Sunday 6 February 2011

26 days in Aquilas!

Home from Spain after 26 days.

Was one of the best experiences ever, have learnt so much, and it was a fantastic opportunity to get my fitness up after being sick over the Christmas period.

Flew out on the 6th of January to meet up with the Scottish Triathlon Squad who had been out since the 3rd and stayed with them until the 17th.The weather was fantastic for that 1st period with it getting up to 24*C which was a far cry from what we had been used to over Christmas.

Training was great with the guys even if I struggled the 1st couple of days trying to get fit, but as the saying goes – ‘no pain no gain’, and it didn’t take long until I was starting to get my legs back.

The banter was also brilliant mainly thanks to a number of the guys; lets say “experimenting” with different hair colours. This made for a couple of nights entertainment as they were never happy with the changes. One night it was blonde the next morning it was ginger, the next night it was red the following morning it was pink. Never really what they were aiming for, but it was all a good laugh.

On the 17th Jan I moved down into town near the ‘Don Juan’ when the Irish team came.

It was a good way to mix things up and kept things interesting, rather than staying in the one place for the whole camp. It was brilliant with the Irish team, we had a great set up with a lot of support staff; Physiologist-Declan, physio-Deirdre, masseuse- Marty , strength and conditioning- Martina, and cycling coach- Tommy.

The training was fantastic, really bringing my swimming and cycling on very strong. Some great long rides and plenty of climbing, especially Big Bertha and Campo Lopes, to name the main ones.

Campo Lopes >
and Big Bertha V









We had some good swim sessions thrown in as well like 40x100 off 1.20, definitely going down as one of my favourite swim sets. ( I know; I’m a bit of a freak)

It was also a great opportunity to get some physio from Deidre, and see what she thought of my stress fractures. (we think they are coming on well and will soon be fully healed (fingers crossed).)

Our apartments were extremely cold as there was no heating and the sun never hit them, we ended up having to invest in a few fan heaters to try and heat the place up, we also found out that when you have three fan heaters on, an oven, all the hobs, and a microwave on it is possible to fuse the whole apartment. Unfortunately it resulted in eating our dinner in the dark.


One major benefit to our apartment was the Panaderia just below which resulted in buying a chocolate croissant nearly everyday . :)

I had planned to stay for 5weeks but as I still hadn’t booked a return flight I decided to head home slightly earlier than planned and I ended up coming home when the Irish team left instead of moving back into the Scottish camp for another week. This means I can spend a bit more time at home before I head back to University until Easter time.

This has been an amazing experience and one that has really reinforced the fact that I want to be a professional Triathlete, I just loved the lifestyle.

I know I havn’t kept this updated as much as I should but I will get better at it, keep reading as I do all in my power to chase the dream.



No comments:

Post a Comment