The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold113 2019 Competitors today
Cotswold113 – 9th june 2019
Good afternoon all, I hope everyone’s out enjoying what appears to be the start of the summer ?
We’re less than 2 months away from the Cotswold113 now, so I wanted to drop you all out a mail with a few things in the run up to the event.
This mail’s gonna be a long one, so grab a seat and a coffee as you’ll need to stay awake for it all as there’s some good and important info below
In this mail, I’ll cover the following :
1) Race information pack
2) Not feeling quite ready
3) Marshal requests
4) Familiarisation day
5) Race weekend Wave times and numbers
6)Kit choices
1) Race Information pack
You can download the race information pack here: https://www.113events.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/1132019-–-Race-Information-Sheet.docx
I’ve tried to include absolutely everything you could ever need to know in this, but if you think there’s something else you need to know. This is your info pack, so please let me know if there’s anything else that you think should be in there
Please please please take the time to read thisas it contains some quite important information on where to be and when.
I’ve tried to make it as ‘work looking’ as possible, so you can probably get away with reading it at your desk and not get told off by your boss, or you could print it off and put it by the toilet so you can read it in peace and quiet at home, but please do take the time to read and digest it.
I appreciate that many of you are experienced triathletes, and you know pretty much everything about racing, but we do things slightly differently to many other races, so it’s important that you know what’s going on over race weekend
The more eagle eyed amongst you will see that we’ve moved the start of the first wave from the suggested provisional start time of 05:30 to 06:00 as many of you didn’t appear too keen to be up so early, and to be honest, our team weren’t overkeen either.
We’ll also have a couple of full Saturday briefings during the registration day on June the 8th in the afternoon, and I’ll send out info on these in a few weeks. They’re not compulsory, but they’re a good chance to hear me and Noisy Dave talk through the race bit by bit and answer any queries you might have on race weekend. Normally, they tend to be at around 13:00 and 16:00
2) Not feeling quite ready ?
We’ve now reached the point where the start list for the June race is pretty fixed, and we’ve insured you all etc.
However, what this means is that until we start to committing to various other things against your names to a specific race, we can still transfer you to the August 4th Cotswold Classic Middle distance tri, which is effectively a rerun of the June 113 under a different name.
If you’re now starting to worry that you’re 7 weeks out from the race and you’re not feeling quite up to the distance yet, we can still just about transfer you over for free as we have around 200 slots for that race remaining.
I’ll need to know by Thursday the 25th April, as after that point we have to commit to numbers on the June race, and beyond that point, although it’ll still be possible potentially, it’ll incur some costs to yourself.
I’m afraid we’re unable to offer year on year deferrals, and we’re beyond the point where we can change names against a June slot, sorry
We don’t ask or care why you want to swap to August, and it may be for a million reasons that are none of our business, but if you ask in the next week I can still sort it very easily, but if you ask me in a few weeks when it’s too late, you may incur some cost for doing so (Assuming there’s still spaces in the August race) as beyond next Thursday we have to start to putting things in place that aren’t then interchangable between the two races and these incur cost as you might appreciate.
So, if you are unsure, please ask now before it’s too late as every year I get loads of requests about a week or a few days out from the June race, and it’s just not possible at that point.
3) Marshal requests
We still have around 20 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 too
All our marshals get paid too, 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/you somewhere to put up a tent on the site on the saturday night
Please email graeme@113events.com
4) Familiarisation day
As per my previous competitor newsletter (https://www.113events.com/cotswold113-march-19-newsletter/) , our annual free of charge course familiarisation day is going to be held on June 2nd, so 1 week before the race.
It’s a great chance to come and meet the team and see the courses, so if you haven’t already, please book on at www.entrycentral.com/113events under 113 Fam Day
5) Race weekend Wave times and numbers
As mentioned above, we’ve opted to set the start time to 06:00 from the previously suggested 05:30 and will go off in 6 waves at ten minute intervals.
Wave 1 06:00
Wave 2 06:10
Wave 3 06:20
Wave 4 06:30
Wave 5 06:40
Wave 6 06:50
The waves tend to be mixed abilities and the race has been won by most waves now, but by default we tend to set off the youngest competitors first and the oldest ones last (regardless of gender or entry type)
However, you might want to choose a specific wave and or race number, so now is your window to do so. Before you get your request in, please read below:
You might have a lucky number, so you can also choose a specific race number, or you might want a group of sequential numbers so that you and your club mates are all racked together in transition next to each other (our transition is numbered and runs sequentially)
Of course, you don’t have to choose a specific wave and/or race number, but the option is there if you do
There’s a million variables in why you might want a specific wave, so I thought the easiest way was to list a few examples to give you food for thought:
Wave Choices
1) You might feel you’re going to be at the slower end of the competitor field, and not want to be the last person on the run course, so you would want an earlier wave
2) You might not want to have your breakfast at 4am for a 6am Swim start, so you could want a later wave and eat your porridge 50mins later
3) You might have forgotten it’s your mums birthday and need to be back early to take her for lunch, so you’d want wave 1
4) You might not want to have lots of following waves swimming past you on the course, so you would want a later wave
5) You might feel you’re the next Michael Phelps and want nothing but clear water in front of you, so would want wave 1
6) You might want to see a wave or two go off before you do so you can see how it works, so you’d want wave 2 or 3
If you have a group of mates that all want to go off in the same wave and in sequential numbers, we can sort that too
Typically, I’ll get around 800 of the 1100 competitors ask for a wave and/or number, and as you can imagine, this is massively time consuming for me to do (I block out 4 days/40 hours or so to do this). I like that we can offer this for free, as I think it’s great to be able to choose a wave and rack with your mates at our races, but in order to make my life easier, please follow the few simple guidelines to getting your request in:
1) Please give me your name, email and DOB as people often email back from a different account to the email they have registered and we have duplicates of many names.
