After a 5.30am breakfast the previous week for a race in the Alps, last Saturday I found myself up at 3.45am to force down some fuel ahead of a 5am deep water start at the beginning of the Solo 0.5 Celtman, the ‘baby’ version of the full event which had been run the previous weekend. The race involves a 2.2km swim around Loch Shieldaig, an 85km cycle around the Applecross peninsula and a 23.6km run around Liathach.
Other than the early start, the swim leg went well. Lots of jellyfish but no stingy ones, relatively warm water and only a modest amount of thrashing in the mass start. Swimming face down provides no sense of where you are in relation to the rest of the field but when I exited the water after about 42 minutes I was relieved to see a fair number of bikes still on the racks so I knew I wasn’t in last place.
Transition went OK with only mild cursing of my wetsuit and I set off on the cycle leg feeling reasonably positive, pleased that I could still feel my fingers and toes. We cycled initially south towards Tornapress and I started to regret my smugness at leaving plenty of bikes behind me at T1 as I realised that this just meant there were more people to overtake me. Over the next half hour, a constant stream of much stronger cyclists passed me including Noel Tomney (club member but competing on the day for his tri club, Edinburgh #3). Thankfully, once we’d reach the bottom of the fabled Bealach na Ba I was past caring about being overtaken (or maybe I was dead last by that stage). I laboured my way up the hill, mercifully shrouded in cloud, for a full 50 minutes bottom to top before enjoying the descent to Applecross followed by a lovely stretch along the west coast of the peninsula with a decent tail wind. My only low point during this section was when I was overtaken for the second time by Noel who’d had time for a toilet break and probably a sit down meal in Applecross before he sailed past me again. With this demotivation playing on my mind, I struggled badly for the last 20 miles back along the ‘undulating’ north coast (barely a flat metre the whole way), finally making it into T2 in Torridon after just less than 4 hours on the bike.
After a pathetically slow transition (who knew I could take so long to tie my shoe laces??), I set off on the run leg with my legs (which had clearly been having a rest for most of the cycle leg) feeling OK. Eliott Sedman, another club member who was also competing for his tri club, Grangemouth, rather than Carnethy, had come into T2 just as I was leaving so I knew he would catch me and so it turned out within the first 2 miles but, amazingly, after that, no-one else passed me and I slowly crept up the field as my relative strength in ‘running’ over unrunnable rocky terrain finally paid dividends. The triathlete thoroughbreds weren’t loving the going while the cart horse hill runners were in their element. Eliott counted 75 people he passed and I must have caught about 50. The run leg finishes with a few miles on the road into Torridon and I just about managed to hang on to finish in 7hrs 27minutes for 43rd position. Eliot finished almost exactly on the 7hr mark for an excellent 22nd place and Noel was just over 8hrs. The winner was 5hrs 25 minutes, over half an hour ahead of the 2nd athlete (that must have been an awkward wait!).
A tough day out, particularly on the cycle leg for me but an awesome location and an excellent course with a good level of infrastructure and support. I’m definitely never doing it again, I promised myself that towards the top of the Bealach, but I’d recommend it to others.
Neil Burnett