Park City, and the livin’ is easy

It’s been quite an eventful journey since I left Lake Placid for Park City, Utah!

I was originally supposed to leave on Sunday, January 15th but our plane had a mechanical problem and was delayed, ensuring we would miss our connecting flight.  Fortunately Southwest put us up in a hotel for the night, and we were placed on a 6:25am flight on Monday.  It was a long travel day but we eventually made it!

Tuesday was our first day on the ice, and it was pretty fast.  I came within a tenth of my PR pushing almost a half a second slower. I was pretty pumped!  Unfortunately, the days following produced slower, frosty ice because of the warm temps and/or because it was snowing pretty epically.  In fact, the photo on the right is what the track looked like on Saturday, when we were supposed to be racing in the Utah Winter Games.  Needless to say, the race was cancelled, but they did hold a “most creative push” competition and here’s what our teammates were able to produce (note, I did not participate in this contest, although I did aid one of my fellow teammates…you’ll see):

 Anyway, the Sundance Film Festival is going on here and on Saturday I got to see my first ever Sundance film!  One of our teammates, Allen Blackwell, has a Sundance pass and also had some extra tickets so he invited my tour-mate Rachelle and I to come with him.  We saw the movie ‘Black Rock’ featuring Kate  Bosworth, Lake Bell and Katie Aselton (who also directed the movie).  Rachelle and I felt super cool being to attend the event (as you can see I’m cheesin’ pretty hard) and the movie was really good.  Katie Aselton was in attendance and introduced her movie, and at the end of the movie, announced that the entire cast (including Bosworth and Bell!) was in attendance as well!  They all came up to the front of the stage and it was AWESOME.  Here’s a pic I tried to get from our seats….it’s a little blurry, but you see all three of the leading ladies!

We were pretty starstruck.  Turns out we actually saw Lake Bell prior to entering the theatre, but were ignorant to it in our search for snacks at the concession stand.  So we were surprised (and felt pretty dumb) when we saw her get up from her seat in the crowd and make her way to the front.

In a week, we’ll leave for Calgary, Canada for training prior to our ICC races on February 3rd and 4th.  Hopefully we’ll catch some faster ice prior to the long drive up to the Great White North!

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Happy New Year!

It’s 2012! Can you believe it?

I rang in the new year with a few of my girlfriends in DC at the Mad Hatter Bar in Dupont Circle, and we had an absolute blast!  It was the first time in a long time that we were all able to get together and go out, so we were pretty pumped (minus Becky L., we missed you girl!)  We spent the day walking around the Eastern Market and National Mall, and ate a pork and saurkraut dinner before heading out on the town.  It was great!

As you all know, I crashed in Sigulda and was unable to compete, so this break has been spent recovering and healing from my unfortunate incident.  I’m pleased to say that I am able to run and should start working out sometime this week!  A huuuge thanks goes out to Dr. Lausch at Proactive Pain Relief and Wellness in Ephrata.  Dr. Lausch has been absolutely instrumental at getting me back on track as quickly as possible, and has made sure that I don’t do anything stupid (like training, because I’ve been on his case about when I can start working out) in the meantime to derail that healing.  I’m feeling better and I’m anxious to get back out on the ice this Thursday!

At the request of my father (who has been on my case about updating for the past 2 weeks) here is a point-of-view video of the track in Latvia.  He thinks it would be cool to post it on here so you can see what I do.  This video is the point of view of a luge athlete–hence the feet in the picture–but if you are able to count the curves, you can see exactly where I crashed out of Curve 11.

I’ll be spending the rest of today packing and getting ready for my 6+ hour drive back up to Lake Placid tomorrow.  I’m pumped to get back on my home track since I haven’t slid since my crash, so it will be nice to be on a familiar track again.  I haven’t slid here since team trials in October, so it’ll be nice to be home and get my sled checked by my coach!

The second half of my season will kick off in Calgary in the beginning of February.  I leave January 15th for Park City, Utah for 2 weeks of training before the excruciatingly long drive up to Calgary.  After Calgary we drive back down to Park City and compete there the week of February 5th, and then I fly back to LP on the 13th.  Crazy!

Thanks for reading!