The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold113 and Cotswold Classic 2019 Competitors today
2019 is go…..
Firstly, Happy new year to you all.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New year and still fits in their training kit without too much forced breathing in or leverage ?
Differently to previous years, this first newsletter of the year is going out to all Competitors of either the June Cotswold 113 and/or August Cotswold Classic. The next newsletters coming out will be event specific, but as the races are pretty much identical, at this stage, the first email is to everyone, so welcome along and thanks for choosing to race with us in 2019.
As many of you will know, I can waffle on a bit in my emails, so if you’re back at work today after a bit of time off over the festive period, and you’re already starting to yawn into your desk or place of work, I’d suggest either pouring a large coffee first, or saving this email for when you’re a little more awake.
In this email, I’ll cover the following :
– What to expect in 2019
– Have you thought about accommodation yet ?
– Familiarisation days
– Planning your nutrition
What to expect in 2019
Over the next few months, you’ll be getting a fair few emails from me with information about the races. I tend to trickle this out to you as and when needed, as I’m quite aware that most of you don’t read it anyway, and then panic on the day before the race that you missed something you needed to know.
About 3 months out from the race, I’ll email out full information packs to the events which covers everything you need to know in detail, but in the meantime, here’s a rough schedule of race weekend for you to get an idea of what’s going on:
Saturday afternoon 12-17:00 – Registration and briefing’s
Don’t worry if you can’t get there Saturday, we can always come up with ways of getting friends to register for you, or there’ll be a chance to come by our house in the week before and register early if you’re passing Swindon in the run up to the race. We can’t, unfortunately, post registration packs, as the postal service uses Magnets that play havoc with the timing chips.
The briefing’s are not mandatory (you’ll get that one before you get in the water Sunday morning), but these are an informal chance to hear about the race in detail bit by bit and ask any questions you might suddenly have on race weekend
Sunday morning – Racking, compulsory briefing and race start
We do all our racking on Sunday mornings at our races, so no need to bring all your kit to the lake on Saturday for registration.
Both races will go off in 6 waves* at ten minute intervals, and the June 113 will start at 05:30 and the August Cotswold Classic will start at 06:00.
Each wave will get a 3 minute briefing before you get in the water, and you’ll then get around 5minutes to warm up in the water before being lined up for your start. The race starts in Shallow water, and is suitable to stand up in if you need.
*About 4-6 weeks before each race, once the start list is fixed and frozen, you will get an email from me asking you if you’d like to choose a specific wave and/or race number, so you will get a chance to choose an earlier or a later wave, or a specific race number or group of numbers so you’re racked with your mates. We cannot accept requests until the start list is fixed, as this is the fairest way to do it for all entrants. This email will come out nearer the race, and numbers and waves are first come first served from this point only, so please keep your eye out for the request before asking as we can’t allocated them out yet I’m afraid.
Have you thought about accommodation yet ?
As our race is slap bang in the middle of the Cotswold Water Park, the area gets pretty busy with Holiday makers in the summer, and accommodation books up quite quickly, so with that in mind, here’s a couple of suggestions on where to stay nearby.
If, like many of our competitors, you like to camp over race weekend, there’s a campsite literally 200mtrs from our start/finish area.
They open for bookings on Feb 1st, and you can contact them through: http://www.cotswoldlakescamping.co.uk
If you prefer the luxury of a hotel bed and a bath the night before, the closest hotel to the race is the Devere Cotswolds Waterpark Hotel, which is around 3miles from the start, and actually on the bike course. You can book there through: https://www.devere.co.uk/cotswold-water-park-hotel/
If you’d like to make a weekend of it with family, or just book somewhere a little nicer, we’ve had a chat with the Guys at Orion Holidays, who run the booking for most of the Holiday homes and cottages in the area. They’ve agree to a 10% discount for our competitors and will also donate a further 5% of your booking fee to Help For Heroes, who are one of our Charities for the race, and a big part of the event.
You can book with them at http://www.orionholidays.com
The Discount codes to use for our two races are as follows :
Orion113Jun – Valid for bookings between 7/6/19 and 14/6/19
Orion113Aug – Valid for bookings between 2/8/19 and 9/8/19
Alternatively, there’s plenty of other hotels and B&B’s a bit further away from the race site, the postcode of which is GL7 6DF
Familiarisation days
Anyone that’s raced with us before will know that we run free of charge course familiarisation days in the run up to each race.
The dates for these will be fixed in the next few weeks, and we’ll email out when they are. Typically, they’re around 4-6 weeks before each race, and we’ll have these fixed once the lake owners complete all their bookings for the year, as we have to fit around them.
The Familiarisation days are a great chance for you to come and meet the team and other competitors, and to have a guided lap of our courses at a very relaxed pace. They’ll be very informal, we’ll try and make them both fun and informative, and it’s a good chance to ask any questions you might have and to meet other competitors too. The pace of the day is super leisurely as well, so don’t worry if you feel you’re not fast enough, as we’ll make sure no one gets left behind, and we’ll have plenty of regrouping stops (typically, we ride about 14mph average, and run around 10min miles – We do one lap of the Swim, Bike and run course, and on race day they’ll be 1 lap swim, 2 laps bike and 3 laps run, so you won’t be doing the full distance)
Also, they’re a great chance for the 113 team to meet with you guys in a slightly more relaxed environment than race day, as you’ll all have your racing heads on then, and we barely get a grunt out of you, let alone any form of decent conversation 🙂
I’m aiming to get the dates for these fixed later this month / early feb, and as soon as I do, I’ll email them out to you all.
Planning your nutrition
Many of you will want to start training on what we supply on race day to see if it works for you, so I wanted to let you know early that, like previous years, we’ll be using High5 Nutrition products at our races. We’re not big enough to get sponsorship from Nutrition companies, so buy all our nutrition products in, and I’ve always found that High5 stuff works well for most people unlike many brands, so that’s what we buy for the day.
The bike course will have 1 Aid station per lap (the race is 2 laps, so a 28mile loop) and this Aid station will have as follows:
750ml Bike Bottles of High5 Energy Source
750ml Bike Bottles of Water
Half Cut Bananas
High5 Iso Gels
The run course is 3 laps (so a 4.3 mile loop), and will have 3 Aid stations per lap roughy equidistant to each other
Aid stations 1 and 3 will have:
Cupped Water
High5 Iso Gels
Aid station 2 will have:
Cupped Water
Cupped High5 Energy Source
Cupped Flat Coke (Red full fat)
High5 Iso Gels
Half Bananas
Salted Crisps (Normally Pringles or Discos depending on what we can get at the cash and carry in volume)
Jamaican Ginger Cake
Maple Syrup Cake
Pretzels
Salted Peanuts
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Jaffa Cakes
Fig Rolls
Jelly Babies
We have a whole block of 30 Pre race toilets, toilets in transition, and there are toilets at the bike course Aid station. There’s also 3 sets of toilets on each run lap, and we’ll put baby wipes into the toilets on the run course once the race has started as we’re all racers too, so know just rough even the softest toilet roll can feel a few hours into racing.
Right, that’s it from me for today, so I hope you’re well still awake ?
Next time you’ll hear from me will be in a few weeks with info on the Familiarisation days and a few more little bits of info as it becomes available.
We’re here to help, so if you get any questions, need anything from us, or just want to talk triathlon, please feel free to get in touch – It’s what we’re here for.
Thanks and Happy training
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
07595 591612
graeme@113events.com
www.113events.com