The following email went out to all Cotswold113 2016 Competitors tonight
Cotswold113 2016 – Pre race newsletter
Good evening all, I hope everyone’s been out enjoying the sunshine this weekend and getting your last few weeks of heavy sessions in before you all kick in to your tapers in a couple of weeks ?
We’re just 5 weeks out from this year’s June 12th Cotswold113, so I wanted to drop you all an email and get out some info.
Please grab yourself a strong coffee as this email is going to be a long one, sorry
In this email, I’ll be covering;
- Race Information pack
- Familiarisation day
- Lake Temps
- Race Numbers and Wave Requests
- Marshal request
- Other races and slot availability
Race Information pack
On Wednesday 11th May, you will be able to download the PDF document containing everything you need in terms of information and race weekend instructions for this year’s race at https://www.113events.com/c113-2016-race-info-pack/
Sorry, I did try and get it uploaded tonight, but I’m out the country on holiday until Wednesday, and it seems that this part of southern Europe doesn’t do high speed internet like the UK, so I can’t get it uploaded until I get back home late Tuesday night L
In the pack is everything from where the campsite it, what time waves start right through to how registration works and age group splits for trophies.
I’ve tried to make it very comprehensive, but if you think there’s anything we’ve missed, just let me know and we’ll add it in.
Familiarisation day – 22nd May 16
If you’re not already booked in, our Familiarisation day is a free of charge chance to come and meet the team and ride/run the course before the event. It’s a great chance to come and meet the team, and ask any questions you may have as well as a great day for meeting other competitors
The pace is super easy, and no one will feel too slow or get left behind.
I love this day, as it’s a perfect time for us to meet with some of you guys and girls before the race weekend when you’ve all got your serious race faces on.
We need people to book onto it, so we can get a gauge for numbers, and also for us to be able to communicate with attendees directly before the day, so if you’d like to come along, please head to www.entrycentral.com/113events and book yourself in
It’s totally free for the Bike and run, and you can bring friends with you too
If you can’t make the day on the 22nd, but still want to see the course, we can still come up with something. I live within close to the lake, and tend to wind my day job down a bit this time of year to concentrate on the races, so have a handful of free days in the week to show people around, assuming they don’t mind my now somewhat snail paced bike and run speed.
Lake temps
Following a rather winter like spring, it’s been taking a while for the lake to get up to a reasonable temp. However, I’ve heard it’s reached 15.5deg today, and I fully expect it to be up to around 18-20 by race day. For those of you that haven’t been down for a swim yet, lake 32 where we hold the race, is largely quite shallow, so has a good surface to volume ratio for the sun to warm up. This means that the temp can climb very quickly (it was less than 11deg a week ago).
However, I’m 99.99% confident that we’ll be well within the BTF guidelines temperature range of 13-24deg, which is deemed as ‘Wetsuit Optional’ on race day
To date, we’ve only ever had a handful of swimmers take on the course without a Wetsuit, but the option will be there if you like.
The lake is also now open for public open water swimming any day before 10am, and a couple of weekday evenings, and the guys at the lake will charge you £5 per swim.
Race numbers and wave requests
The final start list is now fixed and finalised, which means we can now offer for competitors to select a race number which is special to them (between 3 & 800inc.), a specific wave to go off in and/or a random group of sequential numbers for them and their club mates to be racked together in transition (we rack numerically rather than by wave).
If you want to choose a specific race number, these are strictly first come first served and only available when requested by email to Graeme@113events.com
We typically get around 6-700 requests for numbers for the June 113, and you quick fingered guys and girls get the requests into me within about 2 mins of this email going out, so numbers go very quickly.
With this in mind, please give me a 2nd, 3rd and even 4th choice as your preferred number may have already gone, and with so many mails coming in, I can’t mail back everyone to let them know they have the number they want or not. Numbers 13 and 69 seem be the most popular, and also years of birth (ie 76 or 81), so please bear in mind that they go quickly and let me have some alternatives just in case
If you want a group of sequential numbers for your mates or club to be together, please can I ask that you check with your club/mates first as for us, it’s very awkward when a competitor asks to be racked with 6 of his mates, when 2 of them have already asked to be racked with other people, or have chosen a number that’s lucky to them, so this then can’t be done.
Once you’re grouped, we can’t always change it, so please double check with them first. There’s no immediate rush for groups as the sequential numbers are random sequential groups higher up the number range, so don’t have the urgency of someone wanting, for example, number 102 where you’d want to make the request within 24 hours.
Also, please let me have the registered email address of the people that you’re asking to rack with as you’d be surprised of how many people that have seemingly unique names, have duplicates of that name in the race and we’d hate to group you with the wrong Steven Edwards for example, and your Steven Edwards is the other side of transition and in a different group and you have a strange guy in the middle of you who doesn’t understand why he’s there
Setting numbers and waves is a massive job for us trying to process 6-700 requests in a few days, so please try and make our job easy by checking with your mates, and giving us the right information and we should be able to get it right first time for you and accommodate your request.
