There's a place that you always can go to...

...and that place is not so far away...

Think I might be stuck with the Club La Santa tune in my head for a long while yet (and possibly visions of Rich dancing to it)! Though driving along the bumpy, pot-holed road to Strathblane today and the lovely road surface of Lanzarote was feeling fairly distant.

Had an awesome holiday. 260 miles cycling, 7 miles swimming and 7 running, along with 3hr threshold level dancing on the last night! Thought I'd do a wee bit more running than that but the roads were just so lovely I couldn't resist doing more cycling and decided not to trash my legs running. I'm REALLY really loving my new bike. I'm even learning how to descend faster, mainly because I got so mad that I was beating people up the hills but they were leaving me for dust on the downs!

The biggest climb of the island, up to mirador de Haria had a fantastic cafe which I think we visited at least 4 times (twice on one ride - they had lovely madaleines and it was a really big climb, from either side). The Delta Force of me, Alan, Ian, Harry and Dougiepedia took in almost all the cafes of the island so I'm now feeling a bit of an expert on where to get the cheapest, sugariest cakes and the best bocadillos. The record was three cafes in one day, from Teguise to Tabayesco, Haria, Mozaga, Yeiza and Timanfaya.

Apparently the roadie thing is to drink a lot of coke during rides so I'll probably be visiting my dentist a lot in the next few months too. It amazed me a at how little some of the people from the club were eating while out on the bike. Not sure if I'm just weird or if that's why I managed to recover better from day to day as quite a few people had to have rest days. I think the Nuun electrolyte drink after every ride must have helped as well as it's hard not to get dehydrated.

Swimming at 7am every morning, when it's still dark and in an unheated outdoor pool was a bit of a shock to the system and by the end of the week I was wearing my wetsuit as it was the only way to last the session. Got filmed swimming and had some useful feedback from Masie and Steve. I've now realised that what I think I'm doing in the water bears very little relation to what I'm actually doing - mainly because my shoulders just aren't flexible enough to move into the right position. I'm sure the same has been said about my hip flexors / kicking ability. So maybe I'll just give up training and spend my days stretching instead!

I had a lot of fun with the girls in our flat - mainly drinking tea, stretching and getting a great massage from Jo. Also fun to watch the club efforts at volleyball. Not quite everyone's forte (especially mine) - I think the boys had been 'training' through watching the Danish national volleyball team - the girls actually do play in bikinis! Might take me a while to get over Ken's white lycra (why would anyone think that was a good idea?). Was really nice to be out with lots of crazy people, all with different ambitions for the racing season, whether sprints or ironman. Nice as well not to be the one always at the back, the way I was at all the sprint tris last year. I'm definitely an endurance bunny! Was also nice to see that I wasn't the only lightweight of the group and by 9.30pm most nights everyone was generally tucked up in bed.

Had a lovely time and now back home, dreaming of smooth roads and wishing I was falling asleep in the sunshine during stretch and relax!

Bought the new bike a return to Scotland present of a new stem. I'd been feeling it was a bit short and the guy in the shop said it's pretty unusual to have a 90mm stem on a road bike (maybe a bizarre Kona thing?) so I've changed it for a 120mm and will see if that makes me a bit more stable.