I’m part of a lottery syndicate at work. We don’t win much but what we do win we put aside and spend on a Christmas lunch for everyone. Some years it covers the starters, others it’ll cover a turkey and all the trimmings. We have never had a year when it’s covered a bottle of champagne to celebrate, we’ve never been big winners.

But, other that that, I’ve never won anything. No spot the ball contests, church raffles or multi million pound payouts. Nothing, that’s all I’ve got, until last week.

And what did I win?

Pain. And suffering.

Which are not prizes anyone wants to win. A speedboat is a great prize. Money is a great prize. No one enters a competition and hopes to get hurt. Except me.

Everyone who takes part in the Celtman Solo Point Five race is automatically entered into a draw* for the opportunity to enter the Celtman full race next year. 25 places are available and a random draw takes place after the race to offer 25 entrants a place in Celtman. And I won.

Or lost.

Because now I have a year to train for Celtman and to try again and win a blue or white t-shirt through 4k of swimming, 120 miles of riding and a marathon over a mountain.

And yet the losers of this competition get to put their feet up.

It doesn’t seem fair! 🙂

But, Andrew TwinBikeRun, you say, you don’t have accept the place. It’s not compulsory.

That’s true, but where would be the fun in that?!?

Celtman 2024 entered!

*The draw was conducted by ChatGPT and the AI selected 25 people randomly from the Solo Point Five entrant list. I’m glad the organisers used ChatGPT and not GlasgowGPT as the very sweaty Glasgow AI describes Celtman as this:

Last week I covered registration, the swim and my challenge not to come last. How did I get on? Well…

Cycle

The cycle route is 54 miles from Sheildag , around the Applecross peninsula and back to Torridon. It involves more climbing than the full Celtman course and includes the famous Bealach na Beag mountain pass. The UK’s highest road and one of the few roads in the UK with Alpine like switchbacks.

But it wasn’t the climbing that I was worried about, it was the descent. I hate cycling down the Bealach to Applecross. A few years ago, a friend fell off the road and broke their shoulder, collarbone and wrist. Admittedly, they’d not checked their brakes before cycling but it has put me off cycling there ever since.

It was raining as we left Shieldag for an eight mile stretch to the bottom of the Bealach. This was a good warm up to get blood pumping into the legs before the harder climbing begun.

I’d cycled it a few days earlier (one of my three outdoor cycles this year, see last week’s entry) so I knew what to expect. A steady climb and then an equally steady descent to the Bealach.

The rain stopped as the climbing begun and while clouds were down, and there was no view once we got to the two thirds point. The road is closed to traffic so it’s good to just put your head down and grind your way up the road knowing there’ll be no traffic coming in the opposite direction.

The first half of the climb is fairly easy, the second half ramps up. I was slow but steady all the way up and my hours on Strava had left some strength in my legs. Who says computer games are bad for you?

On the way down, I kept my brakes on for most of the descent and the squeals from my wheels sounded like someone had just jumped after seeing a mouse all the way down to Applecross.

The next section of the race, around the peninsula, has more climbing than the Bealach, but is spread out over more miles. I’ve cycled the route before so knew what to expect but if you’ve not done it then it can be tough to find you’re going to climb more on what should be a flat section than you do on the climb. But that’s the west coast of Scotland for you. There are no flat sections. Everything is up and down.

On this section, Iain TwinBikeRun punctured twice. He asked if I had a spare tube but as I use a tubeless tyre, I’d already taken it out of my seatbag. His race was over, he had to call his wife to collect him so I thought like the concerned good brother that I am: “haha, well, after that, at least he’ll be last!”

I was wrong.

I finished the cycle without ever pushing myself too hard. As soon as I hit a hill I dropped to the lowest gear and worked my way slowly up it. I didn’t see anyone until the last five miles. Between waiting for Iain and taking my time on the bike, the race was now taking place ahead of me.

At the run, I texted Iain TwinBikeRun to say he should pick up his kit and run with me. He could catch me at transition.

Run

That’s if I could find transition as I almost immediately got lost when leaving Torridon.

I don’t know how I did it but I was running along a road when everyone else was on a track. I saw a runner, he shouted I was running the wrong way and I climbed a bank of heather to join the track he was on only… to get lost again.

I came off the track at a point I thought it joined the road. It didn’t. But I didn’t know that as I climbed from the shore up through the forest at the site of Torridon and to the transition into the lower route around Ben Eighe.

Except I came to the transition after the exit to Ben Eighe, which I knew couldn’t be right. You had to go to transition and then go to the exit. You didn’t go to the exit first.

Again, I was lost. The Marshalls helped by contacting the organisers who confirmed I should keep going. I wasn’t the only one who’d taken a wrong turn.

Iain TwinBikeRun on the other hand had taken the right way and had caught up with me. We were able to leave transition together.

The lower level route had a cut of time of eight and a half hours from staring the race. 1:30 pm after a 5am start. Our aim was to make the cut off. After that, there was no time limit to reach the end.

We ran most of the downhill stretches, some of the flats and walked the uphill. There was some rain but it was largely dry and conditions underfoot were okay.

We saw a few other competitors the course ahead of us, and knew of one behind, who’d been at transition.

What we didn’t know was that these were the last competitors, we were competing for the wooden spoon.

But first we had to make the cut off.

We thought the cut off was 10 miles into the race. This was a mistake. It was actually 12 miles. That meant we had to run all the way down the final descent to get in at 1:26pm. We thought we had more time as the distances were shorter, but we should have checked that more carefully before we started.

