When I count up all the brilliant places I get to visit, or live in, or pass through, they’re in their hundreds.
When I try and recount whether or not I have made the most of all the places I’ve been in, the answer is a resounding no. I decided that was about to change.
For the last three years I have spent the winter on the South-East coast of Spain in my apartment down here.
I haven’t left Andalucia, the Southern most province of Spain. I have two ex-teammates in Girona, a 10 hour drive northwards.
Different roads and my friends were the biggest attractions. However, the stars must align…
My job description is to make sure on any given day I am able to race to the best of my ability to best serve the desired result of my team.
That means in December I am thinking about racing in June and how to arrive with the form too best complete my job on that specific race day.
You have to consider how the trip will affect training you’ve done, training you will do, and the training surrounding the days which you travel. I had two conveniently placed rest-days for both the outbound and return trip.
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I was team-mates with Edward Greene on Marco Polo in 2012. We did a four hour ride together and a two hour ride with 2 x 15 minute intervals.
I hadn’t cracked three hours 30 minutes since my crash so I was blowing up on the four hour ride.
With Stephen Hyde (my teammate on Astellas in 2014/15), we did 5 x 5 minute efforts up Rocacorba – one of the famous climbs here.
Stephen dropped me.
I had to take a mental note each time to make sure I reminded myself I am still recovering and what I am doing now will come to fruition in July.
The lesson learned was to make the most of my current lifestyle while seamlessly fitting my training and recovery around each opportunity as well as don’t forget to look around whilst training… my Garmin isn’t too interesting anymore after eight years!
