Celtman, Coffee, Cake and a Collie

"This is all about he or she who slows down the least, and to that end the key training point is time on feet ".  Quoted from the Global Extreme Triathlon 'Training Guide to Extreme Triathlon' There are 16 weeks to go to Celtman.  Or, actually, 16 weeks and 3 days.  Every time I open up my Training Peaks app, there it is...  So of course a little part of my brain goes into panic mode every time it sees that.  Another part thinks 'It's ok, you're doing ok...', and yet another thinks 'Yes... I can't wait'. It's a very weird see-saw psychology, but it is what it is, and I suspect I'm not alone in that thought process.   How to deal with it?   Well, this is where the 'time in the seat, time on your feet' comes in.  When I was coaching sea kayaking, I used to quite often have to explain to people that to get better took 'time in the seat'.  Time out there, doing it, trying things, getting things wrong, then gradually gett...

"A red weather warning has been issued for the Highlands..." It's winter in the Scottish Highlands, and cold, snowy, wet or windy weather is the norm.  It regularly stays around 0-2 degrees here for around 3 months in the winter, and can be snowy, windy or wet.  But it seems to have been particularly windy, and particularly wet this year.  The woods where we walk the dog every day haven't been this soggy & muddy in the eight years we've lived in our house.  Of course, I knew we'd have periods of weather that would make training outdoors difficult.  But I also know that for Celtman, the weather can do virtually anything on race day.  Whereas on the Solo Point Five I knew that for me, the weather wouldn't make a huge difference due to the particular nature of the course; for the Full event, it will have a massive impact: it could be the difference between me making that T2A cutoff, and not being allowed to finish.   So this last few weeks, when I can...