Having run the last part, we then walked into the finish, another three miles to Torridon. We might have run but it was straight into a headwind and we wouldn’t have run much faster than we were walking.

The finish line

At the finish we broke into a run and I finished ahead of Iain by a few seconds. I’d made it. I’d achieved my goal. I wasn’t last. Iain was behind me, and even if he wasn’t DNF’d for failing to finish the cycle leg, there was at least one of other person behind me. Result.

Until we got the results and Iain was timed ahead of me! He was fifth last, I was fourth last. The b****ard!

Overall

A cracking challenging race in one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland. Definitely worth checking out if you fancy an extreme triathlon. But I would recommend that, unlike me, you actually get a full training programme behind you before you start.

I was nervous. I’m usually nervous before a race but these nerves were different. These were based on a lack of training rather than a fear of the unknown.

It’s okay to be scared of the unknown. Who knows what might be there? I’ve seen the film ‘Get Duked’, the Highlands are filled with lairds shooting tourists for fun .Who’s to say the local lord wasn’t going to pop out with his shotgun and shoot triathletes like grouse?!?

But to be scared due to lack of training is not okay because the fear is entirely self inflicted. Like taking a shower in the laird’s house without asking and then using all his best towels while singing “I’m the King of the Castle, you’re the dirty rascal!” Of course he’s going to react. Who wouldn’t?!?

But my lack of training wasn’t entirely self-inflicted. I hurt my toe in Easter and couldn’t run for three weeks. I then picked up a chest infection which kept me out of action for another three weeks before hurting my chest and losing another two weeks. I’ve lost more time than a careless Rolex salesman.

In the last two weeks I finally had a run of days to train for the race and managed to run four times, cycle four times and swim twice. 10 training sessions. None longer than an hour. And I was then taking part in Celtman Solo Point Five, the ‘Baby Celtman’, a middle distance triathlon based around the Applecross penisula on the west cost of Scotland.

So, naturally, I was nervous until I had a simple thought. It went like this. “How will I do?” I said to myself. “Awful,” I answered positively but realistically. “Oh come on,” I said, “it can’t be that bad, at least I won’t come last!” And with that thought I had a goal. I wouldn’t come last. Second last maybe. But not last.

And how did I do? Well, let’s just say if they had a gold, medal and silver for the last three places then I just missed the loser’s podium. (I was fourth last).

But let’s start at the beginning…

Registration

Registration is open on Thursday PM and all day Friday in a hall in Torridon. It’s easy to find and everyone is friendly and helpful. You need to bring certain mandatory run equipment (such as a waterproof jacket, hat, gloves, food, waters, first aid etc) and these are checked to make sure they are suitable for the race. Having run the route before as part of supporting last year’s Celtman I know how horrific the weather can be for the run route. So, I’d brought two versions of everything. A run jacket for normal rain, the one I’d run around Glasgow wearing. And an industrial waterproof jacket for working on a trawler in a storm in a tidal wave. That way I could use either depending on the forecast. Luckily, while the forecast was for rain, it was to be mild rather than biblical.

The Celtman ‘shop’ was also open in the hall so you can buy your Celtman merchandise. I bought a t-shirt which had the slogan “If you get lost, you’re a moron.”

Little did I know how accurate this t-shirt would be… more on this in part 2 next week.

Swimming

The swim route starts in Shieldag and requires you to swim round an island and back. Some warm weather over the last few weeks meant the sea swim was warm, with temperatures around 16 degrees. This also meant the water was suitable for jellyfish and there were plenty around the northern end of the island. I tried to swim further out to avoid them, which worked, but I couldn’t avoid all of them and I just had to bat them away while swimming.

The swim start is early – 5am – and you need to drop off your run bag, set up your bike transition and collect your tracker before hand. Everything is nearby and, if you stay in Shieldag, it didn’t feel too early a start after a 9pm bedtime on Friday night.

However, if you are driving then, while there is plenty of car parking, it’s at the other end of the village so you will need to park, walk to the transition and pick up points and factor in the time to then walk back to the swim start.

Again, everything is well organised and it’s always clear what you need to do and where you need to go.

But what about the jellyfish, are they as bad as people say?

Celtman is famed for its jellyfish and a lot of people are worried about swimming among them and getting stung. For most of the race I would have said “don’t worry, they’re annoying but you soon get used to them. They’re only around for a few minutes of the race and most of the time the waters are clear and calm.”

And then, on the way back to shore, with around 200 metres to go, I was stung by one of the [expletive deleted]!

AAAAAAAaaaaaRRRRRRrrrrGGGGGGGGHHHHHhhhhhHhhHHHHH!

Like getting a whip to the face from Indiana Jones.

The bloody [expletive deleted]!

And I could feel it for the rest of the face. A burning across my cheeks and mouth.

And while it wasn’t painful, it was annoying, and I can’t say I enjoyed it. So, if you don’t fancy the idea of jellyfish then other races are available… 🙂

And did you come last?

Not yet. I was happy with a steady swim around the island and a time of c45 minute.

And, as usual, even though we weren’t swimming together, I ended up climbing onto the shore just 10 seconds ahead of Iain TwinBikeRun. We must have been swimming the same speed all the way round.

A decent start but last place was still in my grasp as the next stage was going to be only the third time I’ve cycled outdoors in the last year. Would injuries, illness and a training program entirely based in Strava help me keep pace with the leaders? No chance.

For the rest of the race, come back next week.