3) You might want no one getting in the water behind you and swimming past you, so would ask for wave 6
4) You might not want to be the last person on the run course as you feel like you’re one of the slower overall competitors, so would want an earlier wave, say 1-2*
5) You might have forgotten it was your wedding anniversary on race day, so want to be finished early to avoid divorce, so would want wave 1, a tailwind on the bike and a downhill run.
6) You might not fancy having breakfast at 4am, so would want a later wave
7) You might not want to have to be out of transition by 6 and stood around for too long, so would want an earlier wave
* For more nervous Swimmers, we always recommend to people that they get in the water and line up, but when the wave starts, they give the others 15-20seconds to clear off, and then start off at their own pace without having a large group of other swimmers around them. We get 3-4 people always do that in each wave, and in the scheme of what could be an 8 hour race day, what’s 20-30seconds for the sake of a clear swim start ?
We also often get swimmers that swim the whole 1.2miles doing breaststroke with their heads out the water, and we have no issue with that. It’ll mean you’ll have to talk with the canoeists, who are pretty boring to be honest, but we don’t have a swim cut off at all – We’ll allow you as long as it takes as long as the water safety crew don’t think you’re a danger to yourself or others around you.
You can also choose a lucky number if you so wish, or if you have a club or a bunch of mates racing, we can get you in a random set of sequential numbers as our transition works sequentially numerically, so you’ll all be together in the racking.
Typically, for each race, we get about 7-800 requests for waves and/or numbers, and as you can imagine, this is hugely time consuming for me to do (I literally block out 4 days/40hrs to do these). I like that we can offer this out to you, but please please please make my life easier by following the guidelines as below :
1) Please email me from your registered email address and include your full name and date of birth
2) Please request not only a specific lucky number, but also a 2nd and 3rd choice if you have them as the numbers can go very quickly (69 and 13 both seem to be very popular, as do your typical years of birth – Ie 68, 82 etc)
3) If you are asking for a group together in transition, please make sure you do the following:
Please list out full names, emails and dates of birth – You’d be surprised how many duplicates of seemingly unique names we have, and that I have no idea who ‘Big Ring Steve’ is or ‘Chalky Brown’, so please use registered names rather than what you might know them as
Please clear it with all members of your group first, as we often get requests to be racked with Joe Bloggs, and this person has already requested to rack with another group already or has asked for a lucky number.
Please don’t CC in everyone when you put your request in as invariably someone clicks reply to all, I get roped into all your personal messages, and I have no interest in reading 50 emails about how Swim lane etiquette in your tri club is deteriorating, or how your garage extension is coming along
Please check your friend that you want to rack with is actually racing
4) Please title your email ‘Waves and Numbers’ and send it to Graeme@113events.com
5) You can only request numbers 10-900inc
Relays have a separate numbering system, so cannot request numbers, but can request waves
Please get your group right first time, as it’s a real pain to try and squeeze more people into a group that are racked together from a request already as often the numbers at both ends of the group are not available, and in many cases I won’t be able to do it if you try and add more at a later date – You have 5 days in this window to get it right, so please don’t rush in and try and make changes later
All number requests are strictly first come first served.
To make things easier, and to give you all a chance to see who else is racing, I’ve uploaded an early start list for the race, which you can find here : https://www.113events.com/cotswold-classic/cotswold-classic-start-list/
Please can you also take 5 mins to check your own name and to ensure that the spelling of your name or the club name are correct, as beyond Monday, the numbers will be printed with your names and we then can’t change that.
The deadline for getting these request in is Midnight on Sunday the 7th July
At some point next week, I’ll publish a new start list with all the waves and numbers listed. I won’t be able to respond to all your emails individually as there’ll be several hundred, so please await that start list to confirm (We can normally accommodate all wave requests and groups)
Kit Choices
For those of you that have the luxury of choosing between a road bike or a TT Bike, it’s a TT bike course all day long. Apart from one small hill, it’s pancake flat for the whole 56miles, so prime conditions for Aero Wheels, Helmet and bike. Largely, the course is quite sheltered from cross winds with only a few gates exposing the roads to any side wind, but there are a couple, so if you’re a lighter racer and it looks like it might be a windy day, I’d think twice about using a disc wheel.
The run course is around 60% tarmac, and the rest is on hard packed lake side pathing with only about couple of hundred meters on grass. As long as we don’t get a fortnight of heavy rain, it’s a road shoe type of course. We will, of course, keep you updated on conditions nearer the time, but I’d be aiming for a road shoe if I was still racing.
The swim is Wet and flat (hopefully), and the current temperature of the lake is around 20deg. I’m pretty confident it won’t change much between now and August 4th unless we have 4 solid weeks of 30deg sunshine, so I fully expect race day to be within the ‘Wetsuit Optional’ range. I swam in the lake last week both with and without a wetsuit, and it’s about the right temperature for both in my opinion (although I am getting increasingly fatter, so better insulated)
We often get questions about what you can and can’t have in transition at our races, and we follow the BTF rules for this, so you won’t be allowed plastic boxes in your spot at the racking. Our racking is pretty tight, so we recommend that you bring a soft bag or a plastic bag to put your stuff in/on. The transition area is on grass, and if there’s been any rain, it does hold some amount of water, so a bin bag or a large plastic bag to put your stuff in/on is perfect.
We don’t have changing tents, so if you like to make a full change between swim/bike/run, then I’d suggest you bring a reasonable sized towel with you to get changed under. The official rules say no nudity, but we apply that rule with an amount of common sense – I.e. if you’re towel is hard to hold and something slips out, that’s fine. If you’re doing naked lunges up and down the racking, that’s not so fine.
Right, that’s it from me for now
I’ll get a couple of emails out between now and race day with info as it becomes available or more important nearer the time. We’re here to help, so please get in touch if there’s anything we can help with or you need from us
Thanks and happy training