Mallorca, Spain - 21cc triathlon camp

Our triathlon club 21cc does spring training camp in a warm weather country.  This year was Mallorca, Spain and Chris and I got to go and have some fun.  We packaged our bikes in two big cardboard boxes, stuffing every available space with bike shoes, clothes and nutrition.  Then dropped them of at a warehouse where a truck picked all the bikes from our club and drove them to Mallorca.

Chris went for two weeks, I only went for one week.  During that week my parents drove from Lithuania to watch the boys for one week: to feed them, do homework, bathe them, put them in a taxi at 7:20am every morning and to receive them at 3:30pm.  While in Mallorca, we stayed in all inclusive Ferrer hotel in Can Picafort on the East side of the island.  

View from our hotel window

Trainings were very intense starting at 8am morning exercise, then breakfast fallowed by 10am bike for 2-4 hours, lunch and evening workout entailing either swimming or running, dinner at last and 8:30pm group meeting.  Wednesday and Saturday were days off only with a morning swim.  

This is our daily running trail that goes along the Mediterranean sea and winds through a warm and quiet bush land in the back.  

What impressed us the most was how friendly the whole island is to biking community.  We went there in the of season and it turned out to be bikers paradise.   Roads are very clean and freshly pawed.  Drivers are friendly to bikers and almost every hotel caters to bikers as well.  They have bike garages where each wall space is taken by a hanging bike.  One funny thing about the Spanish culture is that they love their siestas and if you didn't get your bike in the morning then the garage is closed from 1-3pm.

My biking group mostly consisted of Dennis and 7 month pregnant Ursell - she is a beast! Other groups were for the fast and furious riders but we were sight seeing group:-)  

While biking my group would stop at every town we passed and sometimes at unique places like cemeteries.  I have never seen above ground cemeteries and with small space only available they also built walls and buried people in there as well.   I thought is was unique.

On one of our days of Chris and I rented a small car and when exploring the island.  First we took a tour of the Drach caves.  That was a very cool tour that takes around one house and follows a 1.2 km path in the caves.  The tour includes a classical music concert and a boat trip across Lake Martel (named after one of cave explorers).  We also got to see ocean life guard training.  I was already scared of the waves standing on the shore and these guys had to take turns saving each other and giving CPR's - impressive! 

Later in the day Chris wanted to take me up Cap Formantor mountain he climbed 18K on his bike the other day.  We were in a small car but I was still uneasy driving on narrow roads on the side of steep cliffs.  The views are worth the slow clime up very windy roads that made me car sick and on the way back we had to stop about 8 times for me to through up - that wasn't fun.  While at the top of the mountain with a lovely light house - we had an overcast and couldn't take good pictures but non the less and in between by barking episodes we had fun adventure.