Madeira 2011

It's been a while since the last post from Mallorca. After a good training camp things have not exactly gone to plan. I've done some early season road races and time trials with pretty average results. I'm reasonably fit, but so far have failed to convert this general fitness into race fitness or any results to speak of.

For the long May bank holiday weekend we were due for a short break to Madeira and I decided to take my time trial bike in an effort to find some race form while enjoying the sunshine.

In the end it turned out to be a nice holiday, but one of the worst places to do any time trial training.


Firstly, the terrain is VERY HILLY. I normally don't mind hills, but there really isn't a flat bit of road in Madeira and the road either goes up or down. And the hills are steep... Generally anythigng less then 10% isn't even considered steep here. With my TT gearing I had to resolve to grinding up the gradients with a cadence that would often drop down to 50rpm and legs screaming of lactic acid. A typical 90 min ride would end up with about 1000 meters of climbing.


The road surface is bad. That's the only way to describe it. Potholes, old uneven tarmac, you name it.

I even managed to find some long stretches of "Belgian cobbles".

There is one road on the South side of the island where there road surface is new and smooth. Unfortunately the majority of this expressway seems to go through tunnels. These range from a couple of hundred meters long to 3km long, with the vast majority being over 1km long. Some have decent lighting, some are dark. One thing for sure - none of them seem safe with trucks going through them at 90km/h.

Finally, the weather. Being so close to Africa and the Canary Islands one would expect the weather to be similar, quite dry, sunny and hot. Nothing further from the truth. It rained on most days (making the roads even more tretcherous with the tarmac not being laid out for the wet conditions) and the temparature was around 16C at sea level. Given that the temparature goes down about 1C for every 100m of altitude climbed it made the mountains at 1400m feel very chilly, particularily if you add the cooling effect of the clouds typically sitting atop these mountains.

All in all it made for an environment not ideally suited to time trial training to say the least. Not surprisingly during our 5-day stay I only spotted one other cyclist on our last day and he looked as out of place as I must have looked on my TT bike.

If you're planning a trip to Madeira and are thinking of bringing your bike with you my advice would be to bring a mountain bike. Or better still, leave the bike at home and enjoy the other attractions the island has to offer.

Mallorca - 2011/02

Sadly my first PBscience Mallorca training camp has come to an end. We had great 7 days in the Mallorcan spring sun and I've learned a lot. Mostly about the fact that more isn't always better.

The weather was fabulous for this time of the year - every day it was around 15C and sunny. The camp was organised with military precision and professionalism typical to PBscience but also with enough flexibility to allow for plans to be modified to suit our goals.

We had a group of 15 athletes, all very fit, as our mountain time trial demonstrated, but with some very different goals at different times of the year, which no doubt provided a challenge for our coaches to plan the daily activities to suit everyone. They did a sterling job and I think everybody left the camp on Saturday having fulfilled their camp goals.

The coaches guided us carefully and with a great degree of knowledge and professionalism in the direction that would provide the best return on our time investment in reaching our season's goals, but left the decision to follow these guidelines to us. All decisions have some form of consequences and the time will tell whether we made the right decisions or not - this is all part of the learning process.

Of course there was also a fun element to the camp and some of us provided some additional entertainment in a form of a "washing up in the dishwasher" incident or similar. There was some serious coffee drinking too - after training ;)

Personally I couldn't be happier with the outcome of the camp. I'm leaving stronger than I was when I arrived but also less tired, having been recovering really well - remarkable. The training was less volume orientated but with better quality and a big focus on recovery. My personal favourite day was the "mountain" ride including Col de Soller and Puig Major.

The mountain time trial to Lluc provided some additional excitement...

... and quite a bit of suffering:

As for the numbers, my time trial time was 24:1 and I averaged a 298W. A couple of weeks ago I didn't think this wold have been possible, but the camp was a real eye opener.

I hope better things are yet to come this year.

Lanzarote - 2010/12

Lanzarote is one of our favourite training destinations. It has some great swimming and running facilities at Club la Santa and great bike riding around the island. The area is hilly and always windy and hot which provides challenging conditions all year round.

This year we managed to get away for our trip to Lanzarote for the Christmas period week. Unlike in the previous years I concentrated mainly on cycling with some good riding doing base miles, but trying not to completely destroy myself so early in the season.

My favourite climb is the Tabayesco road to the top of the Haria mountain:

This year I did the climb twice, both times as part of a long ride.

Towards the end of the week I was starting to feel quite strong and the second time up the climb I posted a time of 36 minutes flat averaging 252W. I was happy with that given that it's still very early in the season.

In total I did just over 300 miles over 5 riding days, 10km of swimming over 3 swims, one good run and a few good core conditioning sessions. A good training week.

This time we were staying at a resort in Puerta del Carmen, which was actually very comfortable and located a little bit away from the busy areas with a 3km walk to town. It was nice to be located in a quiet place and be able to get some good rest.

As usual we enjoyed our annual Lanzarote trip. It was so nice to get away from the cold UK weather and spend some time outside in the sun and get some decent training done. We came back relaxed and I'm not even as tired as I've normally been after a training camp so I'm looking forward to another 3 weeks of training at home and then a trip to Majorca.