JBST Camp Days 1 and 2
Day 1 of the camp consisted of a 90 minute swim first thing (which I missed due to an ear infection) with Dan Bullock videoing individual swimmers, followed in the afternoon by a two hour bike ride through Soo, Tiagua, La Florida, Tinajo and back to Club la Santa.
The bike ride was quite hilly, but where isn’t in Lanzarote? (385 m of climbing, according to the CLS guide book). We’d self-seeded ourselves into Slow, Intermediate and Fast groups, which seemed to work out quite well, with the faster groups taking slightly longer routes, ensuring that we all arrived back at roughly the same time.
After the run, we had a track running session with Joe, who emphasized the benefits of nose-breathing when running to determine your approximate 80% max heart rate.
In the evening we had a very interesting lecture from Pete Slater from Science in Sport (SIS) about their range of nutrition products.
Day 2 started with an 8 or 12 km run with Phil Price in the morning. Again, the run was well organised, with the runners all regrouping at the 8 km break-off point, giving the slower runners (myself included) a chance to catch up and the option of the shorted 8 km route, instead of the full 12 km. As usual, I started out too fast, and paid the price later! After a quick cooling of our legs in the pool, it was time for the swim session.
The afternoon bike ride was again 40 km out to Timanfaya (Fire Mountain) and back, ably led by Phil and women’s Tour de France stage winner Tanja Slater. The ride felt good, although my PowerTap was playing up, showing ‘Data’ on the bottom line of the display – there doesn’t appear to be anything in the manual about this, so I’ve changed the battery in the head unit (again!). It also wouldn’t download into PowerAgent, so I suspect that somehow the data on the device had become corrupt.
Tomorrow’s sole event is the longest ride of the camp – an estimated 5 hours up to Tabayesco and back. The climb of Tabayesco itself is a 10 km climb, famously climbed single-legged by CSC team boss and 1996 Tour de France winner Barne Riis – I suspect his time for one leg will be a lot faster than mine with both!
