Lawrence Fanous لورنس فانوس: 2014 kicks off with a bang

Training in Spain, where the rain falls mainly… no… no rain! J

My pre-season training started quite late this year due to a late race season in 2013, which only finished in Hong Kong on October 27th. Training started officially at the end of November after about 3 weeks off. My plan was to keep things pretty low key and not really pick it up much until after Christmas. The main reason for this was that my race season is going to go very long into 2014 and I wanted to delay getting super-fit until a bit later than last season so that my body (and mind) could carry on racing all the way into November.

The main aim this season is to improve my running as that has been consistently the part of my race that has been letting me down after strong swim and bikes. The approach my coach and I decided to take was the high-mileage approach. This is something that I have never really touched much on as I never felt that my body could cope with the stress of high mileage running on top of the rest of my tri training. But after 2 years of consistent running mileage and pretty much no injuries we decided it would be time to start to really lift the mileage on my run. So while my running picked up quickly in terms of hours/week I kept cycling mileage relatively low with just 3 rides per week to give running a chance to increase without any injury problems.

So after being asked if I wanted to join many of the British national team athletes in Spain on the 6th of January by one of the coaches, I decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to get my training bumped up to where it really needs to be going into the next Olympic cycle!

The camp base for the British squad this year, as it has been for many years, is a sleepy little Spanish fishing and farming town called Aguilas, just south of Cartagena and Murcia. This part of Spain has 300 days of sunshine per year on average so the likelihood of rain is low and the average temperature is around 10degrees warmer than in Loughborough. It makes for perfect training conditions and Aguilas has everything the pro triathlete needs to get a good winter’s training in.

The town is super quiet at this time of year, which makes the roads in the mountains around the town very quiet and safe for cycling. The town is also surrounded by huge lettuce fields and orange, grapefruit and lemon groves, which all have great dirt tracks running around almost every border – these make amazing terrain for run sessions because you can keep the impact lower by staying off the tarmac or the track. There is also of course the sea just 5 minutes from our apartment, which conveniently has buoys out for swim sessions and a great coastal trail, which is amazing to run on! Probably one of my top 5 ever runs when the sun is setting in the evening! The pool is also just a short drive away (or a 10min run if you’re feeling spritely after swimming!)

The apartment I’m staying in is perfect, very comfortable and is a great place to relax and recover in between sessions and in the evenings. It has a small pool, which while not good for swimming due to the size and temperature IS good for icing my legs after hard sessions! Having some great flat mates to share with (Joel and Cat Jameson and Iestyn Harrett), who are also some of my training partners from Loughborough, as well as some of the other guys from the Loughborough training centre (Adam Bowden, Morgan Davies, Sophie Coldwell and Aaron Harris) Aguilas has been a great place to train for the last 2 weeks.

With regard to the training, my cycling mileage has been hiked up a lot, with some 4 and 5 hour rides and the run mileage is still high, with no niggles and I have been doing 2 hard sessions per week within that. Swimming is also going great and so I am starting to feel in good shape all round – it seems that it doesn't take very long to get fit these days!

Here are some pictures of the camp.