Watch the professionals in the Canary Islands

Iwas lucky enough to spend the last five weeks guiding cyclists in Gran Canaria and Tenerife. Before you get too jealous, the Canary Islands were experiencing some of their worst weather in years with high winds, torrential rain and enough snow to block roads. It got to the point where I was looking forward to coming home and getting some decent weather. I arrived in Scotland just in time for the Beast from the East to make its appearance.

The Canary Islands are a popular haunt for pro-cyclists looking for some winter sunshine to train in, with hotels like the Parador drawing numerous professional teams for winter training camps. The Parador is situated in the crater of the dormant volcano of El Teide and at an altitude of over 2,000m, (El Teide itself is the highest summit in Spain and reaches 3,718m in altitude) it is no wonder that it does snow there from time to time. During my time there, pro-spotting became a regular feature with Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas from Team Sky being regulars giving us a friendly wave as they cycled past, and Astana were another big team out there on the road at the same time as us.

This got me thinking about other sports and how often fans and amateurs get a chance to see and meet their heroes while out training. Most individual sports people and teams will have venues that they regularly train in. These venues are usually behind closed doors, leaving fans little opportunity to see them. For cyclists the venues are the big amphitheatres of the mountains and the roads around Europe. I’ve seen riders such as Laurent Jalabert and Richard Virenque in the 1990s, and Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali recently, all of them out training and all happy to smile and wave as I gave them a friendly shout of “Allez! Allez!”.

Watching these riders train and ride also highlights how good they are compared to mere mortals such as myself. In Tenerife, I saw one young rider from the Bahrain-Merida team riding intervals, on the short, but incredibly steep climb out from Masca to Santiago. In the time it took me to ride up once he had been up to the top, back down and managed to pass me again before I reached the summit. I looked like a sweat-soaked rag, drooped over my handlebars while he sauntered past looking like he was on a wee recovery spin.

Road cycling is often seen as a sport that doesn’t require a huge amount of technical skill, as opposed to, say, tennis or football or even mountain biking. Fitness is considered more of a determining factor of success, and that is true to a point, but being in fine fettle will only take you so far. Technique plays a huge part of road cycling – the pros are paid to practise and make it look easy but amateurs can watch and learn. Looking at how a professional rider holds himself on the bike, watching how they pedal fluidly and move their weight around a bike on a descent, and then practising to replicate that in your own riding, will see you reap benefits and make your riding more enjoyable. You may even be mistaken for a pro next time you are out riding in Tenerife with your Team Sky replica kit on.