A New Post for a New Year

January 1, 2015

Similar to Phil, if you have read his latest post, http://www.pbellinghamxc.wordpress.com I too had the intention of keeping the blogs regularly however have found myself becoming a little slack again! I have also had a slightly frustrating 3 weeks since my last post, all of which is nothing too motivating to write about. After seeing that my form was in fact much higher than I expected it to be in Lillehammer, Davos on a whole was a complete disaster! With my skating feeling stronger all the time I was very excited to see what I could produce for the 15km skate. My body felt good the morning of the race, however the extremely icy corners managed to catch me out during the warm up. I had my first crash since my chest injury and as luck would have it, a lot of the impact went through the area where I am still experiencing a lot of sensitivity and nerve pain. To be honest, it felt as bad as it did when I got out of hospital. I tried to do another effort but it just wasn’t sensible to push through that kind of pain. I had it checked out and luckily no further damage had been done. So from 2 good opportunities to perform whilst in good shape I unfortunately can’t really say I achieved anything positive. I returned straight to Falun to start a new training period to ensure my form doesn’t drop off.

View over the Falun World Champs venue

I traveled straight back to Falun and already I have felt glad to be hitting out the hard training again! With such a disrupted preparation for this season, I can tell that my body has already begun to lose a lot of strength. This is largely gauged by just how sore and tired I have been getting from the increased load. So it’s safe to say that this is a much needed few weeks before I race again here in Falun for the Scandinavian Cup on the 9th, 10th and 11th of January. Gradually I have begun to feel strong again in the intensity session and tomorrow I will do a 20km Skiathlon test race with DSA. Should be exciting to see what I can pull out! With heavy rain predicted I’m going to test out the new white base skis – let’s hope they are rockets! Thanks Atomic for the recent support!

Overall for me, the Christmas / New Year period with Teresa and her lovely family has been a refreshing and enjoyable time for me. Experiencing a Swedish Christmas and watching my first Leksand Ice Hockey match in a sold out arena packed full of amazingly passionate supports are both times I will never forget!