lanzarote - part one

My lanzarote training camp started with the inevitable bun fight also known as « flying with EasyJet » ! and the hours leading up to the flight didn’t exactly put my in a great frame of mind to get my gloves on and join the party. My flight was a fairly early 8am take off meaning an early check-in and even earlier alarm call… that’s if I had had any sleep! I couldn’t manage to scrounge a lift off my parents, meaning I had to get the last train to Gatwick and find a comfy bench to try and get a bit of shut eye between 1 and 6am! Not going to happen!
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of spending the night in Gatwick airport… or any other one for that matter… its actually quite interesting! And thankfully Costa coffee is open all night, meaning that I could get stupidly buzzing on coffee to get me through the night.
The flight over all went to plan and before I knew it I was In the apartment getting settled and catching up with Matt. Oh and having left England with two t-shirts, jumper and coat I was soon stripping off, still being too hot in a t-shirt! I could get used to this!!

So day one was meant to be just get settled and chill out but after building the bike I just couldn’t resist getting out there in the sun… so 3hrs and 50odd miles later I rolled back in wearing short sleeved jersey and shorts… hold on its December?? This just didn’t feel right, but who’s complaining!

I’m writing this after 4 days of being here and so far, apart from today the weather has been wicked. Yesterday in particular I got some serious tan lines going again! And a bright red face where I’d just burnt! Give it a few days and ill be brown as … umm something nice and brown I guess.

So I did say “apart from today”, this is because the weather has turned a bit and today has been pretty much non-stop drizzle and during my 2h30 spin I hit some proper downpours. I was laughing out loud at one point as I rode through a town called “Florida” as someone upstairs turned the tap on big style … riding through florida in a rain shower but still being too hot in a long sleeve jersey. Madness.

So after a nice steady ride yesterday the plan is to get a good tour of the island in with a 4-5hr ride with Matt, hopefully bumping in to some Rabobank or Highroad-Columbia riders out on the road. So far I have crossed paths with a few of the Columbia guys, not Cavendish yet im afraid or any off the Dutch lads in orange.

In the last few days we have seen quite a bit of a dutch rider called Erik who rode for the continental team Trek Marco Polo this year and is still a pro in Holland next year. A proper nice bloke and someone I’ll hopefully cross paths with during the 2010 season.

So far then, I have clocked over 240miles and burnt 13,365 calories! That’s a lot of eating that needs to be done!

Best get on with it.

Enjoy the snow back home!