Blogs
Thu, 31 Mar 2011
Pre road season Training Camp
By Sarah Storey - Horizon Fitness Racing Team
I love it when a last minute plan comes together and that’s exactly what happened after the Apeldoorn Worlds Team Pursuit selection was made and I was not needed to travel with the team. I’d always know this was a likely situation and so had planned a contingency to get my road season off to a flying start!
Around 12 months ago Club La Santa, UK, started to sponsor me to help with my training in the run up to the London Games next year. Having used the resort as a base during my years as a swimmer, going back last year with my bike was just as good as I remembered only now I know the geography of the island like the back of my hand! So Plan B, was to take a trip to the Volcanic Island of Lanzarote and base myself at Club La Santa for a 10 night stay with my husband and Tandem pilot, Barney Storey.
With the flights booked just the day before we left it was exciting to know I was getting a head start on my road season with an extra block of hard training, this time with a road focus rather than the track focus we’d had during the first two Mallorca camps of 2011.
Lanzarote doesn’t have any flat roads, well if you find one then you are doing very well! The roads wind their way through a spectacular volcanic landscape and with a breath-taking view not very far away, it is a very pleasurable way to spend the 4 to 5 hours of road training I was doing each day. Being an island in the ocean, the gusty winds coming off the sea add some extra spice to each ride and it became a ritual each morning to see where the wind direction was going to be for that day! It was always tough to hit that head wind on the way up to the top of the island and Mirador Del Rio, but then when heading south towards Playa Blanca it sent me whizzing down the road at over 80kph!
The Fire Mountains are always a favourite route back from the south of the island and as you climb the hill north, usually battling a strong head wind, glance to your left and you will see lines of camels taking tourists up the mountain! Unlike so many of the weather beaten roads of the UK, the smooth roads of Lanzarote make the descents far less hair raising than many at home and although there is the chance of a nasty cross wind around the next corner, you get to know the tricky bits and can usually slow down before the gust takes your front wheel!
Back at Club La Santa the accommodation is arranged a bit like an Olympic Village with apartments over 3 floors and walkways in between taking the residents to the restaurants, wellness centre or other fitness zones. For our stay, Barney and I were on the 3rd floor looking out over the coastline towards the north and the beautiful view down to a popular surfing beach at Famara. With a little kitchenette, a spacious living room and balcony we had everything we needed for our own training camp, including one of the resident cats who always came to visit for some peace and quiet!
I did two blocks of 5 days training with one rest day in the middle. Our flights worked out very well so I could ride on the day we arrived and then again before we checked out at the end. It’s no more than 30 minutes from the airport to the resort so when you land you know there really isn’t long before you can get out training! The track legs I took out with me were a little bit shocked when they were required to produce power at lower cadences on the draggy roads, but equally there were some great fast sections and I was thinking I could have done with an “11” sprocket on my rear wheel! After a few days of feeling pretty shocking the legs came good and I was able to enjoy the tough terrain more than I had been doing at the start!
With 25 degrees and sunny skies almost every day we were there it was easier to get the miles in and I clocked in excess of 1500m of climbing on every ride, even the “flatter” ones! There were so many other cyclists out on the road, a mixture of all European nationalities and because of the Ironman on the island in May, there were also plenty of triathletes in training for the gruelling race. It never fails to amaze me how the triathletes manage a full marathon after swimming in the choppy ocean and battling the wind for 180km on the bike leg. It’s insane!
Riding my new Dolan Bike and sporting my new team kit from Santini, courtesy of Prendas Ciclismo, I was able to do 10 days of road testing of the equipment I will be racing on with Horizon Fitness Prendas this coming road season. I was excited to see how well the new bike was handling and I was riding a 48cm Hercules frame with a 120mm sloping stem which helped me get in a great position for descending. The lightness of the frame was also brilliant for getting out of the saddle and powering up the climbs and rises, when you have a headwind up a climb you certainly notice if the bike feels sluggish and there was no way this bike did, it was fantastic!
Both Barney and I had a great time at Club La Santa and in our down time were able to meet some of the other guests. Many of the groups there were college and student groups studying on a sports course and it was fantastic to meet them. The first group were some Foundation Degree students from Burnley College, and we did an informal “Q+A” session with them in the Sports Café, which was also doubling up as our location for watching the Cycling Track Worlds on TV!
The students had some great questions and were also really interested to hear about the nutrition programmes we follow to get the best out of our performance on the bike. They were interested to hear about the products we use from CNP Professional and interested to hear how the products help to keep us fuelled and hydrated for the hours we were doing in the relative heat of the island out there.
The second group was from Lancaster and Morecambe College and they were a younger group who were dying to have a go at all the sports on offer at the resort. We spent some time have an informal chat with them after dinner one evening and then a small group spent some time with Barney, learning how to lift free weights and the Olympic weight bars safely. They were great fun and learnt very quickly, we were just sorry to have missed their attempts on the tandem which was due to take place after we’d left for home!
So for now I am back in the UK for a short time before our Horizon Fitness Prendas training camp next week! It’s all go but with my first 9 races in the UK already entered I am excited to get on the roads and start battling it out for the finish line!
Sarah x
For more information on the Horizon Fitness Racing Team, visit www.onthedrops.com.