This past weekend I had the opportunity to race in Germany for the first time! Known for Oktoberfest, schnitzel, das autobahn, and schnapps (more on that later), Germany is one of those countries that just looks good all the time. They must have ordinances on what you can leave on your lawn, because I've never seen a German house that didn't look clean and neat, and woodpiles are at a whole different level of organization.
We stayed in the town of Zwiesel, which is on the far eastern side of the country right next to the Czech border. Zwiesel is known for glassblowing and also sits at the base of the Großer Arber, the highest peak in the Bavarian forest. We actually raced up at Arber, which was good because by the end of the week it was down to green fields in Zwiesel. We stayed at a great little guest house called the Landhotel Madalenenhof, where the owner instantly took a liking to Julia (Kern) because she was able to communicate in German (so great when you are traveling in Europe!). He brought out schnapps for the team for our first and last nights dinners. I'm not one to turn my nose up at local customs, so... prost! We also spent a lot of time on a 1500 piece puzzle of the world, which unfortunately we had to abandon once we had just the ocean left- too much blue.
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| Exploring Zwiesel, this church had massive vaulted ceilings |
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| Heather and Leah with the tallest tower of wineglasses in the world! Did they use glue? No telling.. |
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| View from an afternoon jog |
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| Skiing up at Arber was fantastic, although the newly fallen snow and warming temps made waxing tricky. |
We raced a 10k classic individual start on Saturday and a 15k freestyle mass start Sunday. The races were all held on a 2.5k loop, which had a really steep hill out of the start and then more gradual climbing on the second part of the loop. Coming straight over from the US and jumping in, I wasn't sure what to expect. I had a good, but not great race in the 10k, placing 21st, but on the bright side I nailed my pacing for the first time this year in 10k. I was third American, and it was cool to see Becca take 13th in our race and Julia 4th in the junior race! In the 15k, I had a horrible start when I slipped on someone's skis on the first uphill and lost a lot of places. However, there were solid packs behind the leaders and I was able to ski with Erika and Becca and catch up a bit. Aided by blisteringly fast skis, I skied to 20th place and was 1st American (in our race, although Julia crushed her junior 15k and had a faster time and 3rd place finish!). I was happy with the result as distance freestyle has been pretty tricky for me this year, and we haven't done many mass starts, so it's always fun to do some head to head racing. The races were really fun overall, and I'm hoping with a little more time over here I can improve my results for next weekend. Big thanks to Bryan Fish for organizing the trip and our techs Justin Beckwith, Jon Filardo, and Dylan Watts for giving us competitive skis, which makes the transition to European racing all that much better.
We drove Monday from Zwiesel to Toblach, Italy, where we'll be competing in OPA Finals this weekend. The schedule has a 2.5k freestyle, 10k classic individual, and 10k freestyle pursuit, and there's about 2 feet of new snow on the ground, so we're happy to be here! I'll post more after the weekend.
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| Skiing on the lake at Arber, just like Craftsbury! |
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| Got to meet up with Heather, who was coming from U23's in Romania! |
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| It's great being in Europe and being able to watch cross country and biathlon on TV! Here's Hannah Dreissigacker after her top 20 in the sprint at World Champs |
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| Little photo collage of the 15k race thanks to Justin Beckwith. I'm in green, lower right. Our techs were awesome at cheering and feeds! |
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