Heavy legs. Sluggish progress on the way to work. General feeling of weariness, and the ability to sleep for ever. Either I’ve overtrained, or I’m about to reap the benefits of a big chunk of training. With less than three weeks to go until the Absa Cape Epic with marathonMTB.com teammate Mike, let’s hope it’s the latter!
Many northern hemisphere riders will probably recognize this feeling as the aftermath of a week away training in the sun at this time of year. For me and my London Dynamo road clubmates, Tenerife was our destination of choice. For a week at a time, sunny home from home to many an overweight, lobster-sunburned Brit abroad, tucking into a local Full English fry-up and going out clubbing. But also for the week just gone, home to 13 skinny blokes on road bikes.
And how smug we felt – sub-zero temperatures back home; even Majorca had rain; and there we were on mostly smooth roads in temperatures in the early 20s and predominantly sunshine. Excellent conditions to get a ton of riding in. Apart from week-long stage races, I think this was more riding than I’d done in a single week – 30+ hours riding, getting on for 20,000m of climbing.
The island of Tenerife is effectively one big hill – a dormant volcano, with the sharp-looking rocks to prove it, and the slopes rising straight from sea level up to a highest road at 2,300m and a peak at 3,700m. We were staying by the sea, so you couldn’t really help but do quite a lot of climbing. Even our “rest” day had 1,500m of climbing in it. It’s pretty spectacular to be able to leave the front door of the apartment and ride uphill for more than two hours straight.
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