Konigssee

Well, today is our last day here in Konigssee. This place is amazing. Konigssee is right next to a town called Berchtesgaden. It might sound familiar because it was in the TV show Band of Brothers and is home to Hitler’s Eagals Nest. The track is on the side of a mountain and it criss-crosses a stream heading down to a lake at the finish area. The track is in peoples back yards.... literaly and in some corners there are no inside walls, so you can actually walk into the track.
As for sliding, I had my first crash here this week. In fact there was 3 of them (3 consecutive runs) all in the same place and the last one I was dragging behind my sled with one finger hooked in, going through 3 corners. I burned through my suit and scrubbed a lot of time, however, I managed to pull my self back on and finish. I finally got the part figured out and the problem was due to a misunderstanding of the amont of steering input....... and maybe direction. It may not sound like much, but in skeleton when we go through corners we experience osillations. We go to the roof, back down, back up, back down.... The amount and number of oscillations are affected by the g-force, duration of the corner and speed. If you steer corectly you minimize the up-down, if not.... well. So I was steering up when I should have been steering down and the end result was a t-bone into the inside wall and then followed by a roll-over. But all is good, now we just have to do it better....
Today is an off day and it is into the city of Salzburg.... Tommarrow off to La Plagne, France. It is a very rare opportunity to get to slide there and even our coach has never been there.... so well see how she goes.

Race Day... Sort Of

Today we held a fake race among the 8 of us. All in all, I did alright. I had personal best times and am starting to feel much more comfortable on my sled. My coach has me not going 100% off the start, for in the past there have been a few "speed freaks" who have had potential but they concentrated only on their starts and failed to develop as a driver, and in the end never really materialized into much. With that in mind, today was good. I pushed a 5:13 and a 5:07, the next fastest was a 5:28 and the average was a 5:60. The track start record is a 5:01, and today, even feeling run down I know I could have given it a good run. But as the saying goes..... "Drive for Show, Put for dough" the only time that matters is your down time and start records dont equal winning or medals. However, my form is getting better and with each run I feel more at home on the sled and on the ice. I am learning tons, not just from my coach though. We have some great sliders here, some are beating other countries world cuppers in trainning and in Cesana we got to slide with and assess the womens Olympic Gold medalist. It is them who I am looking up to, to learn their approach to the sport, to driving and to planning their runs.

Day off tommarrow, we are heading into Dresden. It is a welcome break, a chance to let the brain slow down and the body recover. Then on Sunday it is off to Konigssee and Monday back to sliding.

Hope all is well back home. Like prommised, pictures to come, stay tuned.

Secret Track

Well, long time since last post..... We left Cesana and traveled to Munich then up through Dresden and finally on to a little place in the Forest called Altenberg. Altenberg is billed as being the most difficult and dangerous track around. However, it has a facinating history. It was built in the 1980s as a top secret East German training track for the 1988 Calgary Olympics. It has the most difficut parts of all the tracks to its date and is modeled kind of like Calgary´s, the track lies entierly below the tree line so no one could discover it.

The town itself is... well depressing yet interesting. Some parts have not been changed since WWII, and that goes for the people as well. A big change from Cesana. Everyday after sliding we head to the "sport prison". A 1950`s sport training facility \ dorm to do our dryland training. It is a real unique experience. The most interesting training equipment around, however, developed in the 1950\60´s, still just like something out of a cold war era sports movie. Internet and phones are very difficult to get,hopefully Konigssee (Salzberg) is better. An interesting side note, our next track, Konigssee, is in the German\Austrian Alps and from the start house you can see Hitlers Eagles Nest on the next mountain. Photos to come as soon as we find wireless access.

Oh yeah, what a great time driving the Autobahn, going 150 or more and having Porches blow your doors off going 220. We thing the Deerfoot is Bad!!!

Ouch

Well, it is the end of our 2nd day of sliding and I now have more runs under my belt at Cesana that Calgary. So I guess this is now my ’’Home’’ track. My new name will now be.... Camio Macleodio, being this is Italy. It has been a lot of fun, extreamly tiring. We are up at 6:30, then at the track for 8, slide, lunch, back to the track, and slide again, back around 5-6, video, dinner and bed. I have cuts, bruises, and scrapes EVERYWHERE! However, it is a blast and there will be time for rest on our trip to Altenberg on Saturday. Cesana, a town 1 hour outside Torino, is a great little place. There are 5-6 little town all around the area, all conected by gondolas and sking chair lifts, the place is one gigantic ski resort. The weather has been about 15-20 degrees during the day, sunny and just great. Nights, are around 1-5 degrees, anda little crisp. Tommarrow is another day of sliding, so.....

Torino

Well it was a long trip but we made it Torino. Due to some issues with drivers, I was chosen to drive one of the 3 vans from Frankfurt to Insbruck then the next day on to Cesana, most on the Autobahn. It took us through Verona and Milan during rush hour and turned out to be quite a drive. Today was spent doing track walks and watching the lines of several other sliders. We are being fed well, except the damn bobsleders are eating most of it, just jokes. Tommarrow we slide.