I went skiing today:=)

Hallo liebe Zuhörer und Zuhörerin,
I haven't written in a while, because..nothing much exciting has happened hah! Here are some of the highlights of the last 5 days:
- Going to the local pub, playing pool against a few young german guys, beating them soundly (4-2) and getting happy drunk off 2 amazingly good pints of local beer (I mean I know I'm a lightweight, but 2 pints!)
- Going to the coin launderette in Baiersbronn, paying 9 euros ($15!!!!) for the privilege of washing my laundry. Deciding never to do this again.
- Going iceskating, being intrigued by a german girl with a jumper with the slogan 'It feels so good to be an outlaw in your perfect world' (where were the concerned members of public with pitchforks and rifles to drive this outlaw back into the deep dark forest where she apparently takes pleasure in living???)
- Going to the local pub again, meeting an old guy who called himself 'Cowboy', losing to him in pool 2-1 (with a premature black ending for each game:s), arranging for a rematch when I come back in February.
- Finding a cheaper place to stay in February (3 euros cheaper would've been 60 euros over the course of the stay!), ringing up, being met with utter confusion (
'Could I make a reservation?', 'huh?',
'I would like to rent the room you are advertising on the baiersbronn website',
'No.',
'What?',
'Thankyou, goodbye.'
*hangs up*
*calls back*
'Hello, I am calling again to say that if you don't want to rent the room, maybe you should remove the advertisement from the website',
'I am renting the room, but it is not available at the moment.',
'I don't want it now, I want it in 3 weeks.',
'No.' *hangs up*
....fine then?), resorting to booking another 3 weeks at the place I'm staying.

So yeah, not much has happened. It's been good though, very relaxing. A typical day for me has been:
- Waking up whenever I feel like, feeling happily rested.
- Walking down to the shops to pick up a loaf of delicious german bread (a different one each day:D) and a litre of multivitamin juice (heh)
- Eating breakfast, while watching cartoons
And then, depending on how energetic I'm feeling and whether there's anything good on TV, I'd either go for a walk or do some other activity for a few hours, or watch TV for a few hours.

German TV is awesome! There're like 25 free to air channels (every house has a satellite dish), and in the last few days EuroSport Live has been broadcasting the Wintersport World Championships. So I've been watching the Biathlon (best spectator sport ever. XC skiing plus shooting) and ski jumping (there was one guy whose skis came off 100m in midair...owwwch!). The world Snooker Masters were on last night too. It was fun trying to work out the rules lol.

And then at about 3pm, I'd go for a run. This week has been really great. Baiersbronn is such a great training location. I've run on a different trail each time and I've never had to backtrack or run in a loop, which makes it a lot easier psychologically. In all, I managed to meet my goal, which was to run for 10 hours in total for at least 100km. By my reckoning, I did 110km (+/- 5km), all of it on steep trails, which I'm very pleased with. My long run yesterday was really great (and hard). I did 2.5 hours up to Kniebis Dorf (500m altitude gain) rain and snow (both on the ground and falling from the sky). I was a bit sore from the mileage I'd done in the 6 days before, but I did allright until about 2:00 in. After that it was tough (as it should be). Now the test is whether I can do it again for another two weeks.

After seeing for myself that there was actually some decent snow up on Kniebes (950m above sea level), and because I was a bit sore, I decided to go for a ski for the first time today. I'd held off until today because it didn't really seem worth it since there were only 2.5km of trails available and the reported snow quality was always 'mediocre'. But I went up today and I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either. It was a bit icy, but the whole trail was covered with no nasty rocks sticking out to scratch my new skis on:) I took my classics because I didn't think there'd be enough snow for skating (there was, I'll take my skaters out for a spin tomorrow). The first time around I was a bit rusty, so I wasted quite a bit of energy trying to remember how to diagonal stride (haven't done it for 2 years lol). But the second lap was good, I got some decent speed going. The course is very nice. The first 500m is flattish and then there's about 1km of straight downhill, which is a lot of fun:) Then of course you have to do 800m of uphill to round it out. I did 15km before taking a break, which I needed because by the end my form was absolutely terrible. Turns out you need strong quads to diagonal stride and after running a sizeable portion of my 110km downhill, mine were fairly trashed lol. By the end of the 6th lap I was barely managing walking pace up the uphill section lol. I took a chocolate break after that, and then thrashed out another 2 laps with pure brute force to round out the workout at 20km in 2:02ish. I'm definitely looking forward to skating, classic just didn't feel natural to me. It was a good upper body workout, but didn't do much for me Cardiovascularly.

I'm hoping that while I'm away, there'll be a massive blizzard for three weeks straight and the whole of Baiersbronn will be carpetted in snow:D I like running, but skiing is so much more fun and convenient workout wise. It was nice not having to worry about getting stitch even though I started skiing about an hour after eating breakfast:)

Tomorrow is my last day in Baiersbronn. I'm actually not sure about that. I want to leave on Thursday (and indeed have arranged my WWOOFing plans for that) but I'm not sure whether I'm booked in to stay in Baiersbronn Wednesday night or whether I have to leave Wednesday morning:S So I need to call Herr Keck to check up on that. Actually I think I do have to leave Wednesday because I only paid for 9 nights. Ah well, it's not a problem, I'll just start the WWOOFing part of the trip one day earlier.

The WWOOFing is taking place at a farm quite close to Baiersbronn, it should be good. I'll have a lot more human contact than I've had in Baiersbronn at least:)

Time for me to go, I'm feeling pretty tired (at 6:20pm hah!).
Tschuss from Freudenstadt!