One last look at Liberec and U23s
I am now in Madona, Latvia, preparing to race a few Scandinavian Cups in about a week, but I have a few more pictures to share from the Czech Republic.
First of all, if any of you readers have been browsing WJ/U23 skier updates, you’ll probably have seen references about the very strange hotel we stayed in. The Babylon Hotel. It has a waterpark, bowling alley, club, mall and many resident animals, in addition to its 1000 hotel rooms. I don’t think many photos have been shared of the hotel, so here are a few of mine, with focus on the animals:
The front entrance of the Hotel Babylon
One of two large atriums within the hotel
The second glass-ceilinged atrium
In the atrium with palm trees, there was a pool full of live turtles. Here, Amy Caldwell and Anika Miller admire the turtles.
There were fish of all sizes swimming in the fountain in the front lobby
Fish in the fountain
This glass animal house, on the left, housed 2 squirrels and 2 snakes, in separate cages.
One of the squirrels in the animal case. I could see them from the window of my room, which looked out onto the atrium.
The other case, next to the squirrels, had two albino burmese pythons in it! The first few days they were hiding under things every time I walked by, so I kept walking by, and eventually they came out! Some people didn’t like the idea of snakes in the hotel very much, but I really like snakes. However, their case wasn’t all that nice or big, so I felt sorry for them to be trapped in there all the time.
A standard European hotel room with three small beds.
Breakfast at the Babylon. Breakfast was definitely the best meal of the day, and dinner was sometimes pretty decent, but lunch and the other dinners left something to be desired.
And a few buildings from the city of Liberec.
A church in Liberec in a nicer area of town
A red building that caught my eye while I was out on a run
An ornate lamp
Near our hotel, there were some less attractive structures, like this factory
However, there are fascinating cobblestone patterns everywhere
Finally, a few comments about the 15k pursuit race, which happened last Saturday. I finished 19th in the race, which was solid but I had been hoping to be able to pull off a slightly better result. It might have helped my post-race feeling if I had not narrowly lost a sprint finish for 18th place. While winning a sprint finish can partially redeem a bad race, losing one can put a slight damper on an otherwise good race.
The start and the classic section particularly were crazy. We started in a 5-lane chevron, which is narrower than usual, and quickly were funneled into 3 tracks to climb the first hill right out of the stadium. I’ve been in many chaotic mass starts before, between US Nationals, NCAAs, college carnivals, and the Canmore World Cups, but the bottlenecking and accordioning in this one were quite extreme. Certainly the course was the same for everyone, but the people at the front of the pack had a little more freedom of movement than those of us at the back. During the first and second laps, I was near the back of the lead pack, which was quite large, and I was getting flung off the back occasionally, only to have to catch back up. It was reassuring to be skiing in the same vicinity of the pack as Sophie at the beginning of the race, but we weren’t able to work together much, and she got caught in a tangle and fell back a little after that. In the skate section I caught and worked together with two Estonians and a Swedish girl, and it was fun to at least have a few other people around me who kept pushing the pace. There were a few big uphills that compressed the field, as least visually, and it was cool to be able to see the leaders as I raced… that’s not something I’ve been able to do during World Juniors or U23s before, and I really do think I’m getting closer to the leaders in these mass starts. Lastly, but not at all least, thanks to all of the wax techs and coaches for their tireless work during WJ/U23s!