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Hello everyone,

Yet again, the week has flown past... I began by covering another crew-member's somewhat special physical training...

As I've said before at some point, the boat is incredibly demanding. You sleep little and badly, you have to move the sails and other equipment around the yacht, the food is bad and there are lots of temperature changes, etc.

To deal with all of this you have to be as well-prepared as possible, which is why we train a lot: we work out at the gym, we run and we cycle...

One of our strongest guys is one of our bowmen: Antonio Cuervas-Mons, or as we all call him: “Ñeti”. He loves running, swimming, etc. He found out that there was a Triathlon Sprint in Arrecife and decided to give it a try, for fun (of course he got the all clear from “Yiyo”, our coach first). He hired a road bicycle and on Sunday morning we got up and set off! We were going to have one of the Team Telefónica guys representing us!

Almost a kilometre of swimming, five kilometres of running and 20 km on the bicycle. It was a great experience. There were almost 200 entries in his category and “Ñeti” came 49th in about an hour under some sweltering heat, so it was a great finish. He did really well and we are all very proud of him.

Getting back to sailing, the main activity for this week was our training session, where we sailed around the Canary Islands. It was great fun, but very tough, as it was the first time we've sailed in “regatta mode”, with watches and lots of sail changes for different courses and wind intensities, etc.

We got a range of different conditions: from no wind to almost 30 knots. It was really beautiful as we also sailed up close to some of the uninhabited islands, such as Alegranza to the North of Lanzarote.

“Telefónica” behaved very well, as did her crew. We ate well, although I'll admit that we were a bit short on milk. I'm in charge of the food on board and I'm not sure what happened... I've told everyone that we have a black hole that drank the milk:)

Rafa Lasso, the Manager of Marina Rubicón where we are based in Lanzarote (Spain) also joined us for this trip. Rafa enjoyed the journey and the experience of sailing on board our Volvo Open 70. He ate our freeze-dried food, he got soaking wet and experienced sleeping very little...

Now it is time for a rest and to prepare for the sail to Galicia and the town of Sanxenxo, on the Northern Spanish coast: our next stop.

Thank you Canary Islands!

Diego Fructuoso.

“Telefónica” MCM.