France: Day 5 – Taking it easy

I’m feeling really tired again today even though I slept a bit better finally. I think it only took me till 11 o’clock last night to fall asleep, which means I got about 8 hours of sleep. A couple more nights like that, and I’ll be good as new. My first race, a 7.5 km biathlon, is on Wednesday (day after tomorrow), so I should be fine by then, I hope.

Yesterday, it started getting a little warmer up here, and the snow in the afternoon was much faster. I love skate-skiing on fast (but not icy) snow. It’s such a great feeling when you’re flying down the hill, and you’re able to do little step turns and all those technical things that make you feel like you got some “serious skills.” Harris and I skied around what we thought might be the race course for Wednesday. It was about a 2.5 km loop with pretty gentle uphills and downhills. There was only one corner where you get some good speed going into a wide 180-degree left turn, where I had some trouble stepping around it, but I’m sure now that Robert’s here, we can practise it a few times and get it to where I’m comfortable. We also met up with Jamie and Alex on the biggest uphill and did a bit of technique work with a video camera. We analyzed the video last night, and now both Alex and I know what we need to work on for our offset (skate technique used on uphills).

As I mentioned earlier, my guide, Robert, our biathlon coach, Dave, and our two skiers from Quebec arrived yesterday with the “A” team. Robert’s gone out for a ski to scope out the trails. He and I are going for a walk this afternoon so that he can see the town and I can keep moving.

Well, it’s just about lunchtime so I’d better go. I will post this as soon as I’m able to connect to the Internet. In this town, the only place that has Wi-Fi is the restaurant we eat at. I guess, we lucked out in that regard!

So it's now just after 9 p.m. and I'm about to get off the net and go to bed, but before I do I thought I'd post a couple of the pictures we took on our walk with Robert and Andrea this afternoon. It was a gorgeous afternoon in Bessans, very warm and sunny. We walked through the town, then on a trail out by the river and then Robert and I climbed up to see the church. It was a very nice walk.