Russian love.

So it’s the end of the first week here in Davos and things have settled into a nice routine.

We are all sleeping at very odd hours so its not uncommon to see Callum sitting in the kitchen at 3 am eating muesli in his favourite blue Bjorn Borgs or all of us on the couch watching a movie at 5 am because we were all feeling fresh as daisies. Luckily even that is settling down and we are sleeping longer and longer with sleep almost normal again.

Every day the general routine is we are up and running through the sleepy streets of Davos at 7:30. It’s really nice being up and running so early as the sun rises over the mountains. We have also started going up into the foot hills as well and its pretty amazing in the early morning.

Training has been going well but we struggle to do the long sessions on the small loops. The longest is now around 5 minutes but t

he worst thing is the congestion. Yesterday we had to take Callum to the hospital after a collision with another skier we thought he might of broken a few ribs but he is fine, just really sore and a little stiff. He should still be able to race the Davos World cup in a week.The tracks in the morning are like skiing through the start of the Kangaroo Hoppet it’s extremely congested and messy, trying to do intervals is pretty frustrating and is like dodgem-cars but with carbon fibber poles and skis.

We also have been heading up the hill to the top loop which mainly the national teams use and are a lot quiter, but it’s pretty brutal and a fairly unforgiving loop with the climbs being very steep and the downhills very tight (it’s the top part of the World cup course). Now the first time we went up to the loop a few days ago I was still feeling pretty flat and I was classic skiing and absolutely battling up the hills. There was a point on the course where the Russians had made camp on a small rise and were waxing their skis and coaching. Each time I passed them a few of their coaches were giving me odd looks and It was a little disconcerting.

I knew I was skiing like a muppet so I just figured it had something to do with that and I just tried to lift my game a little and ski properly.

This staring match with the Russians had gone on for about 3 laps and as I went to pass them again one of the coaches walked out onto the track and put his hands up trying to get me to stop. So I stopped and the Russian coach asked me “Wax?” and I was like “ah I just have some KR 50 on mate” he looked at me a little weird then asked “good, bad?” I replied it was terrible and he and another coach had a quick chat in russian then they both just bent down and unclipped my skis for me and walked to there waxing box with my skis and started corking them and putting on some random stick wax for me.

It was pretty classic so here I am standing next to half the Russian team, getting some loving from the coaches. They’re all in blue and red and here I am in green and grey lycra standing out like the sun. Phil and Callum both ski past me with the weirdest look on there faces just shocked that the Russian are even talking to any of us let alone sharing waxes.

So after getting some loving from the Russians I managed to finish session with absolute bomber grip, which was good, and every time I skied past the Russian now I give them a massive smile!

The snow here in davos is starting to get a little desperate with the temp now roughly +2/3 of a night time and getting warm in the day. We are really hoping to get some more snow soon otherwise races will start getting scratched. Fingers crossed