Tenerife Training Camp.

I'm currently sat on the plane, cruising at 37,000 feet. Roughly the amount of climbing I did during the last 8 days. What a great 8 days we have had here on the volcano "el Teide"!

My "intenso" group at the summit of the main climb.... 2100m, around 1900m climb from the hotel.

I have never previously been a guide on such a full on training camp, so going into the week there were many questions and wondering about what was going to happen. I am always quite anal about the details and not knowing was a wee bit stressy you could say. The big advantage was that I know quite a lot of our punters before we flew out. So a bit less concerning than a full group of new people to get to know. At the best of times I struggle with being social for long periods so a week was going to test me out, we as guides were incredibly lucky to have such a great group of people to spend and share the week with. A massive variation of personalities, backgrounds, cycling ability and ambitions for the week. But we all had a single strong interest in enjoying riding our bikes. Myself, Laurence and the other two guides arrived the day before the majority of the guests to start to set up the hotel, room and bike maintenance area. So Saturday I had a chance to take Laurence onto a few roads I knew and to very quickly tune in his climbing legs! :-) That done we had a quick shower and was ready to welcome Justin's first mini bus load of guests.

Paul (on my wheel) enjoying my pacing, and James rather not by the looks of it....

We had pre set three rides for the week, "intenso", "medio" and "cappuccino". People selected the group they thought they would suit and the Sunday morning we set off. We had deliberately set the first rides pretty light and not too much climbing, too often people ride too hard on the first day or two then are flagging for the rest of the week..., I think one or two might have done this but mostly people paced things well. My group were mostly there for good long rides, with limited stops trying to sit in what we call "zone 2". This is a pace you can ride at for several hours and something you struggle to get in the uk this time of year. One or two of our group wanted to do some structured intervals and this also worked well as the climbs here are an hour or two so people were able to regroup at the summits or spin back and help the later riders finish off the last few k's. Mid week we as guides thought it would be nice to pull all groups together for a "resty" type day. So we rolled mostly down hill and met up at a pre arranged town on the coast. This seemed to be a success, feedback from the not so experienced members of the group was that they learnt a lot from the other people. So I think this is something we can do again. Getting towards the end of the week I kept reminding people to stay safe descending as they would now be mentally tired as well as physically. Thankfully we had only one very very minor "off", which was stationary not I clipping fast enough. And only a light ego bruising. I was really pleased everyone rode safely and we had no traumas. (Mosquito bites and allergic reactions don't count I believe..!)

Passing the Medio group, some rather lively coloured socks.... Been seen i guess!

So from being pretty nervous pre camp I actually really enjoyed it. Some people even said I wasn't as unsociable as normal so this tells its own story of how great our group was. Feedback from my group has been good and I would like to say it was a pleasure guiding all of you, and giving some people "the hand of God" up the climbs on the rest day ride! :-) We are currently discussing next years camp already... So watch this space for more information or message me. Hope all who came out with us had as good a time as we did and hope to catch up with new friends very soon.... Chilly uk... 3hrs away.... :-/ Thanks as always for reading. Safe riding!

*Obviously this was written 2 days ago for those eagle eyes readers....! Not sat at Altitude right now ;)