I just got to Austria a couple days ago. The trip down was very long – we had to take a bus to get to Montreal, then wait 5 hours for our flight, then do the 8 hour flight, then wait another 3 hours for the rest of the team to get here. Then we had to get the rental vans, and drive for 3 hours before getting to our hotels. In order to reduce jetlag, we had to stay awake for another 7 hours. That means that for 31 hours, the only sleep I got was 2 one hour naps I managed to sneak in on the bus in the morning and at the airport. I slept pretty well that night.
The next day we took the Gondola up to the Dakstein. We’re sleeping at 1200 metres, we drive up to about 1800 m, then we take the gondola up another kilometre or so to the altitude we’ll actually be training at. A short 10 minute walk from the gondola takes us to the ski area, a 10 km loop of switchbacks over the top of this glacier, which, according to my watch has about 140 metres of climbing per lap.
The glacier
The skiing at first was very bizarre… skis are a lot longer than rollerskis. After about 20 minutes however you get used to it and it’s just awesome. The skiing is pretty good (relative to winter skiing). The conditions are a lot like spring skiing. The first day the skiing was OK, the second and third days the skiing was great. Here are some pictures:
Graph of my workout on the first day. It was pretty tiring due to the altitude, and because the snow slowed down as it warmed up. The start and end altitude aren’t the same because I started my watch halfway through the drive up. There are a couple of dips in the heart rate where I stopped to take pictures/drink.
On our downtime I’ve been eating, napping, writing blog updates. Yesterday we golfed for a bit. Most of the holes were par 3’s... we did 4 holes, I personally lost about 3 balls (and that was pretty good compared to the others), and most my scores averaged from 8 strokes to 20 strokes to “did not finish because we ran out balls”.
There are a lot of people up here right now. There are us, the entire CNEPH team, as well as the Russian and Swedish national teams, which are staying at the same place as us. Also up on the glacier were the Slovakian and Danish national teams, and NTDC. It’s pretty cool to be training at the same time as these guys.
Ok so I’ll probably post something else soon… stay tuned.
Here are some other pictures:
Me at the top of the gondola
Picture from top of the Gondola
Picture from bottom of gondola, up to the top
Petra Majdic was here
Ola Vigen Hattestad as well (right behind me)
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