Davos Christmas

Our second World Cup in Davos was a successful one, with some of our best races of the year as a team. Liz barely missed the top 10 and placed 12th in the 10k skate race, while Sadie and Jessie also placed in the top 30. On sprint day, Simi, Kik, Jessie, Ida, and I all qualified for the heats. Unfortunately, four of us ended up falling in our heats, but Kik and I did make it into the semis before we fell, so we ended up 9th and 11th on the day. After a busy period one of racing, I think we were all ready to relax and not worry about races for a couple weeks. This was the first Christmas I had ever spent away from my family and I missed them dearly, but we managed to all have a wonderful Christmas in Davos by doing some of the following...

Davos sprint qualifier (Urs Steger photo)

Cooling down from the sprint and ready for Christmas break!

A final Sodie Special before departing for Christmas

1. Building a snowman! After the first significant snowfall ten days ago, Jessie and I decided we would build a snowman. He didn't last long, but he looked great for the evening.

Snow friend construction

The final product

2. Surrounding myself with some things that reminded me of home.

Stuffed animals!

A Christmas card from my sister

Skyping with Isabel and her hat hair almost every day helped make Christmas away from home significantly easier

Mexican food! Our first two nights of break, we made Mexican and curry. These are two foods that we rarely see on the road, but they remind us of home.

Christmas trees and stockings! Jessie and her family very kindly made a stocking for each one of us who was over here without our family. It was incredibly sweet and provided us with some extra entertainment on Christmas morning since they accidentally ended up hiding it in someone else's apartment building, resulting in a Christmas morning scavenger hunt!

Christmas movies galore. It looks like a Christmas tree!!

3. Training smart, but training fun. One of my favorite things to do in Davos is to go for tours up the valleys. There wasn't much snow at the beginning of our break, but on the first sunny day, we decided to take our rock skis and see how far up one of the valleys we could make it. It's been my favorite ski of the year so far. Other examples of making training fun have been going for night skis and skiing back and forth between each other's apartments instead of driving.

Liz, Ida, and me 

The perfect day

Simi, me, Liz, and Ida on our tour up Dischma. These three made my Christmas very special and I'm incredibly lucky to have them.

Night ski to Christmas dinner

4. Allowing other families to adopt us. We were lucky to have other families take us in on both Christmas Eve and Christmas night. On Christmas Eve, the Capol family had us over for dinner. We even got to help their little girls open their presents from Santa! For Christmas dinner, the Diggins family welcomed us over for a delicious traditional Diggins Christmas dinner and the best part was that for appetizers we made a gingerbread house!

Dinner at the Capols

Our gingerbread house

Christmas dinner with the Diggins - thank you!!

Most of the team is either doing the full Tour de Ski or at least the first half. We head to Oberstdorf, Germany tomorrow and the first stage of the Tour is on Saturday. I will be doing the first four races of the tour. There will be four races in five days for those of us doing the first half and seven races in nine days for the people who complete the Tour. I enjoyed having some down time over the past week, but things are about to get busy. Next update after the Tour...Happy New Year!

Showing off some Johaug gloves with Seraina Boner and Liz