My first sporting memory is watching a team in green and white winning the Scottish Cup against a team in orange. I loved football and wanted to follow the team that won. They were Celtic and that was about the only thing they won in the next fifteen years as their rivals, Rangers, dominated Scottish football until 2000. I didn’t know it at the time but chosing Celtic in the Western Isles was like ordering a steak in a vegan restaurant. Everyone on the island supported Rangers because the Isle of Lewis is to protestants what the Vatican is to Catholics. 

Lewis is a very religious island. Sunday or the Sabbath is a holy day and no shops would open, the swings in playparks would be tied up and even clothes lines would be cut if anyone dared to hang their underwear out on the Lord’s day. 

It’s was tediously DULL!

Imagine a day when nothing happened. Slowly. And not just a day because the Stornoway Sabbath started when the minister went to bed on a Saturday night and it didn’t end until he got up on a Monday morning. 

And nothing could happen because, unless you were going to church, everything else was banned. Even watching TV was banned, though not in our house as while Sunday School was compulsory, our Dad still wanted to watch Scotsport on a Sunday teatime. 

It was only in recent years that the airport and ferry opened to allow people to leave the island on an Sunday. We inadvertently ended up on the first Sunday sailing. We were in Stornoway, saw there was a Sunday sailing and booked it not knowing it was the first. At the ferry terminal there were 20 people in black suits and heavy tweed coats silently protesting – because, naturally, on Sunday, shouting was banned. Beside them there were a hundred people clapping to show their support for the new service. On board we hid below deck, while we supported the new service we didn’t want to be in the photo they’d use in the local paper under the headline “Heathens Leave Island. Destination: Hell!”.

When I came back to Stornoway from university, I always loved the Stornoway sabbath. It provides a day each week when you know you don’t need to do anything. However, the Stornoway version was too extreme. If it was sunny outside you couldn’t play football, you still can’t play golf. Today, I’ll go for a run but twenty years ago even that would have been frowned on. Even if you didn’t go to church yourself, you still cared what your neighbours thought and respected their beliefs. 

In many ways growing up in Stornoway was a glimpse not just into the past but into an older past too. While the mainland moved with the times and Sunday became the weekend rather than a special day itself, Stornoway remembered when the Sabbath meant something. It was a reminder that you should spend one day a week doing something different, whether it be resting, praying or tying up children’s swings (lest Satan tempt them to swing on the Sabbath). 

There’s a lesson here for triathletes. The need for a rest day or days. A reminder that it’s just as important to stop as it is to start. And pushing to do something every day is not always progress.

Kudos, according to the dictionary, is “praise and honour received for an achievement.”

Kudos, according to Strava, is when you do anything. Walk to the shops. Take the dog out. Dip your toes on the beach. It doesn’t matter what it was as long as you record it and add it to Strava. You’ll then receive “Kudos” from your friends and followers when all they should be saying is “Why are you not doing any actual training?!??”

Maybe it’s just me but even with normal day to day running or cycling, I don’t want someone to give me ‘Kudos’. I don’t post any indoor bike sessions, unless I forget to make them private, for that reason. No one should get Kudos for sitting on a bike and watching YouTube videos. Kudos is for an achievement. It’s not an achievement to watch a Vlog, unless it’s the Bonnie Gardner then Iain TwinBikeRun will give you kudos! 🙂

Instead of Kudos, Strava needs new buttons to accurately record your reaction to someone else’s post.

First, it needs a simple stick. Instead of giving Kudos to someone you see posting everyday, you should be able to click a ‘Get Out Of Bed’ button for someone you haven’t seen post since last week. Imagining 20 people telling you to get a move on. That’s motivation and far more likely to get you to do something than another Kudos.

Or, perhaps, if you have posted something, you need a ‘Loser’ button, to show you didn’t think what they did was an achievement at all. A marathon? In lockdown? On your balcony? Loser!

Or, even better, an ‘I Did It Faster’ button. Nothing inspires people more than competition. Of course, this button should be context specific. You couldn’t tell your balcony marathon running mate that you did it faster last week because, unless you’re a weird stalker, you weren’t on his balcony for eight hours last week. At least, not running a marathon… This button would only appear if you are on a leaderboard with them and you genuinely went faster than them. If so, you can click the ‘I Did It Faster’ button. And then the ‘Loser’ button too to really rub it in.

Maybe, for a nicer approach, we could also have a commiseration button, just as Facebook has sad emojis. If you see a friend just miss out on a personal best or segment record then you can express sympathy.

Or you could also click the ‘Loser’ button. Your choice.

And that’s it, that’s what Strava is missing. It’s missing a choice of reactions when you post an activity. It needs more than just Kudos and, if they did, if Strava were to add more button, I’d give them a big thumbs up!

UPDATE 1 AUGUST 2020 AND MORE SWIM DETAILS FROM SEPTEMBER HERE

Original review below but as visit was mostly huddled in a car waiting for the rain to stop I thought it best to add a couple of comments after returning a few more times.

