(continued...)

Ahem, sorry about that.

Saturday:
So yeah, I managed to finish off the 45k, didn't really feel tired, just cold and blistered from where my boots had pinched my feet. It was now 9:00 PM, pitch black, -10°c and the buses had stopped running 3 and a half hours ago. I walked down to the Kniebis village to keep from freezing and stuck my thumb out at the passing 'traffic' (read, 1 car every 5 minutes.) The first 4 cars sped past me, but a friendly innkeeper and a young waitress from the hotel were willing to help me out. It was so nice to get into the car! He even put on some rap in english to make me feel more comfortable hahaha:| He dropped us off at his house in the depths of Freudenstadt. Luckily she knew her way around because I really didn't want to spend half an hour trying to work out where the train station was! In the end I still had to spend half an hour in the cold because the trains are fairly infrequent especially at that time of night:(. It was still well below 0 in Baiersbronn and I didn't feel like going home straight away to an empty larder, so I stopped off at the sports bar (don't really recommend it lol) and had a beer and a few games of pool (was beaten soundly by a turkish guy).
Sunday:
Sunday was a lovely day:) The sun was shining and fasching was in full swing. I went up to Kniebis, where the loop was absolutely packed. After 2 laps I got bored of having to constantly overtake people and ventured out onto an ungroomed trail. It was really fantastic:) I'm glad I bought classics now. It seemed like a frivolous purchase at the time since I usually concentrate on skating, but it's good cross training and there are a lot of trails in the Baiersbronn area that are only open for classic. I soon found myself absolutely alone, with amazing views of the Black Forest looking absolutely gorgeous with its blanket of snow:) Ended up doing about 4 hours, at which point my knee started to complain and the pain from my constricted toes was starting to become uncomfortable, so I was glad to stop.

Monday:
On Monday I took my skaters up for a 20km time trial. Did a quick 5km warmup without stocks and then it was on! I gave that hill everything I had. I'd go completely anaerobic for the last km of every lap and didn't really recover until the downhill section gave me a chance to catch my breath. I was aiming for 88 minutes and until the 6th lap, I was on target, but after that I started to slow down. The 7th lap was pretty bad, I was really struggling and dropped at least 40 seconds off the pace. Then serendipitously, the Baiersbronn Ski team showed up for the last lap. They were all standing at the start of the loop blocking the way, and I didn't really have the brainpower to work out how to say 'Get out of my way!' in german, so I just blasted through a small gap in their ranks, breathing like a steam train. I think they took that as a challenge. This girl from the team was onto me within a minute and I paced off her for a while until her superior downhill technique prevailed. The rest of the team caught up with me too and I skiied the rest of the lap with them. I was digging deep trying to keep up while they joked around going at their easy pace lol. It was a good workout, I was pleased with how it went, especially since it was a 6 minute PB on a much harder course (~8km uphill versus ~4km on the kangaroo hoppet course) than the August 07 Kangaroo Hoppet course. I definitely needed a break after that, a chocolate break to be more precise, mmm:)

After the ski, I ate some junk food from my favourite Döner outlet in Freudenstadt and then went and spent quite a bit of money at Müller. I went in because Alice had asked me to get her some Stabilo markers (done and done), but pretty much everything in the store caught my eye and I ended up spending about 60 euros on DVDs, vegan waffles, vocab notebooks and other pretty things lol.

Tuesday:
Miserable weather. I was hoping that what was rain in Freudenstadt would be snow in Mini Siberia (aka Kniebis), but sadly it wasn't the case. I did 27km classic in snow that got a little worse every lap. Had a nice chat with the bus driver on the way back.

Wednesday:
More rain:( It actually started snowing after a while, but 30 minutes later the clouds parted a little and it reverted to rain. Most of the snow in Baiersbronn was washed away. I walked down to the tourist office, skis in hand, hoping that Kniebis was having better luck, but I was soon robbed of that illusion. Went for my second run and got a bit lost and very wet. Stayed up til 5am reading. It's a lot more fun now that I barely have to consult the dictionary anymore:)

Thursday:
There's no snow anywhere:(. And to think I just bought a season pass for Kniebis lol.