We will start the race off in 7 waves this year, which will be at 10minute intervals starting at 06:00. Like the race numbers, you can chose your own wave should you want an early or later start, or just to be with your club or mates together.
By default, if you’ve not selected a specific wave, how they’re organised is that the remained non-wave selected competitors are filtered by age, and the youngest competitors go off first, with the oldest ones last. This is not gender specific so males and females will all be grouped together.
This age based filtering is then put into the remaining unselected positions based on what’s left.
You might be wondering why you’d want to choose a wave, so to make your decision a bit easier as to whether you want to select or leave it up to the default positioning, I’ll offer up some example considerations;
- If you’re lucky enough to be a very fast swimmer/cyclist, and want clearer water/road in front of you, you might want to choose wave 1
- If you’re a very nervous swimmer, and don’t want following waves coming past you in the water, you might want wave 7
- If you’re expecting to be pushing the higher numbers in terms of finish time, and don’t want to be the last person on the course (not that’s there’s any shame in this, as the last people in always get some of the biggest cheers), then you could ask for one of the earlier waves
- You might have a family lunch booked in the afternoon or want to be home in time for Songs of Praise on the TV and don’t want to miss it, so would want an earlier start and earlier finish
There doesn’t tend to be a pattern whereby wave 1 competitors are faster than wave 7, so don’t feel that if you’re slower and in wave 2, you’ll be out of place as the spread of speeds does tend to be pretty similar across each wave. We’ve had the fastest times of the day set from waves 2 and 3 as many times as from wave 1. The same goes for the slowest time of the day, and this is seemingly pretty random as to which wave it comes from, so don’t feel that your selection could put you out of your depth pace wise. It really is very consistent across the waves other than half a dozen faster swimmers in wave 1
If you’re not sure, just give me a ring and I can talk you through how it works.
The deadline for requesting numbers or waves is EOP Friday the 13th May, as it this point we have to submit numbers to the printers, so after that point, we cant accept requests I’ afraid , sorry
Marshal request
We have around 140 paid positions on the course over race weekend, and as anyone that’s organised events themselves will know, getting marshals is one of the hardest parts of setting up and running events.
We need more marshals for the June 113, so if you have friends, family, club mates, enemies or just about anyone else you can press gang into helping on the day, we’d love to hear from you
Our marshals are fully briefed and we provide everything they need, so they don’t need any experience at all.
All we ask is that they’re enthusiastic and preferably know their left from their right.
We pay all our marshals too, and our 2016 package is;
- £20 cash or a £40 113 Events 2017 voucher
- An event team technical fabric tshirt
- Unlimited burgers, ice creams, hot drinks, cold drinks and food during the day
- The best seat in the house
Although we can’t, unfortunately, pay under 16’s, we have event shirts down to a 6 year old’s size, and if families wanted to get involved, the kids can still take advantage of the free ice creams and we’d of course make sure the role the group was doing was no where near a road
We have a variety of jobs from helping build on Saturday afternoon, to early start guiding on Sunday, right through to guiding runners in the finish chute and helping disassemble the course after the last finisher’s in.
If you have someone that’s interested, please get in touch at Graeme@113events.com
Our other events this year
113Events have two other events this year, which still have a few slots available ;
July 17th – Cotswold226 long Distance tri
226 Wknd eventsth/17thJuly 16
Cotswold Classic Middle Distance tristAugust 21
As a 113 Competitor, you can claim a discount on entry to the Cotswold226, or 226 weekend events.
The 226 itself is a ‘full distance’ triathlon, which although swims from the same lake as the 113, has a completely different bike course, and a largely different run course
The 226wkd events are a perfect warm up for a later season Ironman or other long distance race. It has a timed 1.9 and 3.km swim on the Saturday, and then a 90 & 180km Tri Rules Sportive with Brick on the Sunday, which takes place on the same course at the same time as the 226 Tri itself, so is governed by the same rules and uses the same aid stations and closed sections of road etc.
We feel this is a perfect warm up to a late season long distance race, and a great chance to try out kit, pacing or nutrition planning in a comparable environment to race day. Or just a fun day to swim and/or bike in a controlled and supported way.
Entries for the 226 events and the Classic are all available through www.113events.com
As we’re trying to push the 226 and 226wknd events this year, you can use your 113-competitor discount for your mates too, so get in touch for a discount code
That’s it for this rather long newsletter, so I hope everyone’s still awake
We’re here to help, so if you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.
I’m back in the UK late Tuesday night and will have patchy coverage to pick up emails before that, but you can call me before then if you need anything as I welcome the break to talk triathlon (Nicci had the great idea to go to Ibiza for our anniversary, and it’s blimmin raining and cold here and sunny in the UK for once!)
Anyway, that’s it for this mail, so happy training everyone and look forward to seeing some of you at the Familiarisation day on the 22nd, and the rest of you on race weekend
Cheers
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
07595 591612
Graeme@113events.com
Facebook.com/113events
@cotswold113