• Entry shown below is good but you can also enter from south side of loch as there’s parking at a gate here.
• The loch is in a ‘bowl’ so provides some shelter from strong winds but, as it’s at the top of a hill, and the wind farm next to it is a clue, the water can be choppy. On the plus side, if you’re swimming with the wind then you’ll now what it’s like to swim as fast as Michael Phelps.
• As the loch is next to the road and one of the most popular cycle routes from the Southside be prepared to ‘flash’ a few cyclists as you get changed.
• Loch feels very safe, it’s compact, not as ominously deed as one of the larger lochs to the north of Glasgow and a good place to learn open water swimming.
• And, as always, don’t swim near the barrier and don’t swim alone!

ORIGINAL REPORT

I’ve never been to Egypt but I know that if I go to Cairo then there will be pyramids everywhere. And a sphinx. But mostly pyramids because when I look at photos of Egypt that’s all I see: pointy buildings nestled in golden sands.

But if I did go to Cairo I know that what I would actually see are the MacDonald restaurants, KFC and tourist tat shops that surround the small handful of pyramids that look like they’ve been plonked in the middle of dirty quarry. The reality is very different from the image. Just like wild swimming.

Wild swimming can look fantastic when viewed on Instagram or on Facebook posts of happy smiling swimmers in beautiful locations around Scotland . The reality can be very different – as we found out on Saturday.

We were trying a new loch – the White Loch, just outside Newton Mearns and on the way to Stewarton. I’d passed it a couple of days previously and saw people swimming in it. I’d shouted over:

“Is it good to swim here?”

Yes, they said, but they jokingly added that “You can only swim here if you know us!”

“Well, I do now” I said!

So, with my membership of the secret White Loch swim club confirmed we returned on Saturday only to find…

RAIN! RAIN! RAIN! AND RAIN!

After huddling under the open boot of my car while trying to get changed, I sheltered in Iain TwinBikeRun’s car while we waited for the rain to pass. Which might seem strange? Why wait for rain to pass when going for a swim? We were getting wet anyway, dodging rain wouldn’t make us any less wet than a deep water loch. But I didn’t want to be wet when I tried to dry off and get changed afterwards. There’s no point driving home cold and wet. So, we waited for a clear patch.

After 20 minutes, we had 10 minutes of sunshine – the photo above shows the blue sky – and we had a very quick dip and a promise to return to try it out more fully as the car park is beside the entrance, the loch has a shallow entrance and a nice beds of flat reeds to protect your feet from rocks as you enter. Almost perfect. Except for the rain.

So, while the top photo may show sunshine like an Egyptian desert, the reality was that this swim was a bust and more time was spent struggling at the side of the road to get changed into and then out of a wet suit then actually swimming in the loch.

Location

Google maps: Location

Parking

There’s a couple of parking spaces on the road beside the loch.

Water

Around 14 degrees on Saturday. Choppy with strong winds but it looked like this would be a great spot if the weather is good.

This week it struck me, that with no competitions taking place, I’m still officially the ‘Yellow Todd’.

I have to admit that I’m not sure about the title of ‘Yellow Todd’, it either sounds like I have a serious liver problem, or I ran away from the convoy when the injuns came to town in an old fashioned western movie.

“Who’s that at the bar by himself?”

“That be Yellow Todd, a craven and a coward!”

But since neither Iain or I speak French, officially, as both of us achieved the lowest possible mark it was possible to achieve at secondary school French, a mark so low that my teacher’s main criticism was: “You couldn’t even pronounce the English words right,” Yellow Todd it is, and not the more exotic sounding Jaune Todd (as per the Maillet Jaune or yellow jersey).

(Though Jaune Todd, does sound like John Todd and John is the English version of Iain, so perhaps it’s with some irony that I will talk about the Todd Championships and a jersey that’s named after Iain but one he rarely wins.)

Competition is important. It started in school with the rather healthier competition of academic achievement. Who could win the most prizes at the end of year prize giving?

One year, I won two – English and Technical Studies. Afterwards, walking along a corridor, a teacher stopped me and said “Congratulations on your award.”

“Awards,” I said, holding up two certificates because I won the English prize and he’d used the singular “award” when clearly he’d meant to use the plural.

I don’t remember Iain winning any awards – but who remembers losers? I bet James Cameron, after winning umpteen Oscars for Titanic, couldn’t name another nominee. He didn’t need to. He was king of the world.

Our sporting rivalry didn’t start until university. Iain played squash because he went to Edinburgh and that was the kind of thing you did in Edinburgh while waiting for your turn on the real tennis court or, when you couldn’t play croquet on the lawn. 

We had two squash courts in Stornoway, both in a single building with a shared balcony where people could watch. As the balcony stretched across both courts it meant that anything said on one court could be heard on the other. Which was okay, for the first five minutes. And then Iain would claim a ball was out, or below the line or I’d blocked his shot or any of many other minor rules he claimed I’d broken. After 10 minutes, he would introduce a some random swear words to emphasise how strongly he felt about me breaking the rules. Then I’d introduce a few more, then voices would rise, racquets would be gripped with white knuckles and then next disputed point would lead to shouting so loud you could hear it on the mainland and not just the balcony or the court next door. After a few months we had to abandon our games after one angry father barged onto the court and told us exactly what he thought about our language and the words his two young sons could hear. An argument which was validly made but undermined by him teaching us a few more swearwords too as told us exactly where we could stick our squash rackets.

Either way the Todd Championships were born and every year we race for a symbolic yellow jersey given to the Todd with the most victories over the year. And, since I hold the jersey from last year, with no events, I’m still the Yellow Todd.