Fall

Hike up the pass from Bessan, Fra.

Warrior yoga pose on Dachstein Glacier, Aut.





Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each is to succeed.
- Corita Kent



Today is a day for tea and a good book. It has been raining all day here in Ramsau am Dachstein. Fortunately, we have an easy day and I have done just that. Drank tea and chilled. Our shooting session this morning was wet….but survivable! Tomorrow the forecast is for snow at 12000m! We are living at 1100m so I think it will be pretty sloppy out there.

We are currently in the middle of a three-week camp. Last week we were in France – Haute-Maurienne – for the Summer Biathlon Roller ski World Championships. It was a good training experience. I skied well, but had too many mistakes in shooting and didn’t have the results that I was hoping for (finished 13th in the sprint and pursuit). However, it is only September and I know that I am not race ready quite yet. I much prefer winter racing! My teammate Megan Tandy had a great pursuit and finished 3rd in the junior category. Jean Phillip and Marco Bedard had a great sprint finishing 5th and 8th respectively.

After our Pursuit race, we all went on a hike up the valley from the Biathlon site. Was a beautiful area, with a very quaint village of stone houses, and inaccessible to vehicles. The cows grazing in the area decided to stampede down the hill along with boys. Marco got an excellent video footage on his camera. Practically their own running of the bulls…

Now we are on a 2-week camp in Ramsau for glacier skiing on Dachstein (Austria). The ski conditions are excellent this year. Our team here this year consists of 4 women, and 3 men, with coaches Geret Coyne and Jean Paquet. So far highlights include: excessive cheese eating and table wine drinking in France, subsequently interpretive dancing and singing to the Mamma Mia soundtrack in our room, hysterical girl time watching the Sex in the City movie, and overzealous amounts of Milka bars bought once entering the land of chocolate (aka Austria). I suppose skiing this week, could also be thought of as a major highlight, as the last time we were on skis was in Whistler during May. It is awesome to be on skis again!

Next week will be a very busy week on the approximately 8km groomed track on the glacier, as more World Cup teams will be arriving on Sunday. Last year we stayed at a hotel right at the gondola station (1700m), which is great for skiing. However, this year we are staying down by the roller ski track (1100m), which is excellent for afternoon workouts. We get up from our nap and ski 400m to the range! Plus, the owner of our apartment bakes us yummy cakes! Today the occasion was “bad weather” cake!

On the list of activities this week (besides training of course) involve hitting up the forest park which now has a luge looking roller coaster, baking cookies, facebook stalking and playing pranks on the boys. I think it should be a good week ;)

Well Zina from the block is out. Training time….