Christmas in Lake Placid

I have had a beautiful white Christmas here in Lake Placid. It snowed a couple of feet a few days before which guaranteed a cold but gorgeous Christmas day.
I went skating last night at the local ice rink which was only my third time ever on iceskates and managed to not fall over or make a complete fool of myself. I think my rollerblading days in Christchurch helped me out there!
Tonight I have an outdoor party to go to. Although it will be FREEZING, they have a big bonfire going which will hopefully keep me slightly warmer than frozen. Apparently, the place is a bit remote so we have to snowshoe in to it.

Showing my skills at the 'oval', the local skating hotspot. I think that my rollerblading days in Christchurch were my saving grace here!

The race

Yes, this is me with a black eye. Unfortunately I had a bit of a disagreement with one of the corners on race day, and I came off looking second best. I finished 28th which I am not very happy about. Sigulda is one of my favourite tracks so I was hoping to do alot better here. But the good thing is that New Zealand is still ranked in the top 8 nations in the World Cup which means one of us kiwi girls will automatically qualify for the Olympics if we can stay in that top 8 for one more race.

Sigulda pics

Me in corner 15 of the 16 corners in the track here in Sigulda. We start from the 5th floor of the building you can see in the top left of the pic. Sigulda is completely flat but the track goes down into an old quarry.

The building in which we start from. I am standing in corner 1.

Looking over the edge of the start, you can see the finish way below, pretty cool!

I'm alive!

AHHHHHH!!! I survived my first day here in Sigulda! This track is legendary for it's danger and hard corners to negotiate. If you screw up here, there's a high chance that it's going to hurt. But I had my two runs and don't have a bump on me, phew. We only have 3 days of training here and then race on Thursday so each run is very important.

Tomorrow we train at 10am so it's off to bed soon for some much needed zzzzzz's.

Trip to Sigulda

I am sitting in the airport in Vienna, about to jump on a plane to Riga. We have come from Innsbruck already and once we get to Riga we have to find a way of getting to Sigulda which is about an hour away. The Japanese and Russian teams are sitting next to us at the gate here so hopefully we can talk sweetly to them and hitch a lift.

The race in Igls didn't go so well for me. I finished 29th when I was hoping to make the top 20. Lou finished 17th but she also wanted to do better.

Igls pics

The start at Igls. The camera guys are there because our race goes out live on Europsort all across europe.
The beautiful view we have from the warm up area at the top of the track in Igls.

Internet non-existant

Finally I have managed to find an internet place. Our hotel is having difficulty with it's wireless so this is the second time I've been online in 3 weeks!

Training is going really well here in Austria. We have one more run before we race on Friday.

It's been snowing for the last two days but looks to be clearing up a little now.

Igls, Austria

Today was the first day of official training for the Igls World Cup race. We all had 3 runs each and our group was lucky enough to avoid most of the snow that fell today. At one stage, it started to absolutely dump, with some of the biggest flakes I’ve ever seen! Awesome.

Last night there was a festival in town and they had blocked off the whole main street of Igls. This is the start of their Christmas celebrations here in Austria. They have a tradition where after St. Nick has been through the town and handed out gifts to the small children, people dressed up as monsters get pulled into town on a flaming cart and then go around beating the ‘evil’ out of all the bad people. They literally go through the crowd, pulling random people and beating them with a switch. And they’re not gentle by any means! And the people seem to think this is funny! Luckily Lou and I have a room with a balcony that overlooks the main street where we watched the carnage from a safe spot.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RYAN!

My brother Ryan’s birthday, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE BRO!! The big 19!

I’m now in Igls which is a little village above Innsbruck in Austria. It is just beautiful with huge mountains surrounding us.

I’ve had 3 days on the track here now, just training and have been going well. On the first day I did a PB which is crazy! Not often you go to a track and do an all time PB on your first day! So really happy with that.

It has been raining and snowing all day today and we trained in the rain this morning, luckily we have Speedo speedsuits!