France: Day something or other: Day off

This is the morning before our long biathlon race. This is what I wrote last night but was unable to publish.

It’s a snowy evening in Bessans. The snow has been falling softly all day. This should make for very different conditions for our long biathlon race tomorrow. The snow should be faster because it’s most likely warmer than what’s on the ground, but, if there is an abundance of it on the trail tomorrow, it might actually slow things down further.



Today was a day off or a training day. We did some shooting in the morning and just a bit of skiing. Tomorrow’s race is a shooter’s race, so I’m hoping to do alright as long as I can keep my shooting good like in the last biathlon race. The blind categories start late tomorrow – my start time is 1:00:30, which is going to pose a bit of a problem with eating. It’s a long race, so we need to make sure we don’t get hungry in the middle of it, but having this late start means we have to figure out when to have breakfast and when to have some snacks and WHAT to have as snacks, as we won’t be able to eat lunch until after the race.


Well, the internet is not working here today for some reason, so I guess I can’t post this tonight. I will try again in the morning since I will have so much time to waste.

So the internet is working now. I slept for like 9 hours last night, but am still feeling tired for some reason. Regardless, I'll just go out and ski as hard as I can. After all, that's all I can really do.

Yesterday, a group of us wanted to go on a little road trip to Turin, Italy, but we found out that it's too far of a drive from here in the winter to do in an afternoon. So we just went exploring in this region of France. We drove over to the bigger town of Modane and got a "sablé" (kind of like a butter cookie). Then we went to what seems to be the only attraction in the area, a place called "la maison penchée" (the leaning house). Apparently it was some guardhouse that got thrown a few dozen metres from where it stood during WWII. It didn't look like much from the outside, and we were totally unimpressed, but it turned out to be a lot of fun once we went inside. It totally threw your balance and made you all dizzy.

Then, on our way back to our little village, we stopped to look at an awesome castle or fortress thing. They seem to have one of those on every hill around here. We weren't able to go inside, but it was really cool just to see it anyway since I'd never seen one in real life before. It had a moat and a drawbridge and the whole bit. They also had some crazy rope courses and ziplines going across the canyon. Looked pretty scary.

Well, it's just after 10:30, so I'd better go get ready for my race. Hopefully, I'll post again tonight, but no promises. Good morning from snowy Bessans.