The break is over and I’m back in Oberhof, Germany for the start of World Cup #4. It has been a mix of wind, rain, and snow since I arrived on Monday, but it looks to be calming down a little bit as I write this post. We start off this evening with the men’s relay at 6:20pm CET. The last few days of training, the organizers have only opened a 1.5km loop on account of their being very little snow elsewhere on the course. So today will be the first time any of the racers will be able to preview the course – an hour or so before the start! It snowed about 10 inches overnight and the venue looks entirely different from yesterday. Should be a good race as long as the Oberhof fog doesn’t move in!
Since the last races in Hochfilzen, I travelled to Portland, ME where I spent Christmas at my sister’s house with family and friends. There was really no snow to speak of, but it was great to get a little down time and relax over the holidays. Christmas morning brought some big surprises – the biggest of which was definitely a brand new Trebuchet which I found sitting in the driveway of Kendra’s house. Thanks to KB’s boyfriend, Drew and our friend Thomas for wasting two free weekends to build what is probably the coolest christmas present ever made! (See the picture gallery for details). As is stated in the Apple Macbook Dictionary, The Trebuchet is a “machine used in medieval warfare for hurling large stones or other missiles”. In our case, the “other missiles” included a basketball, a pumpkin, and several members of the squash family. Cumberland Fairgrounds was successfully laid under siege for the better part of an hour, and the Herrigel-Bailey fiefdom was preserved.
After the break, I headed back over to Munich on the 27th for a small training camp in Ruhpolding, Germany, the site of this year’s World Championships. While there, teammate Leif Nordgren and I spent the mornings training on the biathlon venue with the help of Tobias Reiter behind the scope. In the afternoons, we had the opportunity to take a couple skitours in the Bavarian backcountry with some of the Ruhpolding locals.
After a solid training block, Leif and I headed through seven hours of traffic to Oberhof on January 2nd. Check out the photo gallery for a few photos from the past couple of weeks.
Happy New Years!
-LB
