Now I'm in Falun, Sweden where there'll be a 15/30km pursuit on Saturday and a 4x5/4x10km relay on Sunday. I won't be racing, Kik's racing the pursuit, FIS won't let us field a composite relay team.

These pics are from a couple of days ago when we were still in the Czech Republic and I was out on an urban run-- my favorite way of touring a city. The sun came out and there was a little bit of fresh snow on the ground so I knew it was going to be a good run. Kikkan turned back at the 15min mark but I decided to keep exploring because it looked like we were getting into a cool part of town.

I was a little surprised to glance through a fence and see a group of zebras hanging out.

And camels, along with some other animals. I managed to stumble upon the Liberec Zoo and ran the perimeter. The fence wasn't solid so at lots of places I could see into the zoo and the backs of the lots.

I love some of the old European (Renaissance?) architecture around here. And when I say I love it I mean it's very cool as a scenic backdrop and I'm very glad that American architecture tends to be simpler since all that decoration looks not so economical to me.

With a population over 100k, I didn't really think that Liberec would have good city running but I managed to find a nice path by the zoo.

I also managed to reach a little bit of forested area where to my surprise I stumbled on an old open air stadium.

With no sounds or sights of the city reaching here it was a bit surrealistic.

Obviously I climbed up onto the stage which had a nice pit between it and the audience. Although I think such pits are typically used for the orchestra I bet they kept lions from the zoo in this one.

Being in front of a stadium, even one just populated by saplings, made me feel like performing. I did some pirouettes and adagio and found that the fresh snow with a bit of an icy surface underneath was perfect for turns. And I had my ipod with me. I tried some more hip-hop style moves but the slick surface made anything with jumps a little hard to stