Tenerife: training on the volcano in winter

Tenerife is where a large part of the professional peloton spends its winter, and the reason is not the beaches. The reason is that a road leaves the sea and climbs, without a break, to above 2,300 m, and that at the top of it there is a hotel. You can live at altitude, ride down to the coast in the morning warmth, and climb back up in the afternoon. There is nowhere else in Europe within a four-hour flight where that is true in January.

This is what the roads are, what the weather does at each height, and how to structure a week so that you come home fitter rather than wrecked.

The volcano and its roads

Teide is 3,715 m, the highest point in Spain, and the national park around it sits largely above 2,000 m in a caldera called Las Cañadas. The Spanish national parks authority lists four road approaches:

• TF-21 from the north: La Orotava to El Portillo, 31 km. This is the classic ascent, through pine forest.
• TF-21 from the south: Granadilla through Vilaflor to Boca Tauce, 57.5 km of road in total, most of it climbing.
• TF-24 from the east: La Laguna along the ridge to El Portillo, 30 km. Locals call it the Carretera de La Esperanza.
• TF-38 from the west: from Chío to Boca Tauce, the shortest approach to the caldera.

The Tenerife tourist board publishes eight signposted road routes with figures, and three of them go over the top. Route 2 from La Orotava climbs the TF-21 for 27 km at close to 6% average to El Portillo at 2,030 m, then continues to 2,300 m at Izaña before dropping the TF-24 to La Laguna: 98 km with 2,727 m of climbing. Route 7 from Costa Adeje uses the TF-38, which the board describes as 24 km at an average of 5.6% with stretches up to 10%, tops out at 2,360 m and totals 101 km with 3,841 m of climbing. Route 8, the long one, goes round the east of the island and climbs from Arafo at an average of 8.8% with points at 20%, for 162 km and 3,950 m.

Those gradients are the point. Nothing here is steep in the Flemish sense; it is long and relentless. A 25 km climb at 6% is an hour and a half for a strong amateur, and there is no flat to recover on. It is exactly the kind of effort a power-based climbing plan is built for, and pacing a climb with power is the skill that decides whether your week works.

Three climates on one island

AEMET, the Spanish met office, publishes normals for three stations that between them describe the island for a cyclist.

The south coast is dry: 132 mm of rain in a whole year at the airport, and 226 hours of sunshine in March. Izaña, an AEMET observatory on the ridge at 2,369 m, is a different place. Its January mean is 4.3 °C, its nights are near freezing, and it gets more rain in winter than the coast does all year. The difference between the two is not a curiosity; it is what you will ride through, every day, in an hour and a half.

The mechanism is the trade-wind inversion. Carrillo and colleagues characterised it from radiosonde data over the sub-tropical North Atlantic: a layer of warm, dry air sits on top of the cooler, moist marine layer, and the boundary between them is where the cloud forms. On Tenerife that boundary usually sits somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 m. Below it, especially on the north side where the trade wind hits the island, it is cloudy and humid. Above it the air is dry and the sun is fierce. Izaña was chosen as an observatory in 1916 precisely because it sits above the inversion most of the time.

For a cyclist that means three things. Start in short sleeves on the coast and carry everything else. Expect to ride into cloud somewhere around 1,500 m on the north side and out of it again a few hundred metres higher. And at the top, in January, expect single figures and a wind, whatever the beach said.

Where to stay

At altitude. The only accommodation inside the caldera is the Parador, a state-run hotel near the cable-car base at roughly 2,100 m. This is where the teams stay and why they come. Sleeping high and riding down to the coast is the classic pattern. It is also, for most amateurs, too much: two weeks at 2,000 m with a hard day's climbing every afternoon is a professional's load. If you do it, treat the first three days as easy and read what altitude actually does for amateurs first.

Mid-mountain. Vilaflor, on the southern TF-21 at roughly 1,400 m, puts you an hour below the caldera. Cooler, quieter, and the climb starts at the door.

The coast. Costa Adeje, Los Cristianos or Puerto de la Cruz. Warm, cheap flights, and every climb starts with an hour of suburban roads. Sleeping low and climbing high is the pattern that suits most people who have a job to go back to.

What a week looks like

The mistake is to ride to the top every day. It is 2,000 m of climbing before you have done anything else, and by day four you are cooked. A week that works, in our experience:

1. Day 1: coast roads, two hours, nothing above Zone 2. You have just got off a plane.
2. Day 2: one ascent, the shortest approach (TF-38 from Chío if you are in the south), steady, back down the way you came.
3. Day 3: easy. The coast again, or a rest.
4. Day 4: the big one. Up one side, across the caldera, down another. Route 7 or Route 2 from the tourist board's list is a ready-made version.
5. Day 5: easy or off.
6. Day 6: a second ascent with structure in it, sweet spot or threshold blocks on the lower slopes where the gradient is steadiest.
7. Day 7: coffee ride, pack the bike.

That is roughly 12–15 hours and 10,000 m of climbing, which is a large week for anyone training under ten hours normally. Our training-camp guide covers how to absorb that when you get home; the short version is that the week after is easy, not hard.

What will catch you out

• Snow closures. The park roads sit above 2,000 m and the Cabildo closes them when snow or ice makes them unsafe, which in our experience happens a handful of times each winter. Check the island's road information before you ride up, not at El Portillo.
• The descent. Thirty kilometres of downhill in single-figure temperatures is where people get into trouble. Put every layer on at the top before you are cold, not after. Descending well here is mostly about braking early on long straights, since the corners are wide and the road is good.
• Sun. Above the cloud there is nothing between you and it. Factor 50, applied at the top as well as the bottom.
• Water. There is very little on the mountain. Fill both bottles at the last village.
• The motorways. The tourist board's routes keep you off the TF-1 and TF-5 motorways; a mapping app will not always.

If you cannot get there this winter, the tourist board's routes are public and any saved route can be ridden in Moveee Indoor on a smart trainer. It is not the same as the real thing, but 27 km at 6% is 27 km at 6% wherever the trainer is.