Oberhof, Germany

I drove through 5 different countries yesterday en route to Italy. The trip took about 10 hours, it is one of the amazing things about central Europe in a few hours you can be in a different country, it really makes you realize the proximity of everything. Last week was mostly a disappointing week both training and competing. I was never really able to get a grip on the track and feel comfortable sliding. We are only allowed 6 training runs prior to the race and generally I am able to pic things up on the first day of training and then move forward in finding my comfort level and extra speed in the runs. This week just didn't go that way. I have had really good training and races on this track before but I wasn't able to turn it around for the weekend and I finished 14th in the WC. We are in Italy nor for a training week, it is European Championships this week, but since we aren't European we won't participate. I am looking forward to a stress free week of just sliding and not worry about having to master a track in 6 runs. It will be nice to just slide and really work on the small details of sliding without having to worry too much about the consistency. I have actually never slid hear before so it will be an exciting "down" week.
Lastly I am selling t-shirts to raise money to help cover some of my expenses I have already endured this season as ell as a last minute fundraiser as I push towards Vancouver next month. I am selling the t-shirt for $20.00 e-mail me clukeyluge@googlemail.com if you have any questions or would like to order one.

Winterberg WC

We have had two races since Christmas break and while I have finished 7th and 10th I still have a lot of things I still need to improve upon before Vancouver. Some athletes are simply satisfied with finishing a race, or just qualifying for the Olympics; I am definitely not one of those athletes. I set daily/weekly/monthly/yearly goals for myself and am constantly analyzing myself athletically. Don't get me wrong I do enjoy everyday, and I am very fortunate for the life I have. But I will always be a fighter, and doubt there will ever be a day in my athletic life that I can't find something that I can improve upon or do differently. Some people would disagree with my mentality, but I see it is a strength. While some athletes find it easier to make excuses or try and justify a weakness or result, I a, always looking inward first.
My main focus for the coming 4 weeks of training/racing we have is to just take every run to fall into a complete comfort zone on my sled. Luckily we have a week of just training coming up next week and I hope that we are able to slide double sessions so I can get my run count up. I am still 80 runs behind on the year compared to my teammates. Which if you multiply by the average run time (45 seconds) which works out to about an hour of time on my sled (again my over analyzing/tracking every aspect of my training). So from here on our any extra runs I can get are going to be very valuable.
We are In Oberhof, Germany now for our next world cup. I enjoy sliding on this track, it is a real luge track in the sense that you have to really drive the sled in every curve. This style of track suites my natural abilities better, as I have a tendency to overdrive a lot. We race Saturday afternoon. Stay warm!!!

Julia

Happy New Year...New start!!!

The past few weeks have been extremely busy, productive, and pleasant. I spent ten days in Lake Placid, training and recovering there. The training center was practically empty and I was able meet and work with the trainers a lot. I left there feeling near 100% and with full confidence that I will be more than ready come our World Cup race next weekend. I went home to Maine for 5 days and had a great Christmas with my friends and family. I spent a lot of time with my sisters, and nephew. He just turned a year old and I can’t believe how much he changes while I am gone. He is becoming his own little amazing person. I can already tell he is going to be a great athlete. ☺
It was really nice to be home although it went by very quickly and I was extremely busy. I am so gracious to everyone who has been supporting me these past few months, and the community planned a great send off celebration for me. Thank you to everyone who came, it was so great to see all of you, and many of you I haven’t seen in a few years.
We just wrapped up our first week overseas, I had my best finish of the year, finishing 7th in the world cup. I was mostly pleased with my race, more than anything I am thankful that my health has kept up and I have been able to maintain the great feeling I had at home, while hopping back on my sled. I pulled my fastest start time ever here, and had a really good week of training. I still have some work to do in my sliding, but this is a great place to start and I hope to only move forward from here. The next month my only focus will be using every run to get more comfortable and natural feeling on my sled, something that for me comes with taking many runs. We are packing up now and heading to Munich for the night before we move on to Winterberg, Germany.

Happy 2010 everyone! We had a nice mellow NYE, which for myself concluded at 10:30PM (we had qualifying the next day) We did however light off a bunch of fireworks, which is the biggest bonus of spending NYE in Germany.