Celtman, Coffee, Cake and a Collie

I had my first triathlon ‘DNF’ at the weekend: Did Not Finish. As is often the case, I should perhaps have seen it coming, but I didn’t. It blindsided me a little, so I wanted to take the time to reflect on it and take away some lessons from the experience.  Over the last month, I’ve been working the heaviest part of my roster; and alongside that, those 12-hour shifts were over-running almost every day, with 12 hours becoming 13, 14 or even 15 hours.  My last set of shifts, a Day/Day/Night cycle, ended and we packed & headed south for the 500 mile journey, split overnight.  Traffic was pretty heavy and the journey took longer than expected. In spite of having done very little training in the week leading to the event, I arrived fatigued and a bit jaded.  For a few days before, and whilst we were travelling down, it became clear that the weather forecast was pretty rubbish for event day. Strong winds, rain, chilly temperatures…  Waking up on race day, the for...

It's been almost a month now, since Celtman Solo Point Five; plenty of time for the 'What next?' question to sink in.  And those that know me know that I tend not to hang around after completing a goal...  That isn't always a good thing - and I tried to do my best to pause and appreciate what I'd been through, and what it meant to me.   I took up triathlon mainly in order to be able to have a go at the Celtman Solo Point Five: to allow me to complete that adventure in the fantastic environment that the Celtman team create.  But I also started to dream of the idea of completing the full-distance Celtman... and learned along the way that combining multiple sports suits me, and helps me to manage my slightly injury-prone and middle-aged body.   So leading up to the Solo Point Five I started to say out loud that, if I could complete the Solo, I would have a go at the Full.  Well, I did... and I will!  It didn't take long following the Solo for me to s...

  It's 3am and my alarm beeps loudly.  I switch it off, take a moment to open my eyes, and crawl out of bed.  It's race day.  Actually, I've been hesitating to call it a 'race' - for me it is an event, an adventure, a challenge to get myself to the finish line.   Long Post Alert! This is my story of how the Celtman Solo Point Five 2023 panned out for me.  If you have a short attention span - cut to the end - if not, read on and I hope as well as helping me reflect on the day, it will give a flavour of how it felt to go through the experience.  Swim round an island, bike round a peninsula, and run round a mountain.  That's all (!) I need to do.  Bike racked, GPS tracker collected, T2 bag dropped off (I'll see that again later in the day), T1 set up, wetsuit donned, hugs exchanged with friends also toeing the start line...  I drop into the water and swap a few words with Rich, the kayaker forming one end of the start line, and Paul - ...

The training is done, planning complete, registration and briefing attended.  Now all I have to do is swim round an island, bike round a peninsula, and run round a mountain.   I thought I'd feel nervous, but in truth, I don't.  I feel a bit like a child on Christmas Eve, wondering what presents will be under the tree in the morning... except I know exactly what presents I'll get, I just don't quite know what will happen when I set out with each one.      We start at 5am tomorrow, the weather is looking kind, and if all goes to plan it should take me around 9-10 hours to complete the route.  I always said that my goal was to make it to the start line in one piece, with a belief that I can complete the event.  Well, the start is less than 12 hours away, and I believe I can do it.  So no matter what happens tomorrow, I've done what I set out to do.  I've done every inch of the course at least once, and I just need to put it all together. ...

  Tapering is an odd thing.  Done all the training, the event is almost here, and you start reducing the volume of training... and all of a sudden all the niggles, anxieties and little irrational worries come crawling out of the woodwork.  We're all set up in Shieldaig, our home until after the Celtman Solo Point Five, and athletes and their support crews have started arriving for the full-distance Celtman which takes place this weekend.  We nipped across to Gairloch this morning, so Mark could do a mountain bike route and I could swim from a sandy beach as the weather's been so warm.   And... 😮 ...Jellyfish soup! (Size 7 Croc for scale...)  It's 25 degrees here just now, and the water feels warm - unusually so for this time of year - so I thought I'd swim without gloves or socks.  I lasted a mere 10 metres (yes, metres!) until the fear took over.  Suddenly I was overcome by the fear of having feet or hands stung, and being injured before next Sa...

This time in two weeks I'll be... Well, it's 9:30am just now, so with a start time of 5am I will be four and a half hours into the Celtman Solo Point Five.   If everything has gone to plan, that will put me somewhere on the coast road at the North end of the Applecross peninsula.  I will have swum round Eilean Shieldaig, biked over the Bealach na Ba, and done some of the 'Coast Road' hills.  I'll still have the rest of the bike route to go to T2 in Torridon, will have 90 minutes to make it to the bike cut-off, and then the small matter of a 24km run/walk around Liathach.  How do I feel?   Well, a heady mixture of excitement intertwined with terror, and a sprinkling of disbelief that I've made it this far.  I've tried to train for big events in the past, and always ended up injured.  Whether that's just down to physiology, weight, or ramping up training in a way that didn't suit my body, it always ended with me not completing the event; not even makin...

  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 ...