I’m very lucky in that for the past 3 years my partner and I have owned an apartment in the beautiful, year round island in the sun of Tenerife.

We bought it almost on a whim… whilst on a family holiday I was doing one of my usual rather long training rides, about 6 hours…  My partner Helen got a little bored and decided to browse the local estate agents… before we knew it 10wks later we were proud owners of a bijou apartment that Helen did a great job converting to a 2 bed contemporary apartment.

This has been a training haven for me!

We try and get out every holiday we can, when time allows and for the last 3 years have made it at new year, April, July and October.  I find its a fantastic way to get some real quality training in on fab roads and in some great temperatures.

I use the weeks we have as mini ‘training camps’,  these are focussed weeks with a specific goal to over load and build my training ‘CTL’ (critical training load).

A typical week for me out here may look like:

Day 1   1.5hr spin off the plane, probably take in a climb to San Isidro or San Miguel and open up a bit

Day 2     3-4 hrs intervals, mixed in intensity and length depending on where we are in the season

Day 3      3 hrs z2 – probably cruise round the flat lands

Day 4     2-4hrs Hill intervals

Day 5      Off

Day 6      Long ride, probably up to the top and circuit back via Los Gigantos

Day 7      Easy 2 hrs pre-flight home 😦

The weather combined with some stunning roads and the opportunity for ‘pro spotting’ make it a perfect destination.

What I love is that there is something for everyone.. If you want you can climb – from our front door – for almost 36m to the cable car station at the top,  right outside the Parador Hotel used by the likes of Team Sky / Astana and many others.  You can choose from the ‘straight up’ route, via San Miguel and Vilaflor that I used when I ‘Everested’ Mt Tiede in 2014 (that’s ride the height of Everest in 1 ride… that’s 4.25x up!),   Strava – Everesting Mt Tiede Oct 2014

Or you can choose the more gradual, about 5% gradient climb from Grenadilla – this is my favourite and is my ‘test’ climb.  I will do FTP or sweet spot sessions on here – its great as I know exactly where I am in my form building.  Its about 13km and has lovely switchbacks, sheltered and exposed sections and some thing for everyone.

Alternatively you can head from Los Cristianos via Arona,  this is pretty steep around La Camella, but is a great climb… the reverse descent this way is AWESOME – the roads stretches out in a constant stream of hairpins and gradual bends – its truly a great descent… the Strava best time to descend is about 30mins from Boca Tauce at the top of the crater to Los Cristianos – near 38mph…!!!….  I’m just outside the top 10 on this – so far!!!

If you need or want a flat easy day then you can ride round Las Galletas / Palm Mar and Guargaucho… perfect as a recovery day.

If you are feeling particularly sadistic you could head round a ‘Tour of Tenerife’ – something I did in October 2015 (see strava Tour of Tenerife – Oct 2015 there is 3 hrs of ‘missing data here where I forgot to restart my Garmin!).

There are some great rides on the North of the island – and some bloomin’ steep stuff too… its where Chris Froome has one of his epic test climbs that (I think) is over 25%.

Or alternatively you can just sit by the beach, drink cocktails and enjoy the sun!

El Medano which is just 8km away has a fab bike shop Bikepoint- El Medano BikePoint that offers great value rentals on high quality bikes as well as repairs and purchases – yes I succumbed and bought my fab Tenerife bike from them last year… an ex-rental for a bargain price!

El Medano is also a world renowned Kite board location and has some fab chilled out beach side bars and restaurants

The weather here is great Weather Averages Tenerife.

Try it its worth it in so many ways.

Andy Jackson

Jan 2016