Tenerife Training Camp

A couple of weeks ago I came back from Tenerife on a training camp. I had a great time out in Tenerife training with Eleanor Haresign and Steve Berry, we were staying near the Tenerife Top trainig facility which was great as it had some fantastic facilities such as:

• Open air 50 meter swimming goal
• Open air 25 meter swimming food
• 333 meter running track, sounds rubbish but was great and handy if doing Kilometer reps.
• State of the art Endless pool for video analysis
• Two gyms, one outside and one indoors.

I managed to get some good training in while i was there. The highlights were:

• an 8 hour ride with Steve which was great fun and a little bit longer then we expected! 🙂
• nice warm weather and being able to train in shorts and T-shirt everyday.
• Getting video analysis in a state of the art endless pool.
• A brick session up mount Teide with the run at altitude

If I’m honest the downsides of the camp for me were the food at the hotel was pretty shocking, very greassy lots of cheap meat. Also I didn’t really have anyone to train with other then a few pool swims with eli and a bit of cycling with Steve. I think in the future I’m not going to bother going away on a training camp unless I know there will be a group of athletes and I will be in a squad environment as for me that’s the environment I thrive in where your pushed in hard training sessions and you want to beat the others around you! That’s what motivates me and what I enjoy!

This may not be the cheery training camp post which you normally read where people harp on about how good there training camp was and about how much fitter they have come back, I do hope thouggh that it hows you that you don’t have to go on a training camp to get the best out of yourselves. Sometimes the best training set up is on your doorstep! For me I’ll swim with the Swans back at home, run with City of Norwich on a Tuesday, and have a few good training partners who will join me week in week out for tough sessions on the bike.

One big factor which also put me off with regards to going away was the food. Normally I’ll stick to a strict nutrition plan and its been going really well. However the food at the hotel where I was staying at was very bad and I ended up gaining 3KGs in 2 weeks! A hell of a lot of weight, aa lot of it was water retention which I think may be because I had a reaction to something.

of course it wasn’t anything to do with this! 🙂

I did a 10 mile running race on the Sunday when I arrived back and although lining up on the start line at just under 80KGs I managed 53 minutes 30. This wasn’t bad but I ws hoping for a bit faster, I got to 5 miles in 26m10 where i had a 30 second lead, unfortunitly I died in the last half and did the faster last half in 27 minutes. I felt strong in the race but just heavy and got caugt with one mile to! Absolute nightmare but fair play to him!

Sine the race and getting back into my normal routine and sticking to my own nutrition I am now back down to around 77.5 which is much better and I’m feeling really good. I’m hoping by Challenge Dubai I will be around 76 Kilos and if I am I think I will be in a great position to execute a fantastic race as I’m Swimming, Cycling and running very well in training!

Another new bit of news to add is that I have a new sponsor Luke1977. This is a great British clothing company which does very stylish casual clothes and sports wear which I will be wearing at the events and on top of the podium! 🙂

Finished the camp off with one of the best cocktails I have ever had, only 5 Euros as well!

Just want to say before I go I did enjoy Tenerife just don’t think you have to go abroad and train to get the most out of yourself sometimes the perfect environment is on your own doorstep!