What an amazing week! I don't know what I expected - in fact with days of frantic Christmas shopping and sending of Christmas cards at the 11th hour, I didn't have time to expect anything. The flight was pretty hectic, with both kids over-excited and energetic and me suffering from the previous nights of stress and sleeplessness. A short taxi ride from Arrecife to La Santa and we walked into our apartment on Friday evening to find not much to lift our spirits; very rudimentary accommodation with one basic sofa in the sitting room, bare stone floors, camp bed twin rooms and a sinking feeling accompanied by the sounds - familiar to both of us from our youth - of teenage-ridden dormitories.

We didn't know what we'd let ourselves in for. Boot camp? A youth hostelling holiday? It seemed clear that our accommodation would not offer much luxury or comfort and that this could not be much of a holiday.

At 8 o'clock on Saturday morning we went for our pre-paid buffet breakfasts at Restaurant Atlantico and as we walked out through the dark hotel complex tunnels onto the sunlit terraces by the leisure pools we were met with the bizarre sight of 150 people - maybe more - evenly spread on every terrace at every level - gently practicing wake-up aerobics like some kind of early morning religious ritual. OK so this was not going to be your average common or garden vacation!

We quickly gathered information on the schedule of activities for the week, still meandering around in a confused haze and trying to size the place up. We picked up a booklet of organised activities from 'Sports Booking' which included anything from mini triathlons (before breakfast), off-road hill running, road bike tours at 3 levels, spin sessions and circuit training. It seemed that you could fill your entire day with cross-training and end up either at the peak of physical fitness or the peak of physical exhaustion or both.

So we went through the schedule with Jody's coloured pens, circling the organised sessions we preferred (with Miles too young to be left in childcare, we had to take it in turns to exercise), and fitting in solo runs and swims (in the outdoor olympic pool) to pad out the timetable. We bought run route maps and bike route maps and acquainted ourselves with the systems for booking out equipment and then we got stuck in.

To exercise, exercise and then oh! A bit more exercise!

I set myself up with a swim session and an hour of advanced spin on that first Saturday, followed by the highlight of my week, the advanced bike tour on Sunday morning. Around 18 of us gathered for this session in front of the Bike Centre, half on hired Club La Santa Cannondale road bikes like me and half on their own race-ready machines; deep-section rims and expensive Campagnolo gearsets all around. Very intimidating. And the intro spiel did nothing to allay our fears: "We do 70 to 90 k averaging 27, 28 or 29 k an hour and we don't stop for anything!" Which was entirely borne out by the ride itself (led by 2 of Club La Santa's 'green team', including the Danish cyclist who's qualified for the Hawaiian IM next year), as first one then another aspiring cyclist fell by the wayside. Mostly it was just a pace thing, but 5 minutes in I heard a puncture fizzing behind me, followed by an appropriate expletive as the inevitable happened and the peloton kept streaming onwards. And 5 minutes later the other 2 girls we'd started with, along with a 3rd cyclist, vanished off the back.

And so we went on, at the hardest pace I've ever had to maintain, climbing unrelentingly up and up out of La Santa for the first 40 minutes at a pace that Danny the leader later confessed was designed to "drop all the riff-raff that we'd otherwise have to push all the way back from the hills!" It was hard but truly exhilarating, and at times the only way I could manage it was by looking around and seeing that there was pain in everyone else's face too! I was gobsmacked that I managed to stick with the group (especially when twice I had to nudge my chain back on from where it had slipped off the big ring, while riding an inch from the wheel of the guy in front).

The ride totalled 3 hours and we managed 70k at 29kph into huge winds and up pretty nasty inclines (not steep but long and relentless). At times I clung on by the skin of my teeth but the longer I was there the more determined I was to stay, and the more willing the group to offer me shelter from the mega headwinds. 20 km from home we were rewarded with a short stop outside a hilltop supermarket to prepare us for the last stretch through the Fire Mountains with half the group surging ahead to race, but waiting for us now after the summit. And then the real reward of an 8km downwards stretch to home at sea level. And smiles and congratulations and new friends all around. Knackered, I sought out Roj and the kids and sat down to a hard-earned omelette and chips, chuffed to bits to have survived the morning, and later to swim out my tired muscles in the pool while the kids had their siesta.

