Blogs
Mon, 12 Jul 2010
Testing the water
By Sarah Storey - Horizon Fitness Racing Team
With a second block of training alternating between medium length rides of around 4 hours of general conditioning, and a morning session of efforts, I was packing my bags all too soon and heading home. It had been another successful camp, with the numbers coming from the power meter looking better than they had before we left the UK, and I was returning home with a better kick in the legs.
My sessions of efforts had been divided between power climbs over 3km, trying to average a consistently high power of 350 watts or more for each of the four efforts. Then I also did a session of lead out sprints with Barney. Having a world champion sprinter as a husband has many advantages, and one of these is that he can cast a firm, but fair eye over my speed work. Sitting on his wheel as the speed notched up, I began to wonder how on earth I would get out of the saddle and launch a sprint to our imaginary finish line. Thankfully he sat up and only ever did as much as sit on my wheel, so I won all 8 of the sprints!
Normally my role would be that of a lead out girl, so to have the chance to work on coming off a wheel and aiming for a line was great for me, and certainly gave me a bit more zip for the remainder of the week.
My longer rides were firstly back to Tabayesco for the 10km ascent, and then the final ride of the camp before the easy pre-breakfast spin on departure day was to the El Golfo route again, and back along the tough headwind of the Fire Mountains, before finishing my legs off with a climb back home from Famara beach.
The Tabayesco climb was taken at about 90% for me, and took just a little over 30 minutes to reach the highest part of the climb. The top of the hill was in thick fog though, so the descent was interesting until I suddenly appeared out of the gloom and could see across both east and west.
Going down to El Golfo for the final longer ride was again great fun as with a tailwind along a rolling road of great road surface towards Uga, just before the El Golfo route, I was able to maintain over 65km for a good section of around 5km. Then it all went a bit wrong as I turned to face the headwind again!
With the business end of training done and the Tour de France well underway, for an extended lunch break after these rides I was able to think about getting back into the swimming pool to see whether I could remember how to swim!
Club La Santa has a fabulous 8 lane, 50 metre, Olympic size swimming pool, and it was this facility that first brought me to the island in May 1992. The last time I dipped my toes in the water was in the same pool in February this year, so it was important for me to maintain the record of only swimming in fabulous outdoor pools!
Five years ago, when I was swimming full-time and did my last international at the US Swimming Nationals in July 2005, I was able to glide through the water at relative speed; clocking not much more than a minute for the 100m freestyle, and a little over 70 seconds for the 100m backstroke.
Armed with some flippers and a float (just in case things went wrong!) I dived into the pool and started to do my best impression of me; the way I used to swim all those years ago! My fears about forgetting or sinking were soon put to rest as I glided along. Or so I thought! Curiosity got the better of me and I timed myself over 100m freestyle and 100m backstroke! There really was no comparison to the days when I’d been good enough to climb onto the podium and international meets, so I put the flippers on and only then managed to keep up with the French team training in the lanes next door!
Unlike my days as a full-time swimmer, I was ready to get out of the water after only 1000 metres, and my arms were aching like mad! With Cav winning back-to-back stages at the Tour de France, we arrived home ready to spend a final week at home before we join up with the rest of the Horizon Fitness team for the Tour of Limousin next week.
For more information about the Horizon Fitness Racing Team, visit www.onthedrops.com.