I’M writing this with my feet up firmly in recovery mode after a week-long training camp in Northern California.

I journeyed up to San Francisco, where my coach Matt Dixon and our Purplepatch team is based, a fortnight ago ahead of a team training camp in a small town called Stinson Beach.

Stinson is about an hour north of San Francisco and, like last year, was a great venue. It’s a stunning beachside town with a tiny population, one general store and not a great deal else – so it's a perfect setting for a camp like ours.

The riding, running and swimming opportunities there are terrific. The landscape reminds me a lot of the Lake District, but with better weather.

We did much of our swimming in a nearby lake and the running workouts were also close by. With our coaches with us every day to oversee every aspect of our training it was hugely valuable and certainly sets us up well for the upcoming races.

For much of the week there were just four of us – four girls at that – so it was a fun time with plenty of hard work (and some of girlie giggles too).

I’m now back home in LA and looking ahead to my next race, which is Ironman 70.3 St George in Utah a week today. This race also doubles as the US Pro Championships which has attracted stellar fields in the past – and this year is no different.

The start list looks similar to last year’s World Championship field, possibly even deeper, so it will definitely be one hell of an event.

As with any race, I do what I have been trained to do and focus on me and my performance regardless of who else is there.

It’ll be a great test of my early season fitness and I’m looking forward to the battle. I’ll travel from LA to Utah on Tuesday to give my body time to recover and recuperate from the journey.

It’s about a 400-mile drive so with stops will likely take about seven hours in the car.

Although that might sound long and arduous, road trips like this aren’t considered a big deal here in the US. I guess when you’re in a country this large, driving 400 miles isn’t actually all that far.

I’ve certainly grown well accustomed to it and now chuckle that I used to think the two-hour drive from Swindon to my old university stomping ground of Loughborough was a “long way”.

As always, I’m ever grateful to my sponsors – special thanks to local businesses Morris Owen and Virtua for their continued support. I’ll be back in two weeks with tales from St George.

In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter @eklidbury for more regular updates.