A welcoming club on the North West of Edinburgh
CLS Day 2 – The Road to Tabayesco
By CoachKev | Published | No Comments
When I first looked at Kev’s training schedule for the CLS week my first impression was “there’s no way we’ll manage to do all that!”. But somehow we did most of the sessions, keen to take advantage of the warm weather, the amazing training facilities at Club la Santa and the motivational effect of training as a group with like-minded people. I also had the Strava leaderboard to think about!
One of my most memorable parts of the week was the cycle on Day 2. After a 2K CSS swim session at 7am, it was back to the apartment for a quick breakfast and prep for the planned 67K cycle at 9am. No time for relaxing! We began with a route that took us to Teguise via the surfing town of Fumara. After watching the fast group cycle into the distance, Adrienne, Andy, Sally and I stuck together until we reached Teguise. Andy and Adrienne stopped for a coffee and Sally and I decided to follow the boys on a route that would take us up the famous Tabayesco climb. Realising we had no clue how to get there, Sally bought a map and then we set off along a main road into a strong headwind. We worked together taking short turns at the front which made a big difference to our speed. After fixing a puncture we eventually made it to Tabayesco and started the very picturesque 10K climb to the top. The average gradient was 5% so it was easy to keep a steady pace all the way to the top. Sally’s constant supply of jelly babies was also a big help! Upon reaching the summit we were rewarded with amazing views and a delicious well-earned lunch from the café.
The cycle home was mainly downhill but again mostly into a headwind (there’s no escaping the wind in Lanzarote!) so again taking turns at the front gave us a bit of a ‘rest’ in between the hard efforts. On returning back to base, Andy had (my 2nd) lunch already prepared which was gratefully received. Enough training for one day? From memory I think I sat for about 15 minutes by the pool before being summoned to the lagoon for the next session – open water swimming. Followed by a pool session, followed by a run….
Anna and Sally kindly cooked a delicious dinner for us all that night. We were all on a mission to consume calories! Our evenings were generally very relaxed and by 9pm we were all ready for bed and thinking about the plan for the following day.
All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘holiday’ at CLS. Training is definitely more enjoyable in a warm, sunny climate and also when you’re training with a great group of friends.
