The following post race mail went out to all of today’s Cotswold113 Competitors ;
Cotswold113 2016 Post race mail
Hi all
I hope everyone’s starting to dry out a bit, and had safe journeys home (Or if you’re staying locally tonight, you’re in the pub with your feet up)
It was an incredibly tough day today with the rather wet weather conditions, and you all did superbly given how cold and wet some of you were getting, yet all I saw was big smiles (or maybe grimaces) and people pushing through the rain to the finish.
I won’t ramble on too much tonight as it’s been a long day for everyone and I’m sure my normal lengthy emails would put most of you to sleep, if you’ve even managed to get this far 🙂
So, in this email I’ll cover the following ;
How fast you went and what you looked like doing it
Feedback request
Next races
Lost property & extra stuff
Race results and Photo’s
I appreciate this is the bit you all really want, so I’ll go through it first
You can find the full results here;
http://dbmaxresults.co.uk/results.aspx?CId=16421&RId=2134
And, you can find the photo’s here (they’ll be uploaded by around tomorrow night)
http://www.charleswhittonphotography.com/group24233.html
We cover the cost of the first downloads, so once the photo’s are all uploaded, the photography company will upload a bunch of free photo’s that you can choose from that are suitable for Facebook profile pics etc. If you need any more super high res photo’s from them, or want something printed on a mug to show off at the office, then get in touch with Charles directly through the site and I’m sure he can sort it out
Feedback request
We pride ourselves in trying to make this the very best race it possibly can, and we can only do this by getting feedback from you guys that have experienced the race from the competitors point of view.
We’re meeting up as a team later this week for a debrief, and we’d love to have your feedback on what you thought worked and what didn’t so we can get our heads together and see what we can do to improve or continue those very things that stood out for you today.
I want you to nit pick and let me know exactly what you thought about everything. Whether that be the entry or registration process, our ways of communicating with you, Policing levels on the course, Goody bags, the size of the fish in the lake or even the size of bananas on the feed stations. No matter how small or insignificant it seems, please let us know as we can’t improve the event if we don’t know
Also, If you’ve raced with us before, what did you think to the new bike section ?
Do you like high5 products ? We’re still at the small end of the event scale, so unlike many others, we still have to pay for all our nutrition. This means we can buy whichever one people like most. I found High5 works well, but do people like other brands ?
We’ve just had a quick post race beer in the pub, and we’ve identified a few things that we didn’t think worked today, and we’ve already started discussing how we can sort it for our August
It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but the first few things were ;
Car parking ; The entry system was too slow and the guys at the other lake who control the parking now know this, so can correct it in the future
Transition racking was too tight ; We had 50 people more than August last year, and that extra row made it too tight, so we’ll limit back to 1000
Recovery on the bike course – We had an unprecedented amount of mechanicals that couldn’t be sorted road side, and our recovery team was stretched to breaking point, so we’ll grow that from now on (we recovered over 40 bikes today, whereas last August, when we had arguably more rain and a comparable number of competitors, we recovered 5 or 6)
Finish line announcer – Our guy let us down last minute, and no one from the team fancied stepping in
Our team meetings are an open invite too, so if you fancied a snack to eat and a beer one night in Swindon this week and your ears can handle Daves voice again, you’re welcome to come along and put your points in. We’ll probably meet Wednesday or Thursday night
Next races
We still have more races this year if you fancied seeing the courses on hopefully a dryer day.
Our other events are open for entries still, and they are ;
July 17th – Cotswold226 Long Distance tri (open until 17th June and totally different bike course to the 113)
July 16th/17th – 226Wknd, which is a Saturday 1.9/3.8km swim and a Sunday 90/180km ‘Tri Rules’ Sportive to run alongside the 226 tri itself (entries close June 24th)
August 21st – Cotswold Classic Middle Distance Tri (Same course and identical to today’s race in everything but name and shirt colour – and hopefully weather) Entries close July 21st or when full
Details on all the other races are available at www.113events.com
Lost property and extra stuff
We have a massive pile of rather smelly shoes that were left by the race start. I appreciate most of these are to be thrown away, but if you check our Facebook or twitter pages tomorrow, I’ll get a peg on my nose and line them all up for a photo – If you recognise your shoes/flipflops/slippers and want them back. We’ll hang onto to them until around Friday, as by then they’ll be properly minging, possibly contaminate the atmosphere and start attracting rats, and will need to go into the bin.
We also have a bag full of stuff that was left in either transition or race start or was handed in from somewhere on the course, so if you go to empty your kit bag tomorrow when you’re more awake and find something missing, drop me a mail and we’ll see if we have it.
We have a load of the white race shirts left over from the event, so if you want another for your long suffering partner, kids or just friends, and you’re passing Swindon, you’re welcome to come and grab one. We have more larger sizes than smaller ones though
Anyway, that’s it from me.
I know I’m already seeing a fair few of you racing with us at either the 226 or Classic, so thanks again for choosing to race with us today, sorry about the weather and look forward to seeing you back with us another time
Cheers and happy recovery (and drying out)
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
07595 591612
graeme@113events.com
@cotswold113
facebook.com/113events