That I’m abso-bloody-lutely freezing. My jeans are still wet from the walk through slushy precipitation back from the pool, I can barely feel my fingers and the sky looks like something out of a James Herbert novel — dark, oppressive and badly written for the sake of including as many rats as possible.

Er. I think that simile went a bit far. I should have stuck with Clive Barker.

Do you fancy a trip up to Bonny Alba in late June? It’s just that I see from the Triathlon Scotland site that there’s a race just along a bit from Embra — the Gullane Beach Tri. It looks like they’ve dropped the sprint distance, so it would have to be the full Olympic. What was your training schedule?

Anyone else? Only problem is that it’s the week after our proposed coast to coast and it definitely clashes with the Exodus.

You could swim to the start from our front door!

It’s blowing a hooey, with intermittent showers of freezing rain. I will be going swimming and should really go out on my bike. Somehow the motivation for grinding through weather like this is lacking.

Every so often the sun comes out for thirty seconds, just to mock me. Damn you sun! I know your game! I’ve come across the likes of you before! Sitting up there in the sky like some great big fiery ball, coyly fluttering your eyelashes and waving demurely only to dash behind a raincloud at the first sign of anything other than passing disinterest. Don’t you think for one minute that I’m going to be fooled by your temporary charms or your false promises!

I know that dreich is more than just a matter of perspective: it’s a reason for Gore-Tex.

Did my first brick today. Wasn’t anything exciting or even an appropriate switch: ran to the pool, swam 500m, ran home again. It was more a test of kit than anything else, as I was in Run and Become yesterday for a sports bra I can wear under my tri suit and a pair of running tights. Needed to check it all felt okay. Also I’ve had about 1 hour of sleep in the last 24 hours. A very good friend of mine from Ireland has been staying this week and it was her last night. We don’t see each other nearly as often as we should do, and I think we were trying to squeeze every last drop of usable time out of what we had left. I was fit to drop after getting back from the airport, but we’re down to only three weeks and I’m starting to worry.

By gum. Carrying on another sport in wet swim gear might be fine in the summer, but in Fife, in winter, when it’s getting dark and you can feel the cold trying to rip off your scalp, it’s not pleasant.

Things to remember:

1. Socks on before tights, if it’s cold enough on race day to need the tights. Wet legs are hard enough without wet feet;
2. Figure out how the hell to dive into the water without goggles being knocked back and filling up with water, thus necessitating a stop at the end of the first length to empty and adjust them;
3. Get a hat for running;
4. At this stage, 400m is really a piece of cake and it’s time to stop worrying about the swim time because 08:45 is a perfectly respectable time for a first triathlon;
5. The Fleming competitive streak really is a monster of epic proportions and should be muzzled and sent to Dog Borstal.

I hear the washing up calling me. Groan.

Need. More. Coffee.

On the On-One site.

Yeah, okay, so I emailed Brant and told him about the page because it’s me wittering on about my Pompino again. Then he told me about the new Lincolnshire Poacher project, the rotten tease. I can feel myself going weak and wobbly over the idea of a retro Pompino.

I wonder what he’d say if he knew that at one point I’d considered getting the On-One logo as my fourth tattoo? Thankfully I managed to bring myself to a sharp halt on that one, on the grounds that it would be even sadder than having a Campag chainring print tattoo.

I’ve just registered a new domain. Girlsfixtoo.com doesn’t have anything on it yet, because I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. Possibly something in black and pink. If you’re a girl, you ride fixed and you’d like to tell the world about it, preferably with pictures, drop me a line at the usual place (avoiding the low-tech spam trap) and you might be able to help me decide what to do with it. If you’re a bloke and you have an important woman in your life you’d like to persuade to ride fixed, well, you’ve come to the right place.

One of my fave sites, the FGE — which, for those of you unaware of such matters, consists of photos of fixed or SS riding guys in either nothing at all or just their undies — appears no longer to be working.

What’s going on? A girl needs to lech sometimes!

The Forth Bridge is closed today owing to high winds. So that means yesterday’s abortive cycle ride really was into the teeth of a very nasty wind. I’ts about Force 9 out there now and the forecast is that it will get worse before it gets better.

I have to go over to the airport later to pick up someone (No! Not like that you filthy perverts!), which could get tricky if the bridge is closed. I’ll just have to keep an eye on the weather. I was considering taking the car over to the Ingliston Park & Ride and cycling into town beforehand, but that ain’t gonna happen if I can’t get across the bridge.

Here’s some more memeage for you while I’m at it. Snaffled from Pupgrrl. Of course I got the snowboarding joke…

I’ve just put up a page about why I ride fixed. As popular as fixed gear bikes have become of late, it would seem that a girl on a fixed gear is still a cause for comment. Anyway. It gives me an excuse to wax lyrical about Shackleton. Again.

Snaffled from Ythry.

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 100% Cultural Creative 88% Materialist 75% Existentialist 69% Modernist 44% Idealist 31% Fundamentalist 25% Romanticist 19%

What is Your World View?
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Painfully aware that I have four weeks before this bloody triathlon, I just took Fingal out. A nice, short ride was my plan, down to Burntisland via Kinghorn Loch and then back up the coast through Kinghorn itself. Not far, just a nice short circuit to get some miles in my legs. Especially with the weather.

Aye. Right. For the first time in years I had to give up. So the first mile was into the teeth of what felt like a force 8, right along the Esplanade, and then there were another 2 miles into the same teeth of the same wind. Only uphill. By this point I had stomach cramps and was feeling nauseous as well as somewhat angry, it was getting dark and the rain was cold.

I decided that I’d rather have something left for training the rest of the week rather than risking really knackering myself doing the full (exceedingly paltry) 11 miles. My body wasn’t happy with the idea before I left and it certainly wasn’t happy with the idea by the time I’d got as far as the top of the climb after the Kinghorn junction out the westend of Kirkcaldy.

That’s… appalling. I’m telling myself that anyone can have a bad day and the weather out there is atrocious. I’ve had about 6 weeks off the bike with various problems and I managed about 25 miles okay last weekend, although not with my usual splendidness.

Don’t tell me it’s going to be the bike leg that lets me down. Three months ago I was doing consistent evens over a route that wasn’t exactly flat. Dammit.

Should’ve taken the fixie.