Prep time

Since returning from France it has been a time for head-down and hard work. It has been great to crank through some thesis data analysis, and also to have several good meetings with two of my supervisory committee to talk about what comes next. I also have an abstract (almost) together for submission this week to the International Ergonomics Association conference which will be held next year in Brazil (here's hoping that goes through)!

In addition to some good work hours last weekend, we managed to get in a great long run yesterday (enjoying our lovely warm spring weather - about +10) which will be our last before a potential race weekend in early May (depending on how our legs feel) and also started the packing for our upcoming Easter extravaganza (where we may destroy our legs a little bit and thus negate racing the week after returning from said trip ... we'll see!).

Thursday we are meeting Rob and Juliette (two Canadian friends) at the airport in Stockholm and heading north to the arctic circle for the last round of spring skiing! This trip has involved some rather complex planning and booking (1 flight, 1 car hire, 3 trains, 1 carpool, 1 'snow weasel', hotels/hostels in three locations, equipment rentals, ... ), but it should lead to an awful lot of skinning up and then skiing down and I suspect it will be more than worth it in the end!

Here is a rough idea of where we are going:

First, we will be joining a Swedish freeride camp in Abisko, then doing some off-piste skiing at Riksgränsen (the northernmost ski resort in the world) and then wrapping things up with some top-touring at Sylarna in the Jämtlandstriangeln, where Richard and I spent our Easter holidays last year! And this year we have even get a room just for our group rather than sleeping on the ground with 35 of our new best friends!

Last night we got together most of our gear and began the packing ... good grief is there ever a lot of equipment involved!

I also cut my first pair of skins so my AT gear is all ready to go! It was actually much easier than I thought it was going to be, which was good because the evening sped by!

So, now it is just a matter of completing that abstract, writing a computer programme and crunching through some data to send off to a visiting scholar, finishing a few weeks of Swedish homework and making sure that at least the essentials are packed in our rucsacks and are onto the train with us come Thursday night! Hmmm ... I had better get at it!