Hola from Spain!

A few years ago, before either of us even considered triathlon, we invested in a holiday home in Spain. The rationale back then was that with 6 kids between us it would cost just as much to pay a mortgage on a foreign property for a year as it would to give our offspring a continental holiday each summer.

The kids have grown up since then and are not too interested in going on holiday with their parents but rather fortunately for us our house is situated in just about perfect triathlon training terrain. We’re inland with loads of great roads, hills and mountains and scenic lakes. There are some challenging run routes, off-road and on-road and the village has just installed a lovely 25m outdoor pool. Perfecto!

We keep a couple of road bikes out here to train on and on this trip we invested in a mountain bike each. We didn’t intend to, but we ambling through a 2^nd hand market on Saturday laughing about the amount of useless tat that they had on sale when we spotted two bikes that looked in ok nick. In fact, the woman’s bike looked like it had hardly been used. The vendor was selling them for 60 Euro each (cheap for Spain!) but we managed to get them for 80 Euro for the pair. I spent a couple of hours getting the gears indexed, brakes working and a general lube and they were good to go.

It has been several years since I mountain biked and I forgot how much fun it was. The trails here are great but the ones I took Rach on for her first ever MTB ride may have been a little advanced.

We’ve been out on the bikes every day since we’ve been here so far and a couple of runs. The weather at this time of the year is perfect, low 20s Celcius. In the summer it gets a bit too hot and training is restricted to earlier or later in the day – especially running.

We try and get out here as much as we can these days. We came out just for a long weekend about 3 weeks before The Outlaw in the summer and it was perfect for getting the peak training sessions in without the distractions that come with being at home. When there’s nothing else to do other that train, rest, relax and eat & drink then it makes it easy and the scenery here makes it much more pleasurable. I know a lot of people who go on training camps for this sort of thing, but it’s nice to have it there available whenever you need it. I’m hoping it’s one of those little advantages I can use in my favour on the quest for a Kona spot next year!!

Anyway, must dash – got a mountain I need to climb. Adios!!

TTFN!