I was in the UK for a mates wedding one weekend and then a Baptism the following weekend in Ireland. The missus and I decided to get somewhere warm for the midweek to take a break from the east coast winter.
My mate Caesar told me he heads to Lanzarote a couple times a year to take advantage of their nicely paved hilly roads, sunshine, trails for running, and both lap pools and the open water for swimming. There are two main hotels that cater to the triathlon community in Lanzarote: Club La Santa and Sands Beach Resort. Caesar recommended Sands Beach because that’s his normal hangout.
So we opted for Sands Beach hotel. It worked out really well: here’s a pic from our balcony one evening as I was taking an evening dip. We got a great room and when we arrived there was a fruit basket and a bottle of wine for us to enjoy. The sad thing is we were there for 5 nights and we didn’t even manage to finish the wine!
One of the great things about Lanzarote is that it isn’t much more than 100k from one end to another so if you’re staying in Costa de Teguise (where both hotels are located) you can do out and backs and practically see the whole island in a few days.
You can ride to Costa de Famara and hang out on the beach. It’s incredibly cheap to rent a surf board or boogie board and wet suit and hit the waves. The waves are gentle and regular so great for a beginner surfer looking to get in some practise:
There are some flats on the LZ-1 route one you climb out of Costa de Teguisa (you can ride out to Orzola from there which is a pretty flat 80k there and back).
There’s a few places you can try your hand at camel riding:
Another one of the pool in the morning time. In the hotel you can rent a wetsuit for a couple days and try it out in the pool, or go down to the water to swim. You can swim out in front of HD Beach Resort or if you want to walk a bit further you can swim out of the Be Live Grand. Both areas are well protected, normally have some swimmers around and are at least a couple hundred yards from end to end. Costa de Teguise also has a small place to swim right there in the resort in front of some of the rooms. It’s a very shallow body of water and completely protected from the ocean, and is maybe 100 yards long.
The lady on her rented steed. You can rent bikes at Papagayo bikes which is also located at Sands Beach hotel. It really does have everything you could need.
Climbing out of Costa de Teguise:
Even when it’s cloudy it’s sunny:
In terms of running you can:
- run west out of the resort for some less hilly road running;
- run north for some very hilly road running (basically pure climbing until you chose to come back down running the fastest 10k of your life if you don’t trip over);
- run east onto trails. There are a few trails, some which are undulating, but if you stick close to the water there are some very steep sections where you may have to walk up to avoid going over your max heart rate.
The food at Sands Beach resort is pretty good although I would highly recommend La Bohemia. We went there 3 times out of 5 and it was great every single time!
Tired Legs Empty Mind 