No rest for Beattie after hitting the beach in Portobello

Commonwealth Games

LYNNE BEATTIE insists she and her beach volleyball partner Mel Coutts will be steeled for anything the Commonwealth Games has to throw at them after being exposed to some wild weather conditions at their regular training base.

The duo practise all year round at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh and 36-year-old Beattie admits it can seriously test their resolve.

“We go there in the depths of winter, training in the early mornings in the dark,” said Beattie, who is part of Team Scotland for the upcoming Games in Birmingham. “It gets cold but the only thing that really stops us training in the winter is when the sand gets frozen. The wind is probably the worst. When it gets windy at Portobello, that’s a real challenge. When it’s windy and rainy, then you’ve really not got a situation.

“We’ve just got to put up with it but it means when we get to a tournament and it’s windy, we feel comfortable in that environment.”

Beattie, who was captain of the British indoor volleyball team at the 2012 Olympics in London before switching to beach volleyball for “a new challenge”, would love to see Scotland get an indoor venue for her sport.

“We don’t have an indoor facility in Scotland like a lot of countries do but we just have to make it work,” she said. “It’s a great place to train but sometimes you get a bit envious of what other countries have got.

“But equally, sometimes you have to think those challenges and that adversity you have to deal with make you stronger as a team so we can’t be too downhearted about it. In the future, if we could get an indoor facility in Scotland it would attract a lot more people to the sport.”