I escaped the cold in Germany for two weeks, from 27th December 2008 to 10th January 2009. The holiday was intended as a training camp without a rigid training plan, but with some serious riding and lots of fun. I managed to get all that and more.

Winter weather in the Canaries is always a bit mixed, so I knew I had to expect some rain and cool temperatures. We did have a rain storm on the fourth day, but in the south, it wasn’t so serious. All in all, I had pretty good weather although I did need a jacket for all my descents, which would sometimes start at a height of nearly 2000m.

Gran Canaria, like all Canary islands, is an extinct volcano, which means that it is steep, has practically no flat areas at all and that its flanks are covered with “barrancos” (ravines). If you would circle the whole island with its mere 50 km in diametre along the coast, you would roughly ascent 4000m. Cycling up into the mountains and descending some other place always means you have to ride up to at least 1200m and ascend more than 2000m in such a trip. The island is great to train endrance and force and I met some professionals (Quickstep, Merida, Swisspower) during my stay. In 14 days I ascended 20,520 m, a result I am quite satisfied with.

I highly recommend taking a cyclocross bike or even a Mountian bike with different tires to Gran Canaria. Some asphalt roads are quite bad and some just end in dirt roads without a warning. I definitely had most fun when I was riding off road, even when I had a spectacular crash, overlooking a huge stone on a wide forest road, which made me fall onto the handlebar, carreen on for another 20m with the front wheel twisted half sideways until I slammed the handlebar into the ground, brake levers first. The results were quite spectacular, both on my bke and my left knee, but luckily, the damage was only cosmetical and could be repaired quite easily. I will probably have scars on my knee the next ten years, but that’s what knees were invented for, weren’t they?

Here’s a link to some of the better pictures I took. It is only one page:

http://www.gregorarndt.de/Biking/Bike_pics/Bike_Trips/GranCanaria2009/i ndex.htm