This is the battery for an electronic gear shifter.

An electronic gear shifter is just like a manual gear shifter except it needs a battery to move a gear. A manual gear shifter doesn’t have a battery and you supply the power to move the gear when you pull a gear lever. An electronic gear system doesn’t need a lever, because it has a battery. The physical lever is redundant and you can save weight by replacing it with a button instead. It’s a great system. If you have a battery…

Celtman starts like most races with an early morning alarm. The swim starts at 5am and we needed to be up by 330am to drive over to the start line in Sheildag, set up and register.

The midges were bad when we arrived, with several people wearing net caps to protect their face from the wee blighters. We had wetsuits but even inch think rubber is no defence against the Highland midge. I’m still covered in red spots days later in place that you thought would be more secure than Fort Knox. A lesson for the future: take a net hat too.

The weather was perfect for swimming (and for midges) being warm and calm. The water temperature was fine too with it at least been in the low teens if not nearly 15. I didn’t feel any chill at all in the water.

Unfortunately that also meant the water was in good conditions for jellyfish and the not so wee underwater blighters were visible right from the start. I wore gloves, boots and a hood so that the only skin on show was my chin and that did the job. While there were thousands of jellyfish they didn’t cause any problems as they would just ‘bump’ like a soft football against the rubber of the wetsuit and clothes when swimming.

I was confident in my swimming ability having managed to regain some swim fitness after being ill in March and April. I’d swum 2km last weekend and this was meant to be shorter at 1.9km. But that’s only if you stick to the optimum route. Instead, I went by the Baltic Sea, Indian Ocean and a quick trip to South West Pacific. I swum 3km. Not sure how, I think I took a wide route around the central island. I was still happy with time, but I could have been much faster if I’d only looked (and thought) about where I was going.

Out of the water, I got changed and got ready for the bike leg when I discover that I left my batteries for the gears back in Glasgow. It has been a year since I’d sat on this bike and, in that year, I’d forgotten it needed a battery and I’d left home without them.

A stupid mistake and one that left me with just one gear and no ability to change it. I though about cycling a 1000m up the Bealach Na Ba, Britain’s highest road as a fixed gear bike but that thought was followed by the very swift thought that I wouldn’t even make it up 10m, never mind get to the summit.

I told a volunteer I was done, my race was over, and I handed in my GPS tracker.

I thought about taking part in the run, I even changed into my shorts, t-shirt and put on my backpack to run with Iain TwinBikeRun, but he also had to pull out so, as the temperature soared to 26 degrees, I was very happy to get changed back into my normal clothes and give the run a miss.

Celtman Solo Point Five is a good name for this race as .5 out of 10 is probably my mark for attempting it.