March 2nd, 2008
My 2008 World Junior trip began with the 24 hours of traveling to Munich Germany. Upon arrival, I thought that our long flights and tiring delays were over, unfortunately the coaches would not arrive in Munich for another 6 hours. So we burned daylight in the Munchen airport, eventually met up with our coaches and proceeded to drive 3 hours to Italy. As we descended into the valley of Males, Italy, I attempted to stay awake by starring out the window and taking in the amazing Italian landscape: there were huge ice covered reservoirs with ice skater and kite sailors, dozens of ancient castles that dotted the valley floor and finally World War II war bunkers riddles with bullet holes. It’s amazing how much history there was in such a secluded european valley!
Anyway, I somehow managed to stay awake for the remainder of the drive, and we pulled into our hotel/pizzeria. It was a really nice building with sketchy single bed, rooms; tucked into the little town of Prato. There were some good laughs when we realized that we were going to be sharing the single beds with our fellow teammates. My roomy ended up being Noah Hoffman. . . .VERY NICE! But seriously, it worked out well. That first night we were introduced to our meal schedule which consisted of a 5 course meal. For the next two hours we had an appetizer, a salad, a pasta dish, a huge pizza, and dessert. It was so amazing. Every day after that lunch and dinner would have 4-5 courses and enough food to feed a small army. Perfect!
We would spend our days waking up to the sound of church bells, eating dinner and then driving the 30 min to the race venue. While there, our team would split up and we would each do our individual workouts, while the coaches tested skis and made preparations for the coming week of racing. I spent most of my time taking pictures and sun tanning in the 50+° days. The stadium turned out to be very compact, and the trails themselves consisted of switchbacks and S turns up and down each side of the valley. When training was over, we would regroup and all head down 3000ft back to the hotel for lunch. Then we would branch out on several different activities.
These activities consisted of walking around Prato and visiting the many stores, or playing soccer outside on the streets, even laying in our rooms and reading books or watching movies. I would have to say though, that we spent most of our off time trying to find internet or other means of international communication. I think that we eventually discovered that internet in Italy is pretty much illegal. So that kinda sucked. We did manage to find a wireless signal in Switzerland only 45 min away. However that trip was cut short when the police came and told us we had to leave.
The first week was really fun and past much like any other training camp I have been on. There was lots of training, lots of eating, and lots of resting, not to mention the hundred other things we found to entertain ourselves. I had 8 days to prepare for the races and by the time that sprint came around I was totally ready to go and prepared for a solid week of racing.