2) If you’re asking for a group of people, please ask them first and clear it with all of them as about 30-40% of our group requests in the past have included someone that is already racked with another group, or may be in your club, but potentially can’t stand the rest of you and wants to be as far away as possible – You may laugh, but this seems to happen a lot
3) When you email in a request for a group, please list each person’s DOB and email and their real name, as I won’t know who ‘Chopper’ Jones, ‘Speedy’ Liz or ‘Baldy’ John is. Also, lots of seemingly unique names have duplicates in the race, so don’t assume as your mate is called Quentin Parker-Williams, that we might not have another one, and you end up racked next to the wrong Quentin.
4) Please get the groups right first time, and make sure everyone in the group is happy as it’s a real pain to try and squeeze more people into a group of sequential numbers later and not always possible – You have a week, so please get it right first time
5) Please don’t CC your whole group into the email to me as invariably, someone starts replying to everyone and it escalates into an unrelated group chat. As much as I love to read about how everyone’s extension is coming along, or people moaning that someone always swims in the wrong lane at Tri Club swim sessions, it’s none of my business and I takes me ages to pick though to see if anything is pertinent to the race – Just get one lead person to email me an excel spreadsheet of the people in the group you want
6) Numbers and waves are first come first served, so if you have a specific race number you want (number 69 always gets snapped up early for some reason, as do all numbers that generally relate to a year of birth (ie 81 or 70 etc), so please put in a few other numbers as 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th choices as if it’s gone, it’s too late and there might be another 100 emails come in before I can tell you it’s not available
7) If you’re not fussed about the actual numbers but want to be in a group, I’ll allocate out a random group of numerically sequential numbers from what’s left for your names to be together (ie 845-861)
8) The numbers available are 10-900inc only, so please don’t ask for a telephone number or for number 1-9 as we reserve them out already for previous winners or our own team.
9) Please title your request email ‘Waves and numbers’ to graeme@113events.com
10) To save sending 7-800 emails next week, I won’t be able to respond to everyone’s request to confirm it’s done, so please keep your eyes pealed for the start list which will be published around the 1st week of May
The window for requesting this (should you want to) is now open, but will close on Thursday the 25th April,as at that point, we need to order numbers with names on them, and we can’t then change anything from this point. You have a week to get your request in, so please please please, speak with your group and get everyone’s permission before putting your request in, and agree between you which wave you might want rather than asking to chop and change all the time.
Please email your request to graeme@113events.com and make sure you include the registered name, DOB and email of yourself and any others you want to be racked with.
Also, if you head to www.entrycentral.com/cotswold113 (and head to the people button near the bottom marked “list’ you can see the registered names signed up to the race. Please can I also ask that you check your christian name is spelt correctly as this will be what is printed on your race number. We had a lady by the name of Virginia race with us previously, and the spellcheck on her phone had changed her name to a certain ‘lady part’ when she registered for the event, and luckily it was picked up before printing and she opened her registration pack with it printed on the race number 🙂
6) Kit choices
It’s about the time in the run up to the race where you will all be thinking about what kit to use on race day, so I thought I’d give you all some info on the course and the conditions you’re likely to expect.
Firstly, for those of you that have the nice dilemma of using a TT or road bike, the course is very flat and is an Aero bike course all day long. There’s one hill on the course, and it’s certainly no Col’ du Tormalet. To give you an idea of the one hill you’ll get per lap: it’s about 150m long at most and some of the faster guys will go up it on the big chain ring. It’s looks like a Mountain climbers stage on the TDF on our bike course map elevation profile, but this is only because the rest of the course is so flat, and it’s really nothing to worry about.
The run course is around 60% Tarmac, about 3% grass and about 37% Hard Packed lakeside pathing. If it’s dry, or even if it’s mildly raining, it’s a road shoe course. The lakeside paths are very hard packed, and much of it is under the tree canopy, so unless we get a lot of rain in the week running up to the race, it’s easily a good enough surface for road shoes rather than offroad or trail shoes. I will, of course, keep everyone updated on the conditions under foot in the run up to race day.
The swim is Wet and flat as you might expect, and I’m fully expecting the water temperature to be within the ‘Wetsuit Optional’ range defined within the BTF rules. The water is currently at a very chilly 11deg, but I expect by race day, it’ll be something like 17-20deg
Right, that’s it from me for this newsletter. There’ll be more newsletters over the month leading up to the race with more info, but in the meantime, if you get any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask as it’s what I’m here for
Thanks and happy training
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
07595 591612
graeme@113events.com
www.113events.com