Guten tag from Saas Fee (again)
The past two days have been quite the whirlwind.
On Monday we drove back to Saas Fee (which had been closed for the previous four days due to rain and wind), to try to get some more speed training before the Zermatt/Cervinia World Cup. As I mentioned in my last blog, it is very hard to find speed training in Europe in October, and while we weren’t necessarily stressing, Stef and I both felt like we needed more days on the speed skis before sending it down a World Cup.
Unfortunately, yesterday the World Cup was cancelled due to lack of snow. This definitely wasn’t surprising, as they had just cancelled the men’s race a couple days before and there was no snow on the ground in the finish when we were there a week ago. But I realized after the race was cancelled, that for the past couple of weeks I had forced myself into the mindset that it was going to happen, so that in case, by some miracle, it did happen, I was would be ready. It’s crazy what you can convince your mind to believe! It’s also crazy that FIS kept all the athletes and teams waiting for so long before they made the decision which in all honestly probably could have been made three weeks ago. I think the race organizers were holding out hope for cold enough temperatures to make more snow or perhaps they were hoping to get insurance money which means they have to wait to the last minute to cancel. Unfortunately, there are no plans to reschedule the downhill races in the calendar this season, which means we will just have five World Cup race weekends instead of six this year.
So now again we are forced to act on our toes and come up with a new game plan! Luckily, we have gotten quite good at this and were able to rebook our flights for tomorrow to head back to the US for our next training block in Colorado, and our sights are now set on preparing for Lake Louise World Cup.
Here are some photos from the past very crazy and very atypical week!
Oh my! I haven't seen Leslie in almost 40 years. Keep the updates coming.