Living it up in Lanzarote

I have now got a complete list of all the don’ts for a holiday with bike on budget airlines. For one don’t assume the luggage weight limit will allow you to take more than 2 pairs of knickers and a spare shirt! My wife’s case alone took up one third of the weight limit, best stop worrying about lightweight bike gear and get some seriously light luggage! I even took the bottom stiffener out of my soft case (yes, lighter) but it was not really to any avail so a lot of stuff didn’t come with and a load of stuff ended up in the bike box – didn’t help that I had agreed to take a 1.8Kg box of energy bars for a mate.
Another example of good practice – don’t leave anything hard loose in the said bike box, nor make it too heavy as it gets dropped if you do. The consequence is that my pride and joy has a dent in the down tube. This is SERIOUS – as it is an aluminium bike you can’t straighten it and if it cracks its goodnight Vienna. Very expensive, lucky I renewed the insurance he day before we travelled. As it happens MuppetBoy has offered to sell me is Cervelo Soloist full dura ace including the carbon wheels (to the uninitiated that means it is a very good, very expensive top bike) so a bit of a no brainer I need to negotiate and agree the price.
Forget all this though we are in Lanzarote again. Two weeks of living a bit like a cycling pro. So any differences to previous years? – The wind has changed round and they have introduced mosquitos!? Big Geoff Cooke (19 times world Champion says he has never seen them before in 15 years of working on this training camp). But the sun and warmth and the rides are fantastic. I’m told it is freezing back in Blighty which makes it all the sweeter. I could live like this all the time!
Each day is similar, we have four different speed groups and after a couple of medium distance ride days we do a long 70-100 miles ride followed by a short ride day. Today’s was a short ride, we had a new member of staff joining in, one Malcolm Elliott, who took the fast group. Malcolm is a full pro who regularly wins on the British racing scene, its his second time round at racing last time he rode the TdF, Olympics etc took a ten year break and he is now back 48 years old and still putting the best riders in Britain to the sword! Awesome. Anyway I was tired from yesterday’s ride so went with one of the slower groups. When the fast ‘group’ went by our group , Malcolm’s reputation had obviously gone before him which meant nearly all the decent riders had bottled it dropping to the next slower ride, it was hardly a group. So it was Malc, two other British Pros, a Club La Santa representative (semi pro) and one camp attendee (from Stratford of course) in their ‘group’. We had given them a 100 metre head start when I suddenly thought ‘sod it I want to see how these pros ride so let’s see if I can catch them and sit in for a few minutes’. Big John came with me and we bridged the gap cor! So now we were over the limit - how long we would last? Amazingly, although they kept going fast it was OK because every time the road went up the effort stayed the same, thus the speed did not, so BJ and I could sit at the back and be fine. So there is a message in all this to all those ‘light’ fast boys who rip yer legs off on every rise, then go slower or the same, (that is less effort) on the flat – do the work on the flat get the speed there and hold the effort level when the road rises, that way everyone gets a good ride – that was what these Pros did. Best ride I have ever had, it was only when we hit the real big climb after 30Ks that we slipped back, there is always tomorrow – so ‘Chapeau’ Mr Elliott!
I do enjoy these camps – we get out on the roads between 9 and 10 am finish the ride around lunch then chill , may be a massage loads of food and in bed by 10! After two weeks of this should be a lot stronger – but not really much leaner. The summer sun here is such a tonic. I would recommend this type of winter break to anyone, just for the lift it gives you and if you enjoy exercise then being able to indulge without weather worries is a bonus.