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I am now in Madona, Latvia, preparing to race a few Scandinavian Cups in about a week, but I have a few more pictures to share from the Czech Republic.

First of all, if any of you readers have been browsing WJ/U23 skier updates, you’ll probably have seen references about the very strange hotel we stayed in.  The Babylon Hotel.  It has a waterpark, bowling alley, club, mall and many resident animals, in addition to its 1000 hotel rooms.  I don’t think many photos have been shared of the hotel, so here are a few of mine, with focus on the animals:

The front entrance of the Hotel Babylon

One of two large atriums within the hotel

The second glass-ceilinged atrium

In the atrium with palm trees, there was a pool full of live turtles. Here, Amy Caldwell and Anika Miller admire the turtles.

There were fish of all sizes swimming in the fountain in the front lobby

Fish in the fountain

This glass animal house, on the left, housed 2 squirrels and 2 snakes, in separate cages. 

One of the squirrels in the animal case. I could see them from the window of my room, which looked out onto the atrium.

The other case, next to the squirrels, had two albino burmese pythons in it! The first few days they were hiding under things every time I walked by, so I kept walking by, and eventually they came out! Some people didn’t like the idea of snakes in the hotel very much, but I really like snakes. However, their case wasn’t all that nice or big, so I felt sorry for them to be trapped in there all the time.

A standard European hotel room with three small beds.

Breakfast at the Babylon. Breakfast was definitely the best meal of the day, and dinner was sometimes pretty decent, but lunch and the other dinners left something to be desired.

And a few buildings from the city of Liberec.

A church in Liberec in a nicer area of town

A red building that caught my eye while I was out on a run

An ornate lamp

Near our hotel, there were some less attractive structures, like this factory

However, there are fascinating cobblestone patterns everywhere

Finally, a few comments about the 15k pursuit race, which happened last Saturday.  I finished 19th in the race, which was solid but I had been hoping to be able to pull off a slightly better result.  It might have helped my post-race feeling if I had not narrowly lost a sprint finish for 18th place.  While winning a sprint finish can partially redeem a bad race, losing one can put a slight damper on an otherwise good race.

The start and the classic section particularly were crazy.  We started in a 5-lane chevron, which is narrower than usual, and quickly were funneled into 3 tracks to climb the first hill right out of the stadium.  I’ve been in many chaotic mass starts before, between US Nationals, NCAAs, college carnivals, and the Canmore World Cups, but the bottlenecking and accordioning in this one were quite extreme.  Certainly the course was the same for everyone, but the people at the front of the pack had a little more freedom of movement than those of us at the back.  During the first and second laps, I was near the back of the lead pack, which was quite large, and I was getting flung off the back occasionally, only to have to catch back up.  It was reassuring to be skiing in the same vicinity of the pack as Sophie at the beginning of the race, but we weren’t able to work together much, and she got caught in a tangle and fell back a little after that.  In the skate section I caught and worked together with two Estonians and a Swedish girl, and it was fun to at least have a few other people around me who kept pushing the pace.  There were a few big uphills that compressed the field, as least visually, and it was cool to be able to see the leaders as I raced… that’s not something I’ve been able to do during World Juniors or U23s before, and I really do think I’m getting closer to the leaders in these mass starts.  Lastly, but not at all least, thanks to all of the wax techs and coaches for their tireless work during WJ/U23s!

Pepa and I travelled from Craftsbury to the Czech Republic last Wednesday and Thursday, the 16th and 17th.  I am racing this week in the U23 World Championships and Pepa is one of the coaches for the event this year, which is being held in Liberec.

On Tuesday I raced in the U23 classic sprint, yesterday was the 10k skate, and tomorrow will be a 15k pursuit for the U23 women.

The sprint was a good way to start out the week.  We had plenty of time in the days preceding the race to check out the course and get to know each aspect.   The course featured three solid climbs, two quick descents, and  a long double-pole finishing stretch.  Since there’s been more time to manufacture snow, and more natural snow too, the loop was about 500m longer than the one used for the World Cup several weeks ago.  While a few inches of new snow had fallen the previous day and night, the race day was overcast with no new snow, and the classic tracks were relatively firm and held up well during the qualifier.

While I didn’t quite qualify for the heats, with a 38th place performance, I was actually very happy with my race.  My warm up may have been a little less than perfect, so I started out a bit too slowly (which is a reoccurring problem for me).  It didn’t necessarily feel like I was going slow on the first uphill during the race, but in retrospect I can see that I was not quite ready to go.  I think I got off balance and slipped a few times on the first two hills also, even though the skis were great (they were so good that I tested during my warm up and didn’t need any touch-ups at all).  However, by the third and final uphill of the course, I felt great and I believe I was skiing with as much “snappy-ness” and intensity as I ever have.

Here are a few pictures of the sprint course, on a pre-race day.

First hill on the courses, photo from the stadium

The second hill on the sprint course, also on the skate courses

A long distance view of people climbing the last hill into the stadium

While 3.5 seconds out of 30th place isn’t close enough for a better last 50 meters or a better lunge to have made the difference, I still consider it tantalizingly close enough that I can reflect on where I could have made up those seconds.  My sprinting is much better than it used to be, but qualifying is still a challenge, and I know I can continue to improve.  I’m staying over here in Europe for about two more weeks beyond U23s, and in Estonia I’ll be racing two more sprints, so I’ll soon have an opportunity to test my qualifier speed again.

