The following newsletter went out to all Cotswold113 2016 Competitors on January the 26th.
Cotswold113 2016 – Jan Newsletter
Good afternoon, and I hope this email finds you all well and settling into training for this year’s races? We’re less than 6 months to race day now, so I wanted to get in touch with everyone and let them know some details for the race, and also to talk through a few points
My newsletters tend to ramble on a bit, so before you start reading, I’d get yourself a chair and a strong coffee
In this newsletter, I’ll cover the following;
- Familiarisation day
- Course update
- 226 Entries
- Marshal Requests
- Transfers
- Race Numbers and Waves
- Tri Shop and Race Sponsors
- Website changes
Familiarisation day
On may 22nd, we’ll be holding a free of charge (other than £5 if you want to swim) familiarisation day down at the lake for all competitors, and competitors friends and family should they wish to come along too. The Familiarisation days are a great chance for you all to see the courses prior to the event, and to meet the team and other competitors. It’s a very relaxed day, and the emphasis is on seeing the courses at a nice easy pace to suit everyone. We will start the day off at 08:00, where Jason, our Swim Couch from http://southwestswim.co.uk will lead out a lap of the swim course, with a few stops along the way for everyone to regroup. Jason will also be able to field any questions you might have about open water swimming, and specialises in coaching complete novices, so is a great guy to get your
On may 22nd, we’ll be holding a free of charge (other than £5 if you want to swim) familiarisation day down at the lake for all competitors, and competitors friends and family should they wish to come along too. The Familiarisation days are a great chance for you all to see the courses prior to the event, and to meet the team and other competitors. It’s a very relaxed day, and the emphasis is on seeing the courses at a nice easy pace to suit everyone. We will start the day off at 08:00, where Jason, our Swim Couch from http://southwestswim.co.uk will lead out a lap of the swim course, with a few stops along the way for everyone to regroup. Jason will also be able to field any questions you might have about open water swimming, and specialises in coaching complete novices, so is a great guy to get your questions to if there’s anything you’re unsure about. If you want to swim, then the lake guys will charge you a £5 day membership, which covers their insurance, and we’ll provide Jason and the safety boat cover free of charge. After the swim, around 10am, we’ll head out in a few groups for a single lap of the bike course (Each lap is 28 miles, and it’s two laps on race day). The groups will average a speed of around 14-15mph, and no-one will get left behind. It’s more of a social ride, and we’ll have a few stops to regroup and to explain where Aid stations are etc. Once everyone’s back in from the bike, we’ll have a 20-30min break for everyone to get changed and get their bikes put away, before heading out for a single lap of the run course (a single lap is 4.66 miles, and it’s three laps on race day). Like the swim and bike, the run lap will be easy paced at around 9-10min miles moving pace, and we’ll stop and regroup to show people aid stations transition etc. My fitness isn’t what it used to be, so it might even be slower than that unless I can sort it out by then
On may 22nd, we’ll be holding a free of charge (other than £5 if you want to swim) familiarisation day down at the lake for all competitors, and competitors friends and family should they wish to come along too. The Familiarisation days are a great chance for you all to see the courses prior to the event, and to meet the team and other competitors. It’s a very relaxed day, and the emphasis is on seeing the courses at a nice easy pace to suit everyone. We will start the day off at 08:00, where Jason, our Swim Couch from http://southwestswim.co.uk will lead out a lap of the swim course, with a few stops along the way for everyone to regroup. Jason will also be able to field any questions you might have about open water swimming, and specialises in coaching complete novices, so is a great guy to get your questions to if there’s anything you’re unsure about. If you want to swim, then the lake guys will charge you a £5 day membership, which covers their insurance, and we’ll provide Jason and the safety boat cover free of charge. After the swim, around 10am, we’ll head out in a few groups for a single lap of the bike course (Each lap is 28 miles, and it’s two laps on race day). The groups will average a speed of around 14-15mph, and no-one will get left behind. It’s more of a social ride, and we’ll have a few stops to regroup and to explain where Aid stations are etc. Once everyone’s back in from the bike, we’ll have a 20-30min break for everyone to get changed and get their bikes put away, before heading out for a single lap of the run course (a single lap is 4.66 miles, and it’s three laps on race day). Like the swim and bike, the run lap will be easy paced at around 9-10min miles moving pace, and we’ll stop and regroup to show people aid stations transition etc. My fitness isn’t what it used to be, so it might even be slower than that unless I can sort it out by then . We’ve run these days for a few years now for all our events, and the feedback we always get is that it’s a fun day and a nice chance to meet other competitors and our team in a less stressful environment than race weekend. It’s also a great chance for us to meet you guys before the race, and a good chance to ask questions and generally see what the race is all about. Nearer the time, we’ll put an online booking form up, which although sounds very formal, it just gives us a rough idea of numbers and a chance for us to communicate with the relevant people without mailing a whole group. Don’t worry too much if you can’t make the date, as I live local to the lake and work from home, so welcome the chance to get out in the week and show people around individually, as long as you don’t expect much pace. We will be holding familiarisation days for the July 17th 226 and August 21st Classic races on June 19th and July 24th respectively also, but will be emailing competitors for those races separately in case you’re wondering.
Course update
As some of you will already know, we have made a slight change to the bike course from this year’s race onwards to avoid a narrow section being two way traffic. The new course maps and files are available now at the race website – www.cotswold113.com, and if you need a .gpx file, drop me a mail and I’ll send it back to you.
226 Entries
On July the 17th, we’ll be holding our Cotswold226 Long Distance triathlon based out the same venue as the 113. Many of you have gone for our 113/226 Combo entry, which saves a few quid over entering them both individually. If you’ve already entered the 113, and want a 226 entry, get in touch as we can still honour the discount for the both. The 226 is arguable the fastest and either PB or beginner friendly Iron Distance race in the UK, and it’s set on a stunning bike course, which is totally different to the 113 course, and although is ‘rolling’ rather than pancake flat like the middle distance course, is still very fast, and the run is completely flat. Over the 226 weekend, we’ll also be organising a Saturday timed 1.9/3.8km swim, and on the Sunday, alongside the 226 itself, we’ll hold a tri rules 90/180km Sportive. This is like a traditional sportive, but will have policed roads, non drafting format, aid stations and moto support/ref’s. We’ll also have a short brick course laid out and a secure transition for those wanting to have a short run after the bike to use as a brick session. 226 and 226 Sportive riders will be distinguishable by different coloured race numbers, but will be on the same course at the same time. The 226 will get around 250 competitors this year, and I expect the Sportive will have around the same number, so the course is easily capable of holding 500 cyclists.
I’m conscious that many people use the 113 as a warm up for a later season ironman race, so this is the perfect chance to test out your longer racing legs too. Details are at www.113events.com.
Marshal requests
One of the things we always hear back from our competitors is how numerous and enthusiastic our marshals are, and to us, the marshals are as important as the competitors, so we look after them. We have around 175 paid marshal positions on the course for the June 113, and we’re always looking for more people to be part of the team for all our events.
The marshal package is as follows;
- £20 cash or a £40 discount voucher to use on any our events
- A Red 113 Events Team technical shirt
- Unlimited Coffee, Tea, Burgers and ice creams
- Being part of a fun team
Getting marshals in the number we use is one of the hardest parts of race organising, so if you have anyone coming down with you that could be part of the team, then please just get in touch. They don’t need any experience at all as we take them through the briefing for all posts and they’re looked after whilst they’re in position. All we ask is that they’re enthusiastic and preferable know their left from the their right. We provide everything they should need on the day, and we have teams of guys that head around the courses with top ups of tea/coffee and bacon or vegetarian rolls. We can’t unfortunately pay under 16′s, but we welcome along families and have team shirts right down to 4 year old sizes. Kids can, of course, still take advantage of the free ice creams and burgers offer, and we’ll make sure that families with under 16′s have roles together away from the road.
Transfers
Within the months running up to the 113, we always seem to get bombarded with requests from people to see if they can transfer from the June race to the August 21st 113 Cotswold Classic, which is effectively an identical race, on the same course, but under a different name. Normally, these requests are made out to be that they’ve been dragged away with work or they have to attend a wedding on that day etc etc, but we’re conscious that they’re often just that the competitor hasn’t quite started the training for the June race or has picked up an injury in reality. At this stage, it’s really easy for us to change you from the June race to the August race, but as the months go by, it gets more and more difficult to make that swap. Therefore, if you do think that it’s likely that you’ll want to swap from June to August, please can I ask that you make the request now, or at least early. If you want to make the change in the next couple of months, there’s no charge for it, but if you leave it until later, you’ll be charged the admin fee, and the chances are that the August race could also be full up. Think of this as an amnesty or just a heads up, as we typically get around 100 requests for this swap, and I don’t want anyone to be disappointed if they don’t get in or get charged for it as once past certain timing plan gateways, we have already fixed info with insurers etc, and get charged ourself.
Race Numbers and Waves
One of the things we pride ourselves on being able to offer at all our races, is the chance for the competitor to choose their own number and wave. It might be that you have a specific lucky number (although number 69 seems a very popular request for some reason !), or you just want a group of sequential numbers, so you can rack in transition with your mates. You can also choose to all be in the same wave regardless of age or gender, or you might just want to go in the first wave to have clear water, or the last wave to not be swum over by a later wave. Either way, we can accommodate that. Around 6 weeks out from the race, when the entry list is frozen and finalised and available to me as an excel doc, I’ll send an email out to all competitors asking them if they want to choose a race number or wave. Please can I ask that you wait this time to make your requests, as the numbers are on a first come first served basis to make it fairer for all. The same goes for waves.
We can accommodate 99.9% of wave requests, but numbers can go quickly if you wanted a specific lucky number. This email will come out from me around the beginning of May, so please hold off until then as I can’t accommodate any requests until that point.
Tri Shop & Race Sponsors
We’re on the look out for a Cycling, Running or Triathlon Shop to attend our events and become our official shop sponsor. If you have any friends in the industry that would like to be part of our team, and have their shop at our races as well as their branding on our stuff, literature and website, please ask them to get in touch. We’re also on the look out for race sponsors, and companies that could benefit from having their logos on our shirts, in our finish line, literature and website. We have a pretty broad demographic within our events, and we’re looking for companies that have customer focus values like ours and represent the same friendly mindset as us. Again, if you have a company and want to get involved, please get in touch and we can have a coffee and discuss what we can do for you.
Website changes
We’re in the process of completely reinventing our websites, so that all the various races will eventually fall under the 113events.com site. This should be up and running in full around early March, so although the existing sites will remain live until then, please bear with us incase of any technical errors until then as we may need to take parts offline for a few mins at a time whilst it’s in this transition. I’m always on the end of my phone, and work from home on my day job, so if you ever need anything that you can’t find on the website, please just get in touch.
Anyway, that’s it for my 5 million word essay today, so I hope that not too many of you are snoring away at your desks at work where I’ve bored you to sleep with my ramblings
We’re here to help, so if you get any questions, no matter how trivial or small they may seem, just get in touch. Or if you ever need anything from us, I’m always up for talking triathlon, so please don’t feel like you’re imposing on us. If you’re passing by Swindon, the kettle’s always on here too.
Cheers and happy training
Graeme, Nicci and the 113 Events team
Tel 07595 591612
Email graeme@113events.com
Facebook.com/113events
@cotswold113