GAB Spring Training Camp - Tenrife

So I am just back from 10 days in Tenerife. What a great place to ride! We arranged a bike through www.tenerife-training.com. A nice durable stead, outfitted with new Vredestein tires. It was my first chance to ride them, and they performed great. Special thanks to Dr Leslie for the set-up. The island is a riders paradise, just do not expect much in the way of flat. Our first climb was 22 miles from Los Cristianos to Teide. It was a beautiful sunny day, with temps ranging from 50-70. Thank god for the great scenery, otherwise a climb like that would be killer. Once we reached the summit of the climb we were awe struck with the open expanse before us. Teide is a Volcano reaching 13000', the basin surrounding it lies between 6500-8000'. We road across the basin to the highest point and returned to Los Cristianos by the same route. While traversing the basin we caught our first glimpse of the pro's training in the area. Several Astana, and Katusha riders were on the island. We passed the daily, it seems they were doing a 107 mile loop everyday. Awesome seeing them. I usually enjoy descents more than the climbs, but this was not the case for this one. 22 miles descending was relentless with the sharp turns and steep grades. We made it back with about 4-5 hours of riding and 9-10000 feet of climbing.
Day 2 brought us to a more civil route along the edge of the mountains. This road started with a 4 mile climb, and proceeded in nice rolling fashion for 37 miles. We turned around in a town called Fasnia. The first day we rode with water packs, not knowing what kind of supplies were available on the road. We learned that each town usually had a grocery store, or convenience store, so we rode with some euros and GU. The scenery today range from views of the sea, and mountains with terraced vinyards, banana plantations and citrus orchards. We use some of the day to put some higher intensity efforts, which made the rollers quite fun. We finished with 4 hours on the bike and 6500' feet of climbing.
For an easier day the next day we decided to drive up to the Teide basin and do an out and back across the top. Nice rest day, 26 miles with 2500' of climbing. We enjoyed ouselves taking the tram to the top of Teide. Whoa was it chilly and windy. We intended to hike the remaining 1000' feet to the summit, but decided against it in the face of the sub- freezing windchill. Decked out in spring attire, we were not ready for this.
Day 4 we decided to hit a little harder. We set out for the Teide climb at Tempo. We climbed up to the basin, traversed the entire basin to the park border on the far side, and returned to Los Cristianos. The round trip, was around 75-80 miles with around 10000' of climbing. This time we had to climb through some clouds on our way up. It was cold and wet. We dried off in the sun as we traversed the basin, but we froze on the descent. I hate that descent!
The next days were more of the same alternating between longer and shorter rides, either riding somewhere on the old road, or riding to the summit, or a combination of the 2.
All I can say is that was a great way to finish off the Base 3 period. Maybe we can return in force one day.