Yesterday, the 10k, was quite a nice race also.  We woke up to it snowing, which wasn’t exactly expected.  I crammed a Rudy Project visor into my bag for the day in case it kept snowing, and I ended up racing in the silly combination of visor AND yellow-lens glasses underneath.  Silly, but effective.  The visibility was so-so during the race even with appropriate eyewear, less from the falling snow than from the flat light that hinders depth perception.   Luckily I didn’t have any major issues with not being able to see the course, as I knew it pretty well from previewing the day before.

As for the race itself… as it started out, I was worried, because I felt funny – weak, a little bit shaky even, and not very energetic while climbing the first few hills.  Still, it wasn’t as if I could stop the race and ask to start it over or anything, so I put the funny feeling out of my mind and focused on skiing smoothly and using my naturally-long glide.  A few hills in, I started to wake up and find more energy, and to be able to push myself into a faster pace.

Several of the coaches were out on two key spots of the course giving splits and cheering.  It can be hard to process the numbers sometimes when you’re racing, but I was encouraged to find that they were giving me lower place-numbers each time I passed.  When I look back at the results, I see that after a 20th place first lap, I moved to 16th by the end of the 2nd lap, then 14th by the end of the race.  A good progression!

That’s it for now, but I have quite a few more interesting pictures of Liberec, beyond the ones below, that I’ll share in a future post.  The 15k pursuit is coming up in not-very-many hours, and I’m very excited to race again!

US in the athlete tent

Waxing and testing

Outside the wax cabins

Sam Tarling in the 15k skate

David Norris, 15k skate

Eric Packer, 15k skate

Sam and Erik B skiing together during the 15k

Most of the GRP skiers have now descended upon Soldier Hollow, Utah, to prepare for US Nationals. Nationals start on Wednesday, January 2nd with a classic sprint race, and continue through January 8th. Along with the classic sprint, there will be a 10/15k individual start skate race, a 20/30k mass start classic race, and a skate sprint.

Soldier Hollow was fortunate to receive natural snow not too long ago, and the skiing is really quite good. However, the organizers are still manufacturing a huge quantity of snow, to ensure that the snow depth is adequate for classic tracks and clean skiing. Anyone who has wanted classic tracks the past few days has been stuck with about 1k of terrain near the lodge, though the outer loops are excellent for skating and quite good for classic without tracks. The snow piles cover about half of the sprint course as well as a few other places, and they haven’t been groomed smooth yet, which makes it somewhat difficult to ski certain loops of the trails. The piles are moderately skiable, but they’re actually pretty icy, so its not that fun to skitter across their steep sides. We heard that the sprint course may be ready for skiing tomorrow though, so I made sure to take a few pictures of the great Snow Serpent of SoHo today. The shapes of the piles and their alignment make them look like huge fins or vertebrae of a serpent.

The snow serpent from above. You can see our Craftsbury Sprinter van near the center left of the photo, which is somewhat dwarfed by the snow piles. Big snow fins.

US Nationals has been plagued by snow troubles in the past few years, so its great to see these trails looking wintery and the snow plentiful, even if some of it’s man-made. Cold temperatures and sunny days are keeping everything white and bright. Though we may still be relegated to a shortened loop, I’m crossing my fingers for a full 5k loop for the distance races. Though 3.3k is a possibility and would be quite nice too.

On a different note, after racing in the Canmore World Cups, I headed home to Alaska for the holidays.

The World Cup races were quite the experience – eye-opening, challenging, and inspiring. Beyond the racing, the atmosphere itself was very festive and fun. I know Ida and Pat posted lots of photos already, but here’s one more… a bunch of school kids and other spectators slide down a hill towards the parking lot, instead of waiting to walk the stairs, after the men’s 15k classic. Everyone was enthusiastic and happy to watch the skiing, but when the race was over, it was time to get down from the course and go do something else.

Alaska was cold, but it was very nice to be at home.  Within the first few days, I had seen at least 10 moose while driving around town or skiing.  My cats were not quite sure if they remembered me at first, but they quickly came around and we played lots of games and they chased balls and feathers all over the house.  On Christmas day it started snowing mid-morning and continued through much of the day, and I went on an evening ski with my parents and brother under the lights.

On the solstice I helped coach at the 2nd annual Lickety Splits Camp for kids – we had around 100 kids ages 7-11, ready to brave the cold to play skiing games and have some active fun. We took this picture at the end of the skiing session, after quite a few kids had retreated inside. (Photo by Janice Tower)

On December 22nd and 23rd I raced in the Besh Cups, Alaska’s equivalent to Eastern Cups, and I was 2nd place in both the classic sprint and the 5k skate.  We were lucky to be able to race the 2nd day, and the race was nearly cancelled due to the cold, but after a 1.5 hr delay it was supposedly above  -4F.

I was trying to protect my lungs from the cold, so I wore an Airtrim mask for many of my skiing sessions. After around an hour and a half of skiing on one of the colder days, I didn’t realize anything funny had happened, but I had in fact grown an ice beard. A good reminder of how much water can be lost just from breathing.

Make sure you don’t miss the Fasterskier article about Susan’s race at Schalke, it sounds fascinating. (http://fasterskier.com/article/in-packed-soccer-stadium-in-germany-biathletes-put-on-a-show-burke-and-dunklee-tenth-at-schalke/)

Racing excitement here in Utah will commence in a few days, we’ll try to keep you posted!