Sunshine please

Winter is here! And it brought its friend, Mr. Freeze. Now, New Zealand houses are cold, horribly cold, with no central heating and an electric blanket to heat the house, you get used to it. Buuuut..I do not think anyone can get used to -38 weather. Sounds cool to talk about, not the greatest thing to live through. and  this early in the season, it shakes you deep into you bones. So Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week training was moved indoors. But other than that, it has been Fabulous!

Richard and Petr are the greatest people in the world. I could not ask for a better set-up and the training has been fabulous. I raced in the American trial races last week, and a Canadian time-trial this week. It felt great to be racing again, even though they did not go wonderfully. But that is why we do them, so we can get the bad races and Time-trials out of the way before the bigger races like the World Cups come along!

I am here for one more week and then back into the air. Wish for warm weather!

1 month later

1 month later and I am feeling fabulous!!! It has been great being back in Canmore with the family and back into training hard. I had 3 days off after I came home and then my new coach, Richard Boruta, was all over the hard training right away! Testing and trials just to see where I was, and they went well!

Richard Boruta lives in Canmore and is originally from the Czech Republic. His wife and him run the amazing Wildflower spa in Canmore, and Richard is generously donating his time and energy to coach me. He is making my training plan and coming to all shooting sessions and even some strength and recovery workouts. It is a whole different situation when there is actually a coach there. I feel like I am learning how to ski all over again because I have fallen into some bad habits from not having a coach tell me to fix little things. I bit frustrating BUT we are getting there :) Petr Zidek, who coached me at the Olympics, is also coaching me along with Richard so it is some kind of double force. Going from no coach to two coaches overnight- ummmm.....INTENSE! (But in a good way!) I am feeling really good and I feel I am getting stronger and stronger every week.

I had 3 weeks of really good, strong training and then I had a recovery week...and what do you know but it worked out myself and a mate were given buddy passes from a friend for helping out at their wedding so 2 days before we left we decided to go to....HAWAII! It was amazing- I desperately needed Vitamin D and this was the best cure. We just chilled, stayed at hostels, went snorkelling and took surf lessons! We also saw some turtles- Yahoo! It was a great trip, but the next day Megan was back at work and I was back at training. Holiday over!

So the season plans are to go to Europe on December 4th and be there until March 21st competing in World Cups, some IBU cups, European Championships and World Championships! Busy season it seems, and I am not even doing all the races!

I hope everyone is happy and healthy and loving life!!!

xx