02 May 2014

Cloudy start to the day so planned to go out cycling this afternoon when it has cleared up a bit, this didn’t happen because it never really did clear up! Arranged to have a chat with Gabriel Esteppa later in the afternoon to see if we can come to any agreements about future holidays that might benefit us both.

Have almost finished reading the book I’m currently enjoying which is "From Lance To Landis" by David Walsh. The book is about the American doping controversy at the Tour de France and I’ve really been enjoying reading it. The details of what was going on during that era is really shocking. I was very interested to read the details about the Australian blood doping expert Mike Ashenden and his mention of the value of blood lactate levels at specific workloads being of value, which is exactly how I use them, to measure carbohydrate dependence!

Interesting also in the book how Mike Ashenden essentially demolished the publication by Ed Coyle about Lance Amstrong’s development and how he put all his improvements down to improved muscular efficiency, cadence etc. My, how Coyle was conned!

11:47:28 No WiFi at the Duva so far today so not been possible to check any emails, hard to complain about this when at the present time it is a free service. Lorena’s cold not getting any better, worse if anything, such a shame.

14:49:22 Decided to spend a bit of time out by the pool where I thought I might get a better Internet connection and Evernote finally seems to be syncing which is good. Want to try to get Lorena’s diary function up and sorted and can’t do it until I get this working, fingers crossed. In the meantime Lorena is out catching some rays which I’m hoping will help her cold, or at least take her mind off it. Damned sync seems to have stopped again :-( Not sure what Evernote thinks it’s downloading but it seems to be taking ages.

17:43:22 Good meeting with Gabriel Esteppa this afternoon. Looks as if he is prepared to offer us a 25% discount on the stay if we stop either for a 4 week block or for 2x2 week blocks in 2015. This looks as if it would work out at about €42 per day for the apartment and then extra for the evening meal. On the face of it this looks like a good deal as it would mean that the cost of a month out here in May 2015 would pretty much be covered by our normal living expenses and pocket money so we wouldn’t really notice too much of a cost for such a long holiday. This offer certainly seems worth careful consideration and Gabriel is going to put some details into an email for us to look over and we will just have to cost up the flights. Interesting times ahead.

18:23:06 Having a very frustrating time connecting to the hotel WiFi, just doesn’t seem to want to play ball at all, been trying on and off for most of the afternoon to no avail. I think it’s more frustrating to have a connection that sometimes works than a connection that just doesn’t work at all, at least with the latter you know where you stand!