The alarm went at 3am this morning. There’s a particular moment in the dark, somewhere in the first ninety seconds, where the whole thing is still negotiable: kit on and out the door, or roll over and nobody would ever know or even care. I’ve lost that negotiation plenty of times, but despite questioning and thinking about the fun I may have missed the night before, I didn’t this morning. Why, I’d love to say discipline, but that's probably a far too simple answer, really?

Two rides, and a question worth sitting with There's a phrase in cycling about emptying the tank. Most of the time it's just something people say, yet as a cycling fan we got to see what it actually looks like more than once in the last month; however, two in particular stand out.

I was in Stockholm this weekend. Not racing, just watching. Standing at the side of the road as thousands of people moved through the city on marathon day, I found myself not necessarily watching the race but watching the people. The ones flying through at kilometre twenty, all efficiency and quiet confidence. The ones starting to hurt at thirty, jaw tightening, form beginning to unravel at the edges. The ones at thirty-five who have clearly had a conversation with themsel

Why the build matters more than the day itself I was sitting in the café after track Tuesday this week, coffee in hand, still sweating!! When my friend VK asked how the recovery from my hip operation was going.

Better people. Better environment. Better performance. I've been thinking a lot about environment this week. Not training environment in the technical sense like altitude, heat etc. The human environment. The people you do it with. The energy in the room when you show up.

It’s exactly one month today since my hip replacement. Thirty days since the moment I woke up in a hospital bed thinking, “Right, now what?” The first question that came to mind was, “Can I walk?” — which I quickly answered by nearly fainting on my first attempt. Humbling doesn’t quite cover it.

A few days after my hip replacement, my friend and coach, Rob Foster, travelled from Newcastle to Manchester—four hours each way—just to see me. No training talk, no data, no spreadsheets. Just care. He came to watch me hobble around Manchester and chat. As we meandered through town, the topic came up—care—and just how much it matters in coaching. How it underpins everything we do as coaches. That chat stuck with me, and it’s been on my mind ever since.

This past weekend, I took part in an endurance training camp in Khorfakkan, UAE—swimming, biking, and running alongside a group of passionate and committed people. But the real purpose behind it had nothing to do with triathlon.