The next few days broke into a similar routine. Afternoon swims and evening spin sessions shared with Roj, and a run in the morning or 2 more bike rides for me; the intermediate ride with some of Sunday's crew going out at a more amenable 26kph average, and occasionally stopping for the numerous stragglers, and then a great ride on Thursday morning through torrential rain which I expected to make alone but instead was invited to accompany a group comprising 2 big strong Danish lads - who will forever be known to me as the Blue Brothers in their TeamMermaid.dk strip (and who I recognised from both previous rides), their beautiful wives (one 4 months pregnant and none the slower for it; the other on her 5th ever road-ride but still clad head to toe in Assos like most of the Danes), and 35-year-old 57-year-old Morten with stories of his 300 km recumbent tours, and his newborn baby.

And it left me wanting to ride my bike with groups of enthusiastic cyclists every day, because the camaraderie in the group is inspirational and addictive. It's teamwork at its best and it's great to earn a place in it.

Sat: 45min swim; 60min spin
Sun: 3h ride; 45min swim
Mon: 75min run
Tue: 2h ride; 45 min swim
Wed: 60min run; 60 min spin
Thu: 2h 15min bike
Fri: 90min run

Training addiction aside, the rest of the holiday turned out very well too. The kids enjoyed themselves enormously. In the mornings they would spend the day playing on the beach with one or both of us, and towards the end of the week (we had 48 hours of storm weather which precluded outdoor playtime) we'd sit with them in the Kids' Club where they undertook numerous suitable sticking-and-gluing activities. After lunch we'd coerce them into a siesta so that we could do our second session of the day or nap or read ourselves. The siesta would then enable us to elongate the evening because with no babysitting facilities we were obliged to keep the kids with us while we ate at one of a selection of restaurants in the complex. The food wasn't amazing, but it was good enough to keep hunger at bay and could always be supplemented by goodies from the supermarket (the apartment was self-catering too, so we could have prepared food there if we'd had a mind to, although our general policy was to spend as little time in it as possible).

The complex was filled with teams of youths but noise levels were very acceptable, and clearly the vast majority of people were there on training weeks, so would prioritise their exercise schedules. We've never seen so many muscular athletic people (there were others too, but in a minority), and clearly it is a venue for very high level sportspeople. For a while Roj wondered why so many people could be seen walking out into the sea to crotch level to stand around chatting for several minutes at a time, until we worked out they were icing their muscles after a hefty workout. Not what you'd normally see on a beach holiday! I suppose this plethora of young sportspeople could have been intimidating for us thirty-somethings with kids in tow, but actually I found it incredibly inspirational to see so many enthusiastic, motivated, health-orientated individuals in one spot. Never mind the eye-candy!

So all in all it was a very inspirational week. Roj I think, enjoyed it almost as much as me, although he very kindly left me to the longer bike sessions and took on the mini duathlon and numerous spin sessions (his first ever) instead. I'd love to go back again - this time possibly shipping my bike out or doing a week-long hire to ensure the possibility of day-long rides - but with the desolate volcanic landscape and the lack of advanced windsurfing equipment I think Roj will take some convincing!

I'm already failing with the plan to avoid Facebook. Alright I'm not playing all the games yet, but I've invited some friends, and it's part of my regulars list now. I feel like a saddo, somehow, and yet also more connected.

The weekend in Cheshire was, against all expectations, excellent fun. My parents assisted me in the entertainment of the kids during some of the worst weather Cheshire has ever seen. Refusing to be grounded, we took a short walk up Beeston Castle in vehement winds and nasty freezing drizzle, amused by Miles's little grunts as he struggled up the steps. A nice basic lunch followed, and a relaxing afternoon before my parents returned home and I prepared for the evening's shoot dinner. Usually I don't much look forward to these affairs but it turned out to be an excellent evening, during which a long-standing hatchet (that turned out to be a comedy misunderstanding about something that happened when I was fifteen, for goodness sake!) was buried. I also met Roj's first girlfriend (he was eleven, I think), and had some very amusing conversations during a reasonable meal. My father-in-law's housekeeper was kind enough to babysit for the kids during the evening so we were well and truly relinquished from our duties (until the early-morning wake-up call that is!)

We set off for London in the afternoon the following day, after a leisurely breakfast for the 10-or-so hungover victims who were staying at Mike's house with us. It was nice to catch up with all the guests and despite apalling lack of sleep, I know I wasn't in as poor shape as those who'd stayed up to watch the boxing match at 5am, nor those who hadn't twigged that water is always the best beverage after midnight.

