The new season has started and after training in the snow and cold, I have found my way to the Island of Lanzarote again. In the past I have trained on this island for 6 times and always made a good basement for the season. The Island is known for her hard training circumstances , the wind and the though hills. I think its the best place for building up your season, you will getter strength that you can’t get anywhere else.
My partner Thomas Vonach (www.trivonach.com) and I met each other on this nice Island exactly 3 years ago. We both love to train here, we made a lot of local friends as well .
The only difference this year against the past years, is that I came here alone.
Thomas had a big operation on Jan. 12th, he got a new disk in his lower back. The operation went very good, the hospital in Munich, Schön Kliniek specialized in operations like these, even put a story about Thomas on there website.

So that’s the reason that Thomas is back home and working on his rehabilitation and I’m training my ....of ,here on this Spanish Island. I’m staying at Club La Santa ( www.clublasanta.com) ,for people that don’t know this “triathlon paradise” it’s a big complex near the little village La Santa at the Northern part of the island. You will find a lot of athlete’s in different disciplines running around and maybe sometimes taking a brake and resting at the leisure pool. There is a 50m Olympic pool, perfect for swimmers and triathletes. Who doesn’t love to swim with a blue sky above the pool,. At home I really hate doing back stroke, here I LOVE it:-)
Last week I had 2 sessions with Ute Mückel (www.utemueckel.com ) in the pool, I was sorry that she had to go home, it's always great to have a good swim coach on the deck.
The complex also has a great photographer Bob Foy. This gives us the perfect opportunity to make some nice pictures for the new season, blue sky's, ocean ,mountains, what do you need more?
So that will be on my schedule for the last week for sure, I prefer doing a photo shooting by 20 degrees and sun then freezing and standing around in the snow.

My training is going well, the first week I took it easy because I just started training serious again after racing Ironman Cozumel on Nov. 29th. I can feel that the winter brake was good for me, I feel rested and I’m able to do a big amount of training. I did the Duathlon here at Club La Santa last week and now I’m building up the amount of hours in training. Next week will be a “big one” that’s for sure, I’m looking forward to that especially because two Dutch friends are arriving this Sunday, Mirjam Weert (www.mirjamweert.nl) & Gonny Roosendaal. I had lots of fun training with all the athletes here at La Santa, a big training group from Germany was here with Heidi Jesberger (www.heidi-jesberger.de ) & Meike Krebs (meikekrebs.de). So my German has improved again with all the “girly chats” , now it’s time to speak Dutch again before I forget how:-)
It almost feels like a training camp for my languages, for my English our good friends and great helps Maria & Steve from the bikeshop Pro Bike are on my side....Maria and I had some great rides and Steve is taking good care of my bike, thank you both!!!

Yesterday I did my first serious interval training on the track, you can see that the season has just started, it’s still a little stiff to do those hard sessions in the stadium. I love running sessions on the track, I think it’s by far my favorite training.
The good thing about living here in Club La Santa is that you meet athlete’s from everywhere and that you don’t have to spend any time driving to a pool, gym, track or what so ever. This valuable time you can use for your recovering, reading a nice book, taking a nap or writing a story for your website:-)

As many of you already know, I’m heading towards my first goal on March 13th. The first big race of the season is called “The Abu Dhabi International Triathlon” ( www.abudhabitriathlon.com).
The race will have the toughest field besides the World Championships on Kona. We will have a exiting race over the distance of 3 km. swim, 200km. biking and finishing off with a 20km. Run.
I will come back to you after finishing my training here on Lanzarote, I’m only back home in Austria for a week before heading to a second camp, this time hopefully with my partner.

All the best, stay healthy and good by for now!