A long garlic day

24th Feb 2008
After the first couple of days where the rides are relatively short and sharp on each of the training weeks here they stick in the first proper training camp length ride. This consists of riding around most of the island, you can go further - the Iron man course is 180K but does include repeating bits. The day’s ride consists of 155k including the climbs of Tabayesco windmill side, Mirador, Tabayesco proper, back of Fermes and finally Timanfaya. The group I did it in was led by Laurent from the La Santa Green Team. He sat on the front the whole day - Wish I had the strength to do that. He is a former pro rider though, and still rides in Lanzarote all the time for La Santa. Anyway, I still did a bit of hors d’oeuvres by sticking in a 22K ride before the stretching with Geoff. This meant that if I did a ride to the La Santa village and back I would make more than 180K. Nope, I did NOT do that! It was a lovely day, spent nearly 7 hours in the saddle, ate 5 energy bars, 4 cheese and ham rolls, 10 energy gels and drank about 9 litres of SIS Go, that would make a saint fart! We went to a really nice restaurant for dinner with Gary and Sarah, it’s called Mezza Luna, real nice and loads of it with masses of garlic. Now, what looks like a ‘half moon’? Yep, a clove of garlic, so we should have expected that. Still by far the nicest restaurant I have been to on the island.
Big thank you to Big John for letting us use his laptop otherwise the blog would be very sparse. He is incredible by the way, after ten days of training he is a man transformed we’ll be calling him little John soon.
We went to dinner early to get Gary and Sarah’s boys back early for the pool competition. When we got up to go we found half of the Stratford crew were also in the restaurant, first time I had been there myself, these boys and girls (Miranda and Natasha) find the best food on the island quick! So in the taxis to get back for the training camp pool competition and a race down the hill, we got the boys back in time and then got roped in to play as well by Alex. Thx mate! So I get the pool cue and we end up playing Gary and Sarah, there was a real dearth of competitors and I think if we had not played then it would have been straight to the final. I said to Jackie that we could lose real quick and be back to our drinks in no time. Next thing, Jackie has told me off for shouting at her when she mishit a shot, well it was a competition! We ended up beating Gary and Sarah only to find this put us into the Grand Final against Alex and Patrick (G and S’s boy). Now it was serious! Er, not. Except of course Wedge, a few beers and a ‘competition’ means that although I should have been backing off Jackie and I somehow ended up winning which was a bit bad ... we were playing kids. I will never hear the end of it. They gave us a bottle of champagne that was poured out for the vanquished lads, Jackie will have to do the walk of shame to receive her diploma for winning something on bike week at the gala (should be called garlic) dinner on Wednesday. Actually jackie has won loads on these camp as she is a member of the undefeated quiz team winning 4 so far, hats, bottles and some more SIS Go! cor keep this up and the camp will be self financing!

Hope you all enjoy the rambles, do let me know and don't forget to help pave the road with a little silver by going to my online giving page, thx W