Seefeld, Austria

This years ski trip was to Seefeld in Austria, a traditional Tyrolean village just near Innsbruck.  It hosted the Nordic events of the 1964 and 1976 winter Olympics and is now a massive area for cross-country skiing.  The village has plenty of shops, bars, restaurants and café 

The downhill ski area, which we were there for, is quite limited.   It has three areas, the beginners nursery slopes in the centre of the village, the Gschwandkopf and the Rosshutte. 

The Gschwandkopf area has three slopes, two blues and a red.  Apart from the very top of the red they are all very wide runs with a few steeper sections.  You can go up and down the big long blue under the chair lift many times choosing a different route each time giving a different skiing experience.  The red is narrow at the top, but not very steep, not a particularly challenging red.  There are two huts at the top of the Gschwandkopf and both are lovely, one self service and the other table service.  Both are very cosy inside with big outside terraces for those sunny days with a good range of tasty food.

The Rosshutte area is the bigger area with some more challenging runs for intermediate skiers.  There are only two short black runs so expert skiers may get a bit bored if looking for a challenge.  There isn’t much difference between the blue and red runs in fact some blues, particularly the narrow steep top of blue 3 running next to the Rosshutte Funicular should be red.  The Rosshutte has a lot of lovely mountain huts all with excellent food and friendly staff.  They are defiantly worth stopping at for the compulsory Gluhwine.  It’s possible to ski all the Gschwandkoptf and Rosshutte in one day, a nice challenge which is easily doable as long as you don’t have to wait two long for the two cable cars at the top of the Rosshutte.

I read a lot about the Seefeld area being a beginners area and whilst there are a lot of blue run, good for getting some practice in and some speed up, it’s defiantly not a place for someone who has just learnt to ski and first coming off the nursery slopes.  The runs are wide, but can be steep in places.  The Gschwandkopf is the easier of the two main ski areas.

Night skiing, down Blue 6 on the Rosshutte, is available on Wednesday and Friday evenings.  The top of blue 6 is quite narrow and flat, but it opens out to be a wide run with lots of room to get some speed up.

The pistes were very well maintained.  We were treated to awesome weather, snow one day and another with low cloud over the village, but high on the Rosshutte this was not a problem and skiing above the clouds was fantastic. The rest of the week was clear blue skis and bright alpine sun.

There are lots of activities for non-skiers.  The Olympica Centre is superb.  It has a huge warm pool including a heated outdoor section and two slides.  A tame kids slide and a brilliant white-water slide. Just be prepared to get some bruises on the white-water slide as you are thrown from side to side and dropped into mini pools on the way down.  Sauna world also at the Olympica Centre is excellent with saunas, steam rooms, heated pools, plunge pools, lots of rooms for relaxing and panoramic views over the village and cross-country ski area.  Just what is needed to relax those sore skiing legs.  It’s all very clean and high tech, much better than anything that you would find in the UK.  Seefeld supposedly has lots of toboggan tracks, although we didn’t find them. As always the tour companies had a huge range of activities, snowshoeing trial, trip to Innsbruck, Quiz (which we won),

We stayed in the Krinserhof Hotel on the edge of town.  It’s a 15 minute walk into town but only a 5 minute walk to the Rosshutte lift.  The Krinserhof is a lovely little family run hotel, very traditional and welcoming.  The Binder family are friendly and will do anything to make people feel at home.  Once a week the family play traditional Tyrolean folk music during and after dinner.  You also get a traditional Austrian Fondue once a week.  The food tastes lovely with excellent portion sizes.  Each day you have a 4 course meal with choice of main course.  Our room was massive with two beds, two sofas and a desk.  If you are lucky enough to get a room at the front you are also treated to a lovely view over the village and surrounding mountains. 

If there was a bigger downhill ski area I would defiantly return to Seefeld.

Leeds Abby Dash

After a hard few months of running with 2 half Marathons, Lots of 10K’s and countless 5k’s yesterday I did what I’m planning on being my last proper race of the year.   It’s the first time I’ve done the Leeds Abby Dash, voted as being one of the top 10 10k races by Runners World and one of the flattest and fastest 10k’s in the country.

Pre-race was incredibly smooth, the usual 30 minute plus queue for the toilets was about only 10 minutes and the baggage tents were well marshalled and very quick.  With over 9,000 people running this was quite impressive.

Once the race started there was a few minutes wait until we got through the start, then the usual weaving around slower runners and walkers who for some reason only known to them started near the front.  I’ve never understood why people who are obviously slower start really near the front, where is the enjoyment of spending the entire race getting over taken by people?  Is it not more fun to run with people around the same speed?  It was a shame to have to dodge round people as it meant we couldn’t make use of the downhill just past the start.  Still once past the first km it started to spread out and running at one pace was much easier.  It’s not the most exciting race route, very urban, but except a slight hill around 4k and a short hill with about 500m to go it was flat and straight.  The Abby at half way was a nice sight, but blink and you miss it.  As it is an out and back course, it was fun watching other people coming back in the opposite direction.  The challenge being to get as far as possible before the front runners started coming back.  I think I got to 3.5k! Those front runners are amazing though, they are like machines when they run.  Overall I enjoyed the race and finished in 48:49 a new PB by 20 seconds.  A good way to end my running season.  I was hoping for slightly faster given how fast the course is, but this sets me up nicely to go for under 48 minute next year.

It felt slightly disorganised at the end, probably not because it was, more likely due to the huge number of people trying to get through the end, collect their finishers pack and meet family/friends.  As was the case for a lot of races this year, the post race goodie bag was non-existent.  A bottle or water, bottle of recovery milkshake and technical t-shirt had to do.  At least I got a t-shirt, a lot of people who finished after me didn’t.  As someone said to me, ‘that’s why you run’.  You earn your t-shirt and want to wear it afterwards and it training and want to feel proud of what you have achieved.  When you pay £20 for entry with the organisers advertising a technical t-shirt for every runner that’s what everyone should get.

Now I’m going to concentrate on getting my 5k time down.  Aiming for under 23 minutes by the end of the year.  Although given the Parkrun course I now run, with it’s ramps over bridges, steps and tight turns I think that may take a bit longer, but it’s good to have something to aim for.

Pin and Repin.

In the last few days I’ve been really getting into Pintrest.  It’s a brilliant idea, exactly the thing I’ve been looking for without even knowing it.  I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve seen something online a though I’d love to give that a try and bookmarket it to look at later.  Now here everything is in once place.  Such a simple, but effective idea.  Anyway here’s Pintrest boards http://pinterest.com/lizljs/ only a few things on at the moment, but I think they will grow quite quickly.

Why Blog?

I recently found an old blog which I had last updated 5 years ago.  I found reading back some of my old blogs quite interesting, I had forgotten most of what I was doing/thinking at that time.  Based on that I suppose the main reason for starting a new blog is for me to be able to remember what I’ve done.

So I guess I’d better introduce myself properly…I’m Liz, a Web Programmer, Runner and Guide unit leader keen on photography, cooking, cycling and any kind of crafts.  So I guess that’s what I’ll mostly post about.  I suppose I’ll introduce most of those things individually at some point in the future.