The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold Classic Competitors tonight:
Cotswold Classic Newsletter – Edition 6
Hi All
This is going to be the last of my emails in the run up to the race, so I hope that you’ve all found them useful, and I’ve not put too many of you to sleep or bored you to the point of wanting to giving up the will to live.
I’ll keep this one brief as I know you’re all busy getting your kit ready for the weekend, so in this mail I’ll cover the following
Water Temperature Update
Race Morning Planning
Water Temperature Update
I know that many of you are getting a little nervous about the water temperature (as the 100 or so mails I’ve had in the last 48hours on the subject show), so I wanted to bring you up to speed on where we are, and how it’s going to work.
Tonight, I called the lake around 6pm and asked them to take a measure of the temperature for me. It’s currently 23.2deg.
Realistically, I think it’s now looking increasingly likely that we’ll be on a Wetsuit ban on Sunday morning, as the forecast for the next couple of days is for it to be pretty hot.
However, we will measure the Water Temperature on Saturday morning at 06:30 (24hours before the race) and we will make our decision on whether it’s going to be Wetsuit Optional or Wetsuits Banned at that point.
Realistically, if it’s close to the cut off and is a Wetsuit optional swim, I’d strongly recommend you consider whether you really need it or not anyway, as the water is very warm, and overheating in the swim in a wetsuit can set you up for a very bad day of not feeling well at all. If I was racing, and the water temperature was over around 21, I would 100% not be wearing a wetsuit, but that’s just me !
I appreciate the water temperature can change in 24 hours from the Saturday AM measurement, but unless we get a full Saturday of 30deg and Sunshine, or a full Saturday of heavy rain, it’s not going to be by much, so unless either of those two scenarios happen, that is the judgement we will stick with.
We will publish this decision at 12:00 Midday on Saturday once we’ve had a chance to sit down with the Water Safety Crew, the BTF ref and my team.
With this in mind, please can I ask that you all bring both options if you are setting off before Saturday morning and staying in the area for the weekend. The Wetsuit decision will be published at Registration on Saturday as well as on our facebook and twitter pages.
The rules on what you can and can’t wear in the case that it is a Wetsuit ban can be found in my previous newsletter (you can find that here: www.113events.com/news )
Race Day Morning
Firstly, and most importantly, please pleas please leave plenty of time to get parked. It’s a field with one entrance, so invariably, there’ll be a queue, so please leave yourself enough time. You can pay your Sunday parking fee on Saturday (Sunday parking fee is £5) , and this will give you a chance to save a little bit of time as you’ll already have your Sunday sticker when you arrive at the parking area, and not have to fumble around for the right change at 4:30am in the dark.
Once you get into the race site, you will see the transition area. I appreciate it’s an odd rule, but you must have your helmet on and done up before you go into transition to rack your bike, and your bike must also have the number sticker attached to it – it doesn’t matter where, as this number is just to the show the bike is yours when you go to pick it up at the end of the day, as we’ll only let you take out a bike if you have your race bib with a matching number to the bike sticker.
This helmet rule is to show the BTF referee, who’ll be there at check in, that your helmet does actually fit on your head and does up, as we’ve seen a fair few over the years that either don’t fit on the persons head at all, or the chin strap is actually down near your belly button, so won’t hold the helmet on if you are unlucky enough to have a crash.
Once you’re in transition, you will see that all the racking is numbered, so you can find your slot and sort your stuff out in it’s place.
The transition has two toilets in there, but these will not be open before the race starts as these are for urgent T1 or T2 toilet stops.
The pre race toilets are back past the Swim start, and around another 100m, and there is a block of 28 ports-loos to use before you start your race.
The reason these are quite far away, and not next to the Swim start, is that the Swim start is right next to the finish, and on a hot day, pre race toilets are somewhat fruity smelling by lunchtime, and you really don’t want them anywhere near where crowds will congregate. They’re also the run course toilets as you’ll be running right past them on each lap.
The walk from transition and back to the start is around 300m and is on hard packed gravel. You can walk it barefooted if you either have the soles of Zola Budd, or you don’t mind that funny ‘walking on hot coals’ triathlete style. If you want to bring some old trainers, flip flops, hotel slippers or even a pair of roller skates, you can dump them by the waters edge at the swim start, and they’ll be there after the race for you to grab, or if they’re old ones and you don’t want them back, we’ll chuck them all in a skip on Sunday night.
Each wave will have a quick briefing that will take place by the swim start ten minutes before you’re getting in the water to start your race. The briefing will take around 3mins, and you’ll then have 6-7minutes to get in the water and have a quick warm up before your wave will start in the shallow water next to the entrance. (ie wave 2 starts at 06:40, so your briefing will be 06:30)
This briefing is important, so I’d please like to ask for your full attention as I appreciate all you’ll want to do is get started racing and watch the last wave swim off into the distance.
Right, that’s it from me for the pre-race emails. We look forward to welcoming you all to our start line this weekend
Please get in touch if there’s anything you need from us in the meantime
Thanks
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events Team
Tel 07595 591612
Graeme@113events.com