Some people say that triathlon is a sport of four, not three, disciplines.

You’ve got your swimming, your cycling and your running – the three sports that make up a triathlon.

But you could add a fourth. Transition. The ability to stay upright while trying to pull a wetsuit off your foot with all the grace of an alcoholic ballerina performing the dance of the swans on a stage made of butter. Transition is a sport in itself.

However, there is also a fifth discipline. One that’s more complicated than bilateral breathing and harder to master than keeping upright with tri-bars whenever the wind blows (which is every day in Scotland). And that discipline is ‘life’.

Because the one thing triathlon expects, nay demands, is that you actually find the time to run, swim, cycle, struggle with wet suits at the side of lochs, and that can be tricky. You can’t spend all your time on your bike when you’ve got to be at home or work.

And some weeks, that means you don’t get to do very much at all. And those are the toughest weeks because you might have a diary or training plan that requires you to swim 4×500 metres followed by 30 minutes of light jogging. Yet you’ve not left work. The dog needs walked and you want to be home in time for dinner.

That’s why I call life the fifth discipline. Arguably, the most important one, because you need to be just as good as balancing everything else that’s happening in your life before you can even think about going out for a run. At least if you want to avoid divorce, the sack, or a grumpy dog.

So, for the last few weeks, I’ve been concentrating on the fifth discipline. Life.

Which is definitely a thing – and just something I’ve invented to justify eating cake.

And I’ve definitely not been lazy and put my feet up for a month.

Oh, no, not me –  I’ve been hard at work.

Training – honest! 🙂