Always take a compass

Treading water, just ahead of the two yellow start buoys, two things were going through my mind; "this water is NOT 16C" and "how exactly did I end up here, at the start of the Huntsman Triathlon 2015?" I guess then, before jumping straight into the race and my experience of my first triathlon race I should fill in a bit of detail - a back story if you will. Way back in May of this year (2015), during a 25 mile walk in training for a long walking event, I suffered from serious knee pain and an injury that, and, several Physio sessions and some advice, later would put pay to the long distance walk that we'd planned and saw my wife Donna signing us both up for the Huntsman Triathlon (Sprint Distance) in October of the same year - just in case you haven't already you can read about that on my blog here The thinking was that a Triathlon would give me a goal and anyone that knows me also knows that without a goal to aim for I lack the self discipline t

Looking out across the nature reserve to Abernethy Forest With the longest day of the year upon us we'd arranged an evening walk starting from, and ending back at, Glenmore Lodge and the nearby Reindeer Centre. The basic idea was to put Isabelle to bed and head off on the 20 minute drive to Glenmore Lodge where we'd park up and head off on a circular walk taking in the summit of Meall a Bhuachaille (810m) - a walk of just under 6 miles, or with an extra half a mile or so to take in the 2nd summit of Creagan Gorm (732m). Walk stats Date - 21st June 2015 Distance - 5.78 miles Time - 2hrs 26mins Avg Speed - 2.37mph Height Gain - 1853ft Map used - Harvey's British Mountaineering map - Cairngorm and OS 1:25k maps on ViewRanger Android app (for reference OS Explorer 403) Reindeer at the centre We started at around 8pm although as we were in Scotland and it was the longest day of the year it felt like 10am, it was so light that the head torches we'd packed

Team Exertis - (nearly!) all smiles before the start! The Dell Management Challenge 2015 - Team Exertis UK It was back in May 2015 that I heard about the Dell Challenge and that my company, Exertis UK, were entering a team for the race in September. A team of 6+1 was required for entry and a communication was sent around to the 1200 or so UK staff to recruit interested parties - I however was "informed" that I'd be on the team so didn't need to apply - lucky me! I won't bore you with the details of team selection, kit planning, logistics and training leading up t the event in any serious detail suffice to say that I was planning right up until the last minute and had a number of people drop out who needed to be replaced, right up until the day before the event which made things even more challenging and resulted in a team pretty much meeting up for the first time at the College in Brecon that was to be the HQ for the race weekend - not ideal! The final E