The following email went out to all Cotswold Classic 2019 Competitors today:
Cotswold Classic – 4th August 19
Good morning all, I hope this email finds you all well and getting ready for this year’s race season ?
We’ve had a snippet of the spring last week, but judging by what I can see out my window currently, we’re firmly back into Winter now 🙁
We’re only 5 months out from the race, so I wanted to drop you all a quick email to bring you up to speed on things that are happening this end, and to get some info on the race out to you all.
In this email, I’ll cover the following :
1) Course Familiarisation day
2) Marshal request
3) What to expect from us over the next few months
Course Familiarisation day
On Sunday July 7th, we’ll be holding our course familiarisation day down at the lake for everyone to come down and see the Swim, bike and run courses before race weekend and to meet the 113 Events team and other competitors before race day.
These days are a great chance to check out the courses via guided laps, and to ask any questions you might have about how the race weekend will work.
The emphasis on these days is leisurely, so the pace will suit pretty much everyone, and if you were thinking of using this as a speed session for your training, I’d really suggest you plan that another day.
We’ll start off with a guided lap of the Swim course with toes in the water at 8am. The only part of the day that carries a cost is the Swim, and if you do want to swim, you’ll be asked to pay the lake guys a £5 day membership on the gate at arrival.
Our lap is 1,900m, but the lake also has 400/750/1500m loops marked out, and you’re free to swim as much or as little as you like, and whether you choose to join the guided lap is entirely up to you.
Our Swim course won’t be marked out on the day, so will be lead by our local OW swim coach Jason Tait (http://southwestswim.co.uk) along with a couple of kayakers.
The lap will have a number of stops and regrouping points, and we’ll be going at a nice leisurely pace.
If you only wanted to swim half the course, there’s a point at around the halfway mark that runs about 100m from the swim entrance, so you’d be welcome to drop out at that point if you like.
Once the lap has finished, myself and Jason will be on hand to answer any questions on the Swim part.
At 10am, we’ll then regroup by the Cafe (it’s easy to spot as the complex is quite small) and head out for a single lap of the bike course (2 laps on race day, so 28miles per lap).
During the bike lap, we’ll have numerous stops along the way to regroup and to point out things like where the aid stations are etc. We’ll aim to average around 15mph on the bike
The bike typically takes about 2.5hours, so following that, we’ll have a 15-20minute break for everyone to put their bikes back in their cars and change into their run kit before heading out for a single 4.33m lap of the run course (it’s 3 laps on race day)
Like the bike course, we’ll have a load of regrouping and info stops along the way, and we’ll aim to keep around a 10min mile average pace.
Throughout the day, myself and the 113 team will be on hand to answer any questions you might have.
These days are a great chance for us to meet all of you guys, the competitors, in a relaxed environment too. As on race weekend, we barely get a grunt out of you all as you all have your race faces on 🙂
If you have club mates or friends that are coming down to support you on race day, they’re welcome to join in on the familiarisation day, and not just for competitors only.
We ask that everyone attending please books on using the following link – www.entrycentral.com/113events and hit the tab marked “Fam Day Classic”
It all sounds very formal having to book on, but in reality, we only use this as way of gauging numbers and to have a method to communicate with all the attendees before the day
If you can’t get down on the 7th July, but still want to see the course, we can still come up with something:
I live fairly local to the lake, and work from home a few days a week on my day job during the summer season from about May onwards. I love a chance to skive away from my desk/laptop for a few hours in the morning, so if you can get down on a weekday morning, I’ll happily take you for a lap of the bike and run courses. My pace is very slow now days though, so please don’t come expecting to blast round quickly 🙂
I’m afraid I can’t do weekends as I’m generally tied up on family things at weekends
Marshal request
We have around 180-200 Paid positions on our team over race weekend, and although we get around 50% of those roles as regulars, we rely on the friends, family, club mates, enemies, stalkers, and anyone else associated with the competitors to make up the rest. If you have anyone coming along with you on race day, or any club mates that you can pressgang into being part of our team, we’d welcome them along and look after them for the day.
All our marshals get paid too, and they can choose from either £20 cold hard cash, or a £40 113 Events Vocuher, and all our marshals get an event team technical shirt along with free hot food and ice creams during the day.
We’re very proud that our races have built up a reputation as having some of the best marshals in the sport, and I’m very aware that happy marshals are good marshals, so we really look after our guys, and we’ll make sure that we make it fun for them too.
They don’t need any experience at all, and we’ll pair them up where we can and our course managers will take them through a full team briefing before kitting them up with everything they need getting them started.
Marshals, obviously, get free parking, and if they wanted to camp over saturday night, we can find them a spot at the lake too.
We can’t, due to insurance reasons, employ under 16’s, but if a marshal has kids with them, we can kit them out in an event shirt, and they can still take advantage of the free burgers and ice creams
Also, if you, as a competitor in August, wanted to really see what the race is all about, we need marshals for our June 9th Cotswold 113 race, which is identical to the August Classic in every way but name and date, so we’d welcome you along to our team them and get you involved.
Please email graeme@113events.com
What to expect from us in the run up to race day
The next thing you’ll get from us is the race info pack in around 4 weeks time. This race info pack is a downloadable PDF document that contains absolutely everything you need to know about race day from both a competitor and spectators point of view. You’ll hear me going on about this in all our emails, but it’s really important that you read and digest the info it contains. I find printing it off and putting it next to the toilet is the best place, as if your house is like mine and Nicci’s, it’s the only place in the house you actually get any peace and quiet
If you’ve signed up to the race in the last few weeks, and missed our Jan Newsletter, this also had some info about the race weekend, and you can find that here : https://www.113events.com/january-19-competitor-newsletter/
About 4-5 weeks out from the race day itself (so around the time of the familiarisation day), once the start list is fixed and frozen, I’ll send an email out to all competitors asking if they want to choose a specific wave and/or race number. Or you might want a group of race numbers together so that you and your mates are racked next to each other in transition.
We issue these out on a strictly first come first served basis following that email early July, so please don’t ask for waves and numbers yet as without a frozen start list in excel, we have no way of recording this, so it’ll get forgotten or ignored.
Sorry to be strict on this, but in the interest of fairness to all, we won’t accept any requests until that email comes out to you all
Right, that’s it from me. I hope my rambling on hasn’t put any of you to sleep, and you’re all still reading this ?
Myself and the 113 team are here to help, so if you have any questions at all in the run up to the race or there’s anything we can help with, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. It’s what we’re here for
Thanks and happy training
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
graeme@113events.com
07595 591612
www.113events.com