Tuesday, September 25, 2007

New Zealand Update

Here's a report from Nick in New Zealand:

Hello from New Zealand. I've been here in Dunedin for about 3 months now studying at the University of Otago and trying to keep up the ski training, but the options aren't nearly what we have in Maine. I have done some cool things that you can't do in Maine over the weekends. I've done some great overnight hikes (called tramps), including one in Fiordland and around a dormant volcano called Mt. Egmont. I also drove up to the mountains for 3 weekends of skiing in July and August, which you definitely can't do in Maine. I went up with a couple of "mates" that I met down here, including one of Nathan's former Whitman athletes. For the most part we had great snow and lots of good skiing. Some of the highlights included skiing with the US Ski Team (and almost getting passed by the women's squad going up a hill, so i had to pick up the pace to avoid that), doing a 42k marathon and racing in FIS races, but there were mainly just the New Zealand and Japanese athletes in them.

Today was more of a typical day of training here, with a 30 minute uphill rollerski time trial in 40 d
egree rainy weather. It reminded me of some of those cold fall workouts we have in Maine, except I couldn't pop over to Thorne or Moulton for lunch afterwards. There are plenty of good hills to ski up around here but the problem is getting back down them, so I have come up with a few different schemes to bike or run down with the skis and boots in a backpack. Well, I'll keep you posted in the next 2 months as I have a busy time with finals and then an entire month to travel and train before returning to the US.

The wintery picture is from a weekend at the Snow Farm. Most of the time we had blue skies and blue extra wax.
The rollerskiing is from the Otago Peninsula just 15k from my apartment. Great scenery with potential to spot penguins and royal albatross sea birds but not so good pavement on the roads.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for throwing up the post Nathan and good work runners. Nick