DAVID McNAMEE begins every training session knowing that the two triathletes grafting alongside him will be doing everything that little bit better than he is.

They will swim stronger, cycle harder, run quicker and lift heavier weights. Both are younger than him - albeit one by just three days - but are Olympic gold and bronze medallists. He is merely the world No.16. "Every day I am getting beat," he muses. "You can take that to heart and become demoralised. If you're losing day-in, day-out it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel."

While the Ayrshireman toils in the darkness, the spotlight shines on his training partners Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee. The Yorkshire brothers are the poster boys for a sport on the rise, their relentless performances and achievements catapulting a hitherto dismissed discipline into the public consciousness and dragging their peers along in their wake.

It is with a rueful smile that McNamee points out that his own times this season would have made him world and Olympic champion less than a decade ago. "The bar is raised every year; it's incredible how far it has gone up in the past six or seven years," says the 25-year-old. "Everybody is swimming faster, cycling faster and running something like 90 seconds quicker over the 10k, which is astonishing.

"It's good, I suppose, to be in a sport that is constantly moving forward, and at least training with the boys I get to see where the standard is at every day, but sometimes I'd just like it to stand still for a bit because it's frustrating when you think about how you might have done a few years ago. I've just got to remember that it's about me moving forward all the time and not worrying too much about what other people are doing because I know if I keep improving, I'll have the best opportunity to climb the ladder a little bit."

Certainly McNamee clambered up a few rungs in the season just finished, even if his ranking stayed static. The Irvine-native went into September's ITU World Series Grand Final in London knowing that a strong showing would force him into the top 10 but he could only finish 25th, two minutes back, meaning he ended his second senior year in the same spot as he ended his first.

It was, he acknowledges, a disappointing conclusion to the campaign but one from which he intends to learn from ahead of the most significant year of his career. McNamee will, this morning, be confirmed as Team Scotland's first triathlon representative for the Commonwealth Games and considers himself one of "six or seven guys fighting over the three medals" next summer.

The Brownlee brothers are, of course, favourites but the absence of Spanish duo Javier Gomez and Mario Mola - first and third in this year's rankings - among others opens up the possibility of a podium place for the likes of the Scot.

Furthermore, the Strathclyde Park course on which the triathlon event will be held is one McNamee knows well, even if his recollections are somewhat sketchy. "Did I win a medal there once?" he asks. He did: second place at a European Cup event was his first senior podium appearance. "Right enough! I think that was about 2011 . . . or maybe 2010. You'd think I'd remember it! I've not been round recently - although the entire New Zealand team flew up for a look after London - but I'm planning to have a refresher in a couple of weeks."

That visit will give McNamee a further experience of the grip that the Games has taken on Glasgow. Living in Leeds has divorced him from the build up but a recent trip to visit family opened his eyes to the growing excitement. "Until then I hadn't really realised how big it was," he confides. "I know I'm only four hours down the road but they're not as excited about it as people are up here are. But now I'm looking forward to it even more. The fact we only get to represent Scotland every four years makes it hugely important and it's my main priority next season. After all, you can win the world title every year . . . "

Although his schedule has still to be settled, McNamee expects to do two or three of the ITU World Series events between April and June next year before taking a month to prepare for Glasgow, where he will be joined by a further four Scottish athletes - two male, two female - whose selections are unlikely to be confirmed before May.

Some of that quartet will be based at the same University of Stirling facility that McNamee once came to call home, but only after he was almost lost to elite competition.

A contemporary of Michael Jamieson at Glasgow's School of Sport, he was considered a swimmer of some talent only to tire of life in the pool and take up recreational running instead. Soon he realised a latent talent and was moved to enter a New Years' Day triathlon. "I thought it was probably a more productive way of spending January 1 than lying in bed with a hangover," he recalls. "It was a massive shock to the system but it went okay and suddenly I had this new, exciting thing to focus on. It was a beautiful day but I reckon had it been pissing down with rain I'd never have gone back again . . . "

Instead, he was convinced to opt for Stirling when it came to choosing a university later that year, combining training with an accountancy degree. "I can't remember half of the stuff I learned but it was one of those decisions you look back on," he says. "If I hadn't gone there I probably wouldn't be doing triathlon now; I'd be elsewhere working in a regular job and my life would be totally different. I wouldn't miss being in the pool at 7am every day but a medal next summer would make it all worth it."