Recommendations for tri holiday?
nicnacnoo100
Posts: 3
in General Chat
Hi all,
Been browsing the forum for a while now and amazed at how helpful folks here are.
Here's a challenge for you: looking for a coastal holiday place in Europe that caters to both triathletes (with facilities such as bike hire etc.) and their other halves, who are perhaps a bit less actively inclined.
The only time me and my wife can both travel this year is end of August, which is 3 weeks before the London Triathlon - around the time when my training regime should be at its most intensive.. So, looking for place where she can have some blissful rest while I beaver away on the bike/track and in the pool.
Any recommendations?
kfjat
Been browsing the forum for a while now and amazed at how helpful folks here are.
Here's a challenge for you: looking for a coastal holiday place in Europe that caters to both triathletes (with facilities such as bike hire etc.) and their other halves, who are perhaps a bit less actively inclined.
The only time me and my wife can both travel this year is end of August, which is 3 weeks before the London Triathlon - around the time when my training regime should be at its most intensive.. So, looking for place where she can have some blissful rest while I beaver away on the bike/track and in the pool.
Any recommendations?
kfjat
0
Comments
www.les-stables.com
Or hit up La Manga in southern Spain - awesome place
I considered Les Stables and am definitely planning to pay them a visit at some point, but perhaps a bit later, when the other half is already hooked up to tri too (sshhhh... there's a top secret, very elaborate and probably relatively long-term plan for that in action as we speak..
Will check out that Spanish place you mention, could be an option. Been thinking Lanzarote too, but not sure which resort (apart from La Santa, of course..) would fit the bill..
Beautiful scenery, great training and a superb style of life.
http://tri-topia.com/
And of course there's Club La Santa, etc.
Found what looks like a fabulous hotel: http://www.vanityhotels.com/hotel.php?hotel=vcms&lng=en, and a bike rental place just round the corner with some pretty darn good kit to hire (Cube carbon with Ultegra groupset and Di2 shifting - why am I getting a sneaky feeling this will make me throw my humble Allez Elite away and spend my last hard-earned penny on a new bike when I'm back?): http://www.m-bike.com/index.htm.
We're off end of August, and I'll make sure to report back when we return - who knows, may well save someone a few hours of online research.
Thanks again everyone for your input.
I noticed when I was posting my previous post that the nicks don't match - must be a weird glitch in 220's database mapping..
Frankly, a bit disappointed to see these posts - you want to be helpful and you get a virtual slap in the face as a result.
Very glad if you're not a spammer
Agree it's a shame about the spam - hopefully the admins will manage to eradicate it, this forum has been a very useful resource.
To start with, let me quickly reiterate who we are and what we were after in our trip. A couple, no kids, he: beginner triathlete preparing for London Tri, she: slightly intrigued by the whole tri thing, but not to the point where she'd actually do something about it (not yet anyway
ACCOMMODATION
We stayed at Vanity Suites in Cala Mesquida, in the North-east of Mallorca (http://www.vanityhotels.com/hotel.php?hotel=vcms&lng=en). Adult only hotel, so relatively quiet and non-invasive. Pretty good food on site, so not an awful lot of incentive to move around. This said, Cala Mesquida is a tiny place so not much to do in the evenings etc. (you'd have to drive / grab a cab to Cala Ratjada about 5 miles down the road). If anyone has a bit of a “Monk” syndrome, the hotel is super clean, which is great.
Overall score for accommodation: 8 / 10.
BIKE HIRE
Found a place called M-Bike (http://www.m-bike.com/) in Cala Ratjada, 10-minute drive from the hotel. Owned by a few MTB-crazy Germans who run the business as a general bike hire place and MTB guided tours operator. All bikes are Cube, whether you're after a roadie or a mountain bike. The roadie I got was a Cube Agree GTC Race: http://www.cube.eu/road/road-race/agree-gtc-race/, with carbon frame and Shimano 105 groupset (Ultegra Di2 available too, for a slightly higher rental fee). Did an excellent job out on the road for me.
Overall bike hire experience score: 9 / 10 (one point deducted for the fact their website is in German only - although they do speak English if you email/call them).
Bike
Even though north east of Mallorca isn't exactly the part of the island where pro cycling teams go to practice in the spring (they typically park themselves in the Alcudia region), the area abounds in interesting cycle routes if you're keen enough to look for them. I did a few morning rides during the 9 days we were staying there and enjoyed them thoroughly. Not a metre of flat course in sight though - the roads ondulate constantly as they weave around the numerous hills and mountains. Hill work itself is generally moderately difficult (5-8% grade in most places), but the road can go up and up and up seemingly forever, so a slightly different experience from Surrey Hills. If you’re up for some off-road play, there's literally tons of MTB trails to take advantage of too.
Riding "experience" is generally excellent - not a lot of cars around and most major roads have been resurfaced recently so the surface is smooth and comfy to ride on. The roads typically also have space on the side (a cycle lane of sorts), so most of the time you find yourself riding outside the "traffic proper". And the views are simply breathtaking.
One negative observation – you can get some gravel from the roadside, which can be bad news for your inner tubes - certainly was for mine on my first ride - so make sure you have spares when you ride out.
Overall bike score: 9.5/10.
The hotel pool is certainly big enough to fit in some practise - 43m across if you believe my 910xt’s GPS. It gets too busy during the day for a proper session (think holiday floating aficionados etc.), but it’s usually empty until about 9.30 AM and after 6.30 PM, so there’s plenty of time to play with. No lines on the bottom to hold onto, so one might actually consider practicing some sighting too.
My overall swim score: 8.5 /10 .
Run
Funnily enough, the run part was the one that gave me most grief. Because Cala Mesquida is a tiny place, there is little standard “urban” running space that you can use for a workout. This means that you’re either out on the road (people did that but I’m not a big fan for safety reasons), or take your running training into the wild, which invariably means hills and high probability of ankle twists etc. This said, I did a couple of these hill runs (to Cala Agulla and Cala Torta) and while the experience itself is difficult, the views at the destination compensate any hardships.
My overall run score: 6.5/10
So that’s it – summing up all the scores we come up with 41.5/50, or 83%. I think that's a pretty strong “YES” as far as recommendation goes.
Here's a photo from one of the sunrise rides I did: [img:1hvevz0v]http://www.justgiving.com/Utils/imaging.ashx?width=400&imageType=frpphoto&img=82012%2f203b0a6f-7d1e-48ca-98b4-68f230025171.jpg[/img:1hvevz0v]
220 forum post of 2012
But then when you're lounging at the pool you have plenty of time to tap away on your phone..