SPANC Winter Training Camp 2026

After the disastrous SPANC Lanzarote training camp in 2025 the committee (decision delegated to Martyn (co-founder and Athlete Relations & Squad Engagement Secretary)) decided to hold the 2026 camp on a P&O cruise to the Caribbean to try to increase numbers. Unfortunately, the new training base failed to attract club members and attendance remained at 1 person for the second year running.

Unfortunately (again) the choice of a cruise ship proved to be a terrible one as once on board it became apparent the longest swimming pool was 7m long ( just enough for a good push off) and the only bike was a woman named Dana, who failed to return to her cabin one night promoting a call from the captain at 5am to ascertain her whereabouts. We tried to get her to join SPANC but she was put off with the £10 admin fee and suggested we should be paying her. Back to training, there was a 229m jogging track around the top of the ship that formed the basis of most sessions for the 2 weeks. I don’t know if running loops of the deck were a contributing factor to the seasickness but it probably didn’t help. What did help was the ship travelling at 10 knots giving Martyn (A.R.S.E Secretary) a 2nd ever fastest 5km. I think the 3 x 3 course meals a day also contributed towards the improvement. No-one should underestimate the power of a sponge pudding with custard for 14 straight days (incredibly tasty if you are interested in a P&O cruise - As tasty as my mother wished she could cook).

As a result of the pool situation an impromptu sea swim was arranged at Dickenson Bay in Antigua. Unfortunately (3rd one), a nasty bit leg cramp or something required a temporary stop at a tiki bar approximately 50m off the shoreline. Unfortunately (4th one), when climbing onto the floating bar Martyn’s 8 year old Speedo jammers decided they had done enough and proceeded to split all the way up the back (possibly, but not necessarily linked to sponge pudding intake). It took over 2 hours sat at the bar to work out how to get back to shore without mooning to all other customers. Fortunately, 6 bottles of the local Carib beer helped the decision making process through a 120% increase in confidence and no longer caring what people thought. A hastily borrowed sarong saved the day and a number of references to David Beckham were heard from the assembled crowd (not sure if these were ironic or not). Sitting in the midday sun with no sun cream did however cause some problems for the next couple of days, resulting in all further swim training being cancelled due to safety concerns. For info, no arse cheeks were harmed as a result of split jammers.

This incident has created some discussion in the club as Martyn did say that being arseless did give a nice ventilated feeling and added some excitement to proceedings, something that’s been missing from the club recently. Sam (co-founder and Board Officer for Long-term LOad, Conditioning, Kicks & Strength) seemed particularly excited by this and has already prepared some new kit designs that have been sent to JvO (co-founder and Custodian Of Club Kit) for review.

The club has accepted that perhaps members are not interested in winter training camps and instead a summer trip has been arranged in Majorca in July thins year. Unbelievably, 3 members have already signed up and have booked on. In light of this unexpected interest a number of sub-groups of the committee will need to be set up, otherwise we will end up in the same shit as we always are. The groups will be:

- Team Working on Allocating Transport & Sizes. Some A.R.S.E (secretary) booked a hotel without any bike hire facilities so something will need to be sorted. JvO seems interested in this so probably best we leave it to him.

- Permission Group - Someone needs to ask our wives if we are allowed to go cycling for 4 days. I'll be honest I don't fancy doing this so I suggest we do a rock, paper, scissors at the AGM to decide who will do this on behalf of the whole group. Whoever ends up doing this gets free subs for the next year.

I am 12% sure that the SPANC committee will learn from the issues and the lack of interest in winter training camps and revise their approach next year. But until then, onwards and upwards and let's hope 2026 is a fantastic year for all SPANCer's.

PS. If you have arseless bib shorts where is the arse pad?

Anyway, enough of this nonsense. January 2026 is a big month for big birthdays. Happy 70th birthday to uncle Mal on the 8th, happy 50th to the A.R.S.E on the 11th and a massive happy 80th birthday on 15th to Black Betty. Only 1 of these are SPANC members but we may look at honorary memberships next year if the number of people who want to join remains under 5.