During the following week, we went to a very gorgeous, expensive and indulgent meal at the Orrery to celebrate our 16th anniverary of being together. We were tempted by the delicious tasting menu which was a mixed bag of the absolutely sublime to the downright average. We also made the mistake of being simultaneously tempted by the wine tasting menu that went with the food, but both felt by the end of it that we could have done with about half as much alcohol (maybe the extra massive glass that accompanied our optional cheese course was mostly to blame?). Of the courses, the scallops, the turbot with oxtail, the cheeses and the chocolate desert were outstanding (sadly I forgot to retain the actual menu, to detail the courses here), and the main course lamb was sorely disappointing.

The next morning we had the last of our SwimforTri lessons in the endless pool at the Truman Brewery, but I was so tired that I could barely string my stroke together and feel now that I'm still in the middle of deconstruction, struggling with the amount of instructions I'm supposed to assimilate. More help required, but the cost precludes too frequent visits.

I spent the rest of the week frantically filling Santa's sack with appropriate gifts for 13 deserving recipients, and looking for the couple of items inevitably needed before jetting off to a different climate.

I then embarked on an intimidating list of Christmas cards on the night before our departure, finally crawling to bed at around 3:15am with the last (incoherently) written.

I rose at 6 to stick stamps, hurriedly pack for Lanzarote, and to 'nip' to the post office. Which made us 15 minutes late for picking up Jody at school which in a half-hour window isn't too reprehensible except that 15 minutes turned into well over half an hour with not a taxi to be found as we loitered, bags and all, on George street waiting for the usual fleet.

We screeched into Flood street with not a minute to spare to pick her up, and zoomed to Victoria just in time for the Gatwick Express that got us to the airport in time to breathe a sigh of relief and buy a couple of books before we boarded the aeroplane. At which point the enforced insommnia and stress of the previous days caught up with me, and I struggled to stay awake in order to help Roj with the over-excited kids.

I've had all my hair chopped off! Roj is still in shock! I love it. I mean, I love having long hair too, and deep down I think that's 'me', but isn't that something to do with the fact that no-one's seen the back of my neck since I was about 14? Well ... it was getting ridiculous; it takes about 4 hours to dry (8 if I go to bed with wet hair) and with 3 or 4 pool sessions a week, plus the showers resulting from numerous run/spin/cycle sessions, it was driving me nuts to have wet hair half the time. I've never been a fan of the hairdryer, having hair that will just turn to frizz if I go near a direct heat source, so there I was, middle of winter, wet shoulders and hair dripping down the back of my neck most of the time. Yuk. Plus my hair was getting into hideous condition from being put through that regime anyway. It was time for a radical change.

So Gary at Trevor Sorbie - the only hairdresser I've been to more than twice in my life and who I will loyally follow to the new salon he's setting up in Hampstead - did the honourable thing and chopped it to collar length and strangely enough, I haven't missed those straggly curls yet (the kids didn't even notice the difference!). I'll grow it again when I've done my Ironman, that's what I reckon!

I've been continuing the training this week to the tune of 1 (very hard) spin session, 3 swims and 2 runs (including 7 reps of Primrose Hill yesterday; slowly but without stopping). The muscle in my bum is no better and no worse and very obviously is not suffering from what I'm doing to it. I don't know when the minor discomfort will go away (more Deep Heat required I think), but I'm currently happy to continue ignoring it. Spin was the worst thing for it which surprises me since I felt no pain after my Yorkshire endeavours, but 2 days later it's pretty much back to normal. Cool.

We went to Jody's Christmas Play on Tuesday afternoon. She's been coming in the house for the last few weeks singing Jingle Bells in French (unrecognisable until I looked it up online, but she'd got all the sounds right), The Sun Has Got His Hat On, We're All Going on a Summer Holiday, and doing little dances to Wipe Out (Fat Boys version). The theme was the 4 seasons and she was there in her little hula skirt and lei, wiggling her bum and holding her cardboard surfboard. It was all a bit weird actually. It was very fun and very cute but the attempts to appeal to the audience by having fairly adult characterisation was a bit strange. The kids loved their funny little dances but have likely never seen a surfer or a Hawaiian dancer in their lives before, let alone Point Break or Big Wednesday. And Wipe Out was to them, I guess, just another piece of music just like Twinkle Star. No airs and graces; lots of innocence and I think the choreography maybe took advantage of that a little to get the laughs (Autumn performed to Thriller, and Summer and Winter to similar pop epics).

That said, the whole performance was very endearing and Jody has loved her time doing it. She was a little dazed and confused during the actual show, focusing less on the words and the moves than on the atmosphere of the event, but we loved her committment to it and felt she fully deserved her lolly at the end. Just hope the DVD is out before Christmas!

Had a very lovely and rather alcoholic dinner at The Providores with Emma and James last night. Very indulgent and entertaining. Roj has been trying to make up for his lack of evening predictability at work by - while he's on 'gardening leave' - booking us into a restaurant once a week. I have The Orrery to look forward to next week. Yum.

(I put 'gardening leave' in inverted commas only because we have no garden and we have very little leave either. Amazing how 3 months has turned into ... well ... less than 3 weeks. Roj is being called on from all sides to go to meetings and to help with this and that. His thumbs are surgically attached to his Blackberry. Good job we never intended to go away on a long trip to the Antipodes or anything).

Off to Cheshire this weekend. Roj has an annual shoot thing with some of his old school mates, and I will spend a day with my parents and the kids. A bit intimidating that this is the last weekend before we go away to Lanzarote and after that it's Christmas. Sadly my Christmas shopping count remains about the same as it was last week at zero. I shall have to pull the stops out.

Meanwhile I am trying to earn some spending money (and help clear our spare room) via eBay, and trying not to get addicted to Facebook.

Tough week last week, sleep-wise, because Miles was poorly with a sore throat that kept him coughing through the night, to the point of throwing up during 3 nights. He's much better already (though still tired); his raging temperature has subsided, his appetite's back, he's slept through for 2 nights in a row, and he just has classic autumnal snot slugs remaining. I wouldn't expect any different at this time of year.

We plied him with all sorts of drugs, but nothing had much effect. Multiple night trips into his bedroom were required. I was amazed it didn't affect Jody more.

I had the week off (exercise) too, for similar reasons. My throat thing did turn nasty as I half expected, and I wanted to clear it before embarking on anything strenuous (especially having seen Roj's linger for a few weeks while he ignored it and carried on running). Plus the muscle in my bum was niggling as usual, and I was more of a mind to rest it.

Which is not what I'm doing now. I waved goodbye to the throat thing at the end of last week so I've managed to go running the last couple of days. I decided while reading up on soft tissue injury online during a period of insommnia on Saturday night, that 6 weeks is ample time for recovery (granted I haven't done nothing in that time, but I've done a lot less than I would normally have done, particularly with regards to running), and that residual soreness is likely to be stiffness and problems resulting from scar-tissue formation more than anything, solveable by light exercise and stretching. The guidelines stated that as long as I stay in the 'discomfort' zone, rather than the 'pain' zone, I shouldn't be doing myself any harm and in fact, by increasing blood flow to the area, should be doing more good than anything.

So I've done a couple of 'light' (ish) runs and kept with the swimming. I've administered these amazing Deep Heat heat pads during the night, which have a miraculous result in the morning, and I'm basking in the smugness of finally getting back into my exercise routine, the lack of adherence to which has been driving me slowly nuts over the past month. I also don't want to get to Lanzarote in 10 days and find that I can barely lug myself round a 40-minute circuit; I want to make the most of a week of exercise in the sunshine. It feels great to be out again (notwithstanding my alarm going off at 5:12 this morning and the rain and wind I was running in yesterday); I just hope I'm not doing the wrong thing with this muscle injury (to be fair it doesn't hurt at all while running, and only becomes a little sore a few hours later from, I assume, being properly used for the first time in a while.) I will take it relatively easy this week and see ...

Roj did the Monsterman I Duathlon on Saturday; his first race since early September. He expected it to be 2 hours long, but the course had been elongated to make it nearly 3, so he was dead on his feet when he returned to us in the afternoon. But he managed to kick himself into action on Sunday for long enough to take the utterly over-excited Jody to Homebase to buy a Christmas tree and decorations. We didn't really want to get one this year, given that we'll be away for the week before Christmas and then spending Christmas itself with family in Shropshire, but when Jody came home with a little fairy she'd made at school during the week, and pleaded for a tree on which to put it, we could hardly refuse. And it looks very nice in our sitting room ... but just serves as a constant reminder that the countdown has not just begun but is nearly at an end already, and I don't think I've bought one Christmas present yet.

4th out of 5 swimming lessons tomorrow with SwimforTri who I can't recommend highly enough. My stroke is already completely renovated and I'm finally getting the hang of some of the new concepts. Strange drills reinforce and exaggerate the ideas, and with a bit of weektime practice, it's all coming together. Really I want to go for an Endless Pool lesson once a week though, to ensure I stick with it. Or buy an Endless Pool for the roof, rather than continuing to drink the water at Seymour Leisure Centre. Do you think that's indulgent!?

CONGRATULATIONS to Nick and Abbie on their engagement. Fab news.