World Junior Championships: Part 2 - Livigno

So where I left off we were travelling to Livigno. That trip ended up being a bit more complicated than we had originally thought. We almost got lost in Zurich, then we went 15 minutes up the top gears best road in the world (not so when it was that snowy, only to find out that it was blocked off and not used in the winter. Finally we arrived, tired and sore from the 5 hour drive.

We went straight to the restaurant, where we were greeted with an amazing meal. Like very amazing. We then went back to our hotel, and had a good night’s sleep.

The next morning, we woke up, went for a ski, and realized just how awesome Livigno was. If I could describe it, I’d say it was like a combination of Canmore’s mountains with Silverstar’s ski network with awesome food. We went for a nice easy ski, as we were just getting used to Livigno’s 1800 metres of altitude. The sun was shining, the grooming was great and the scenery was beautiful.

The panorama from my hotel balconey

Patrick and Andy skiing

Yay!

Perfect grooming

There was steam coming off the stream. Looked pretty cool.

So this is where we stayed for 4 days. Every day was beautiful conditions, and always the awesome food. It was a lot of fun.

On the third day, we went down to Bormio, Italy, which is a 40 minute drive away, in order to do some intervals. We couldn’t do the intervals at Livigno’s high altitude, but Bormio’s altitude was just fine. There we hammered out some intense descending intervals, then went back to Italy for one last day.

One final ski, one fine final meal, and then we headed straight back up to Hinterzarten.

Livigno & I

Panorama of Bormio

Panorama of Livigno

Andy, unable to eat wheat or milk, got a special meal, just for him

Me and my cake. All I wanted was a piece of cake, and they gave me a piece of cake... and wipped cream, gelato, and custard... awesome

World Junior Championships - Part 1

Hey people!

Yeh, yeh yeh, I know I haven't posted in a little bit. Since my last post, really not that much has happened. I trained, I made it home from Austria alright, I went to Silverstar, I raced there, I trained some more, I raced at Val Cartier then... BOOM! I was on the plane to Zurich. Which is where my story begin...

As I’m writing this we’re heading over to Livigno, Italy.

We arrived here 3 days ago, or perhaps 4, my sense of time got all messed up by the jetlag. The first day was very difficult. Our flight from Ottawa to Frankfurt was delayed by almost 2 hours. This meant that we missed our connecting flight to Zurich, and had to take another one almost 3 hours later than the original connecting flight. Finally, upon arriving to Zurich, we realized that our skis had not made it to Zurich on the same flight as us, and they wouldn’t be arriving for another 3 hours.

It all worked out in the end, however. We met up with the rest of the crew and had to wait for a bit for them to get all the cars together and such, and Eric Bailey, who was a bit later because he had originally arrived to the airport with an expired passport, was able to pick up our skis.

So we drove over to a little town near Hinterzarten, where we would be staying for most of the trip. We ate, watched a bit of a movie, then finally got some needed sleep after this 30 hour day.The next day we went up to the ski venue to ski on the trails. The trails there are very nice. The course had a good amount of climbing and descent, and they were real fun to ski on.

The Stadium

The snow-making artillery

Pat and Andy in they're fancy new suits

Me

The next day, we went straight into my very first international FIS race. It was a skate sprint, and although a great number of the world junior teams weren’t there, the competition was still very stiff, albeit the jetlag was still affecting me quite a bit, and I was tired.

I qualified 27th, 7 seconds back from the winner. Compared to the other Canadians, I was more or less where I should have been in a sprint, perhaps even better than usual. However, compared to the rest of the field I felt like I was sprinting a couple years ago, before I could sprint properly. In the quarter finals I finished 5th in my heat (last, one of the guys didn’t start), and that was the end of that day. I wasn’t super happy with my race, I felt like I could have possibly done better in the heats, but overall that day I felt pretty tired so I didn’t worry overly about it.

The second day we did a classic 10 km individual start race. I felt like my race went pretty well. My grip was good, and I sure was tired by the end. Once again, however, well still performing decent compared to the other Canadians, I found myself all the way back in 21st place when the results came out, a full 2:34 behind the winner. Again, I was not up to my full potential yet, but still, stiff competition! Hopefully, come World Juniors, I’ll be able to perform a bit better.

So that was this morning. Right after getting back from the race, we ate, showered, packed up and then left. We’re making our way over to Livigno, Italy to do a bit of an altitude training camp (although we won’t be training very hard). The area is supposed to be extremely nice, the food and lodging exceptional, so I’m looking forward to it.

A few members of our team, namely Zach, Fred and Jesse all came down with some form of a flu, and will be staying in Hinterzarten until we get back in 4 days. We’re all hoping that no one else got infected. Spending World Juniors in bed, sick, would suck. Quite a bit.

That’s all for now, with any luck I’ll get another report out in a little bit.

P.S. I'm posting pictures as I take them to http://picasaweb.google.ca/steffanis/WJC#