Celtman, Coffee, Cake and a Collie

  I only really started open water swimming to be able to do triathlons. In fact, if I’m honest I only really started so I could do Celtman Solo Point Five.  But one of the huge revelations and benefits of my triathlon journey so far has been falling in love with swimming outdoors, and particularly with swimming in the sea.  Having spent years as a full time sea kayak coach, I always thought I knew the sea; I understand tides and how the water moves, I can often predict it’s moods and how it will behave. I can look at a patch of sea, on the surface, and work out what the wind and tide are doing, and how it will feel to be on it, in a kayak.  But it turns out I only really knew it above the surface. I’ve been around water all my life: sailing dinghies while I grew up, and then bigger boats, sea kayaking, white water kayaking, surf kayaking.  What none of this prepared me for was the underwater world, and how that would make me feel… Photo of a page in  Wild ...

  On this day last year I rode the 'Bealach Beag' cycle event.  It covers 72km and 1500m of climbing, up and over the Bealach na Ba, the UK's biggest road climb - and the brutal coast road that follows it to complete a circuit of the beautiful Applecross Peninsula.  If that sounds familiar, it may be because it is the same route - barring another 20km - as is used for the Celtman Solo Point Five bike course.  So really, I had to do it again this year!  To pass it up would have been passing up a perfect opportunity to train on th longest climb on these shores, and to test myself against a time limit: could I do it fast enough to meet the 5 hour cut-off time?  Last year, it took me 4 hours 48 minutes.  I stopped a couple of times on the way up the Bealach (carefully chosen - it's not easy starting off again with cleats on a steep climb), and stopped at the feed station in Applecross village.  I enjoyed it last year but struggled towards the end, and...