WITC at Fuerteventura

March 21-28, 2015

In 2014, my friends at WITC organized the first WITC Triathlon Training Camp in Crete, where a bunch of guys and girls from the club went for a week to train for the upcoming triathlon season.  I wasn't able to join, but heard it was a lot of fun.  So when the location for 2015 was picked - Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, I had to be there.

When I hear the words "triathlon training camp", it sounds super intense.  If I went to a professional tri camp, I would expect to be working out all day, pushing my body to the edge of explosion, the whole trip strictly business, no goofing around, and lights out by 9pm.  Of course, this sounds awful.  But when I hear "WITC triathlon training camp", I think manageable (but semi-intense) training, having fun 24-7, goofing around while working out, laying on the beach or by the pool, eating a lot of good food, partying at night, and not getting enough sleep...something more like a vacation, but with daily exercise. And this sounds awesome. Seriously, we are fun people.

Look how fun we are!

Igors did a great job of organizing everything for the week-long event, from the accommodation, food, and swim lane at Oasis Papagayo in Corralejo (the northern part of the island), to making sure we had bike rentals available, and all of the other logistics.  Alan led the afternoon run training and I handled the morning swim workouts (7am what?!), but Igors managed the lion's share.

At the Modlin airport, you could tell that this was a WITC trip, as half of the group went to the bar for food and beer (at 9am) and the other half went to the duty free to stock up on Soplica flavored vodka. We weren't so much into bringing proteins and recovery drinks...we are from Poland afterall.  If you are like me, you wouldn't know that the Canary Islands, although part of Spain, are just off the coast of Africa, near the southern part of Morocco.  So it took 5 hours to fly there!  Most of us were on the same Ryan Air flight...you could tell who the cheap triathletes were...bringing only a small carry-on bag to avoid paying for a checked bag (though they do allow a second small carry-on bag), and we were all WEARING our bike helmets to save space.  Ok, so maybe I was the only one, but whatever.

Oops, my helmet is blocking someone's face

 Fuerteventura isn't a common tourist destination compared to the other Canary (Canarian?) Islands like Tenerife and Grand Canary, but they do get a lot of people on sports holiday.  There were a lot of cyclists all over the island, and our hotel's swimming pool was always full of super fast German swimming machines, disguised as young humans.  These kids swam like dolphins, making us grown-ups look like prehistoric turtles (turtles that can swim, but still turtles).

In the end, there were 21 of us on the trip, including baby Sophie, and Ryan, who came all the way from the US to join us.  I think he likes to come on trips with us just so we can make music videos, like we did on his last trip (and we like him to come on trips so we can make fun of him when he falls asleep at the bar).  Certainly he didn't know what he was getting into joining our training camp.

Part 1: Swim

On the first night we were lucky enough to see their local Carnival parade.  When they told us about the parade, I assumed it would be 100 people, with a bunch of little kids holding balloons and flags, and cover a maximum 3 blocks.  I had no idea it would be so intense.  We walked down to check it out and could hear music from the second we left the hotel.  There were more people in the parade than I imagined on the entire island.  There were dozens of floats of various themes, everyone dressed in elaborate costumes that must have taken weeks to prepare, the floats with built-in bars, everyone drinking and dancing on, near, and around the floats as they slowly rolled down the street for at least a mile.  And there were lots of dudes wearing dresses.  Jay and I were jealous.  We wanted to join the party.  But since we started our swim workouts the next morning, we called it an early night.

Mario shouldn't text when crossing the street

Somehow I was considered the best option to be responsible for swim training every morning.  I don't think it's due to my swimming skills; maybe it's because I was a sucker and agreed to be pool-side by 7am every morning.  Either way, I was happy to do it.  I created a swim program for each day, each with a different focus (stroke length, speed, endurance, sprints, etc), and sent them to our coach Przemek for review.  He either liked them, or didn't even read them, as he simply said "looks good!"  10-12 people showed up each day, and we managed around 1500 meters, including a time trial for 100 meters on the first day.  By the end of the week, a lot of people were either so tired for the time trial that they swam slower, or just didn't bother to show up.  Ryan did really well in the swim, improving the most out of everyone.

It wasn't always warm at 7am

So tan after a week

Each day our schedule looked something like this:
7 am - Morning swim training
8:30 - Breakfast at the hotel
9:30 - Check Facebook on Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi only worked in the mornings)
10 am - Meet for bike ride
10:30 am - Wait for people who are late for bike ride, while filming clips for the music video
1 pm - Stop somewhere for lunch (sometimes drink beers and don't feel like cycling anymore)
5 pm - Alan tries to convince people to run with him
7 pm - Dinner at the hotel (the food was decent and it was nice not to have to think about where to go to dinner)
8 pm - Go to Nico's Belgian Beer Bar down the street
10 pm - Start to fall asleep, sometimes at the bar (i.e. Ryan)
Repeat x6

Ryan asleep at the bar

Part 2: Bike

One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was to make a music video commemorating the trip.  I had picked the song "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars (because nobody else in the world has made a YouTube video to this song before) and asked people to start preparing mentally for their moment in the spotlight.  At every moment I could, I asked people to do some silly choreography for short clips for the video - while chillin at the beach or pool, while waiting for people to get ready for the bike ride, while waiting for our food to come at lunch, while waiting for medical help for Mark M after his accident, and even while we were actually training.  It was a lot of fun to make the video, so you should check it out at the bottom of this post.  (Side note: as I am typing this, the song "Time of our lives" by Pit Bull and Neyo came on the radio, which is the song that Ryan made his video for on this trip...crazy! And yes, we made two music videos because why not?!).

In costume for the video shoot

Ryan's new music video

It was very convenient that the hotel had a bike rental company attached to it, so we could easily pick up our bikes.  We had daily routes of between 50-90 km, while some guys even went 130 one day.  I know my butt, and my butt can't sit on a bike for that long.  There is a very clear point on long training rides when it changes from "this is so great" to "can we just be home already?" I was happy to do shorter rides to make sure I spent most of my time on the happy side of that line.  We all had different levels of ability, so with 20 people, we could easily split into groups and then meet up later.  The most important part of the cycle training was making sure we found a good place to eat.  We managed to find some really nice places, especially on the beach.

Cruising around the island

Beach lunch

The terrain ranged from desert and sand dunes to hills and trees, fighting rain and wind, on smooth and bumpy roads, and everything in between.  I wouldn't call it the most scenic riding, but generally it was pretty good and we didn't fight too much car traffic.  Everything was fine except when Mark got into a small accident, running into the guard railing at a roundabout and requiring medical attention (Dr. Dagna to the rescue!) and rest for the remainder of the trip.  And this is how we became good friends with Nico.  Mark has a special radar for these types of things, and after his injury, they spent every afternoon together (i.e. Mark was at the bar every afternoon).  Funny side note: on our taxi ride to the airport, the taxi driver told Mark that he remembered him from the accident.  It seems like everyone on the island knew about it since it happened at a big intersection.

We spent a day hanging out on the dunes

Nico became such a big part of our trip, we had our end of trip closing ceremony at the bar, he let us dominate the karaoke stage and play our songs and videos on their equipment (although his dad was having a birthday and he and his friends literally sounded like the Jersey Boys when singing...we were put to shame).

At Nico's every night!

Part 3: Run

You could really call us sick for doing triathlons on a daily basis, but that's basically what some of us did.  After getting back from cycling, there were usually runs from 5-8 km, but I didn't always manage.  Some people would rather spend time sightseeing around the island, which was understandable.  But if I wasn't running, I was at Nico's.  Anyway, just a couple km down the road was the beach, so it was nice to do some short runs around the area.  And Alan always organized something nice.

Beach running/exploring/selfie-sticking

Post-run stretch at the pool

I knew I really had a problem when on my "day off", I still managed to swim for an hour, lift weights at the gym for an hour, and run 10 km.  So basically my day off just meant "don't spend 5 hours on a bike; go to the gym instead".  But this is what the trip did to me.  It made training with everyone fun. We still managed to have an amazing time, having a great time when not exercising, burning (and eating) millions of calories, and everyone could do as little or as much as they wanted.

When we weren't swimming, cycling, or running, we were squatting

It became such a comfortable routine to meet at the pool every morning, knowing you'd have company at our assigned table in the restaurant every breakfast and dinner, and hanging out at Nico's (with Nico) every night.  I don't know how else to convince you, but you should definitely join us next year.  Then you can be a part of the next music video.  Enjoy!

Official 2015 WITC Triathlon Camp music video