Well, that didn’t turn out as planned…

Normally I’d post a snapshot of my monthly training but that would be pointless this month as I did almost no training at all. At first, it was for a very good reason. My daughter, Rebecca, was born on Wednesday 6th January. All very exciting and, because I knew it was coming – the whole nine months pregnancy does give you a few warning signs that an infant is on the way! – I knew I would need to adapt to training around her this month.

Not that training was the only thing to change. After a week at home Mrs TwinBikeRun turned to our daughter and said: “Rebecca, is Daddy’s beard scratchy?”

I’d not shaved in over a week. It was still too soon to call my middle age bumfluff a beard but it had ambitions.

“Are you telling me to shave it?” I asked her.

“I’m not saying anything,”she said “but Rebecca would prefer it.”

Damn. It was only a week and Mrs TwinBikeRun had tried to ‘turn the wean against us’!

So, in that first week I didn’t do any training, or shaving, and just tried to help out with getting Baby TwinBikeRun into a routine. Once we knew the times she was likely to sleep through the day in the second week I started to either go for a run or jump on the bike for 90 minutes.

This is easy, I thought. We can feed her, change her, play with her and then have some time for Celtman.

And then we all got COVID.

Not that we knew we had COVID. My wife felt tired one day, I had a sniffle another day and then my daughter got tested as part of a routine check and she tested positive, which meant that we’d all had it because she hadn’t met anyone else.

While we’ve been lucky compared to others who have had it, it has meant that we had to self-isolate for 10 days from the point the last one of us had symptoms.

Which meant for most of the month I wasn’t able to do anything because, if I was self-isolating, then I wasn’t doing any exercise in order to get healthy after having COVID, even though I didn’t know I’d had it until after I’d had it.

However, everyone is well and beyond the boredom and frustration that comes from staying in one place, I can’t complain about not starting Celtman training this month, not compared to the alternatives. Instead, I look forward to starting in February.

Update from Celtman

With the uncertainty caused by COVID as to whether Celtman will be possible in June it was good to get the following update this week. It’s good to see that a decision as to whether it may go ahead will be made in March so that everyone can prepare. I suspect we’ll see a race in June but it will only be open to UK based entrants.

Two of my favorite places to walk are Loch Ardinning and Lennox Forest. You can see the loch from the forest and you can see the forest from the loch but there is no path that connects them together. On a map it seemed possible. There is only half a mile between the two paths.

I thought about doing it during the summer but I thought it might be too boggy. I decided to wait until winter and do it on a frosty day when all the vegetation had died back.

So during a recent cold spell of weather I set off with my wife to try and find a way across the gap.

It was surprisingly easy. The conditions were perfect and it only took 30 minutes of off path walking. I’d recommend doing it with a good map as due to the trees it was tricky to find the path at Lennox forest. I used https://maps.me/ as an app on my phone. It has downloadable maps so I don’t have to worry about a signal. It is also completely free.

Check out just how cold the walk was in the video below.

VIDEO

MAPS

Review

An interesting challenge to connect up two routes but no one I’d do often.

Parking

There’s a small car park in Clachan of Campise. You can park on the street if the car park is full. It can be busy on a nice day. Loch Ardinning has a few parking spots but they fill up quickly on a nice day.

Facilities

None on the route

Nearest cafe

There is a cafe at Clachan of Campsie.

Run Surface

50% track. 25% off road track, 25% off road (no path, mud, heather etc)

Dog Friendly

Yes

Elevation

129M of elevation.