Europia so far

So here we are only a day before the start of the World Championships here in Italy. We have been here for just over a week now to give a chance to our body to adjust to time change but most importantly to diet-change. We left Calgary on the 8^th of February and flew to Venice. After about 24 hours of traveling, we found a nice “Aubergo” downtown Venice were we absolutely crashed. A good night of rest later, we woke up early to go for a run along the canals of Venice, one of the nicest run we ever had actually. It was just spectacular. We then made our way to pick up our traveling partner in Landeck Austria.

We spent 3 wonderful days in Reiner’s family in Winnebach in the valley of OtZtal, on a hotel/farm getting immerse in the Austrian Culture.

We made the most of the Austrian snow. On the first ski day, we climbed up the valley just behind the hotel towards a nice summer hut and kept going up the valley and ended up at the top of a 500m long 45 degrees couloir; which we skied with our race skies of course. It was a great warm up run on our first ski day in Europe!

The following day was more training oriented. We skied up a nice mellow trail towards a nice alpine Café called the Nissl Hut, had a coffee break, skied down and climbed up to an other alpine hut (Amberger Hut) where we had amazing cappuccinos and shared traditional food! We also scoped the itinerary for the following day.

On day 3, we woke up to beautiful sunny skies. We climbed back to the Amberger Hut, had an espresso and then undertook the climb up the highest peak of the area, the SchranKroger 3498m. It was amazing! Back down the glacier, we had to stop at the hut once again and get a last great meal before heading back to the hotel. Then, we took the road back to Landeck to have a last minute vertical race against the local Search and Rescue team and drove back to a little town in Italy called Belluno.

Now, the pre-race shopping is done, we are quasi rested and definitively carb loading… I think it is fair to say that we are ready to race! We could definitively hope for more snow as things here are not really covered so racing should be really interesting. Please some some energy our way as we have a week long filled of event coming up!

video of the Ridge Walk up on the SchranKroger to come... Internet is hard to access here!!!