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...

The forecast for today was, frankly, horrible.  6 degrees, light or heavy rain depending on which forecast you looked at, and a 10-15mph North Easterly wind blowing straight down Loch Ness creating a head wind for the second half of the ride.  Yuk. I would never choose to get up at 5am for a bike ride in those conditions... which means that it was ideal training territory.   Training for my legs on the 105km course; training for my brain in the weather conditions. I'd paid my entry fee... rather than roll over in bed, I should really get out there and make the most of it.   My plan was to use the Etape as a training ride for the Celtman Solo Point Five bike leg.  The Etape route is longer than the Solo route, with less climbing, but also with one big hill in it, and I expected it to take a similar-ish time to complete.  My aim was simply to treat it as a long ride training session, but to get to the end with enough left in my legs that I coul...

I’ve been off work and off training for a few days this week.  Nothing serious, just a cold, but enough to cause me lost sleep, lack of energy, an awful lot of coughing & snot and the inability to do very much. I needed a little pause…  So whilst idly scrolling, I came across this little video, posted by a previous Celtman participant on their Facebook page. I say participant rather than competitor because, as he says, 90% of us are just trying to get to the end. Fair play to Leszek, he had a really tough experience, and has learnt from it to come out the other side; eventually.  It got me thinking about how I will feel on Celtman Solo Point Five race day.  Could I find myself in the same position? Unlikely: I don’t have the speed or performance to have much of an ego in triathlon.  But I have been in that place in a different sport: feeling as a sea kayak coach that I should be able to perform in a particular way, and really beating myself up when that...

  Cheap gag, sorry… 😁 I got a set of Tri-bars, or Aero-bars for Christmas, but haven’t been brave enough to try them out yet.  So with the warmest day of the year so far coinciding with a day off work, I had no more excuses. I’d been warned they would feel a bit strange at first, and being ‘clip-on’ bars, there’s no access to brakes or gears whilst in the aero position. So, I was a little nervous to say the least! My Brownlee plan session wanted me to do a 1-hour hilly aerobic ride today, so I chose a local loop with a good climb and descent in the first half, with the second half almost flat, giving me the chance to focus on using the bars. I was a little wobbly at first, but after a few minutes of use, and a few goes at getting on & off them, I started to feel more comfortable. Turning for home, I really began to notice the difference when the headwind kicked in: there’s the free speed I’d heard they would provide! By the time I arrived home I was feeling really delight...

Warning... Whinge alert (only a short one, I promise) I’ve been struggling a bit recently. I’ve felt fat, the number on the scales has gone up a bit, I’ve struggled to complete training sessions fully and enjoyably for a few weeks, and the weather feels never-endingly cold & wet.  My work portfolio is taking up a lot more brain space than it should, and my hormones seem to be giving me a bit of rollercoaster ride.  Blimey, that’s a lot of negative thoughts… more than normal, for me.  So let's get off that particular fast train to nowhere, and sort it out.   Feeling fat & gaining weight - I've been wearing the ZOE continuous glucose monitor for the last two weeks, and experimenting with a few food combinations to test my blood sugar response.  Perhaps stuff I wouldn't normally eat so often.  So first things first: diet.  I have 13 weeks to go to Celtman Solo Point Five, and it's time to double down on training & nutrition.  Ti...

 Test out all your normal/ favourite foods… Oh, ok then! I completed my first day of ZOE program testing yesterday, and for the next two weeks will be doing something that many Type 1 Diabetics do routinely: wearing a Continuous Glucose Monitor. The next two phases are about trying out food I eat normally, along with different combinations, timings, and juxtapositions to see how they impact my blood sugar response.  I’m already fascinated… in fact, mesmerised by it! Yesterday’s trace… Risotto for dinner followed by a ‘threshold’ bike session: And then this morning… A walk to Muir of Ord for coffee & cake. Check out the different gradient of the peak! Does exercise flatten the blood sugar curve? I’m going to be fascinated to learn over the next wee while how different foods work in my body specifically, and how I can use them, along with the timing of eating, training sessions, work and sleep, to manage my health & wellbeing better- and maybe even to lose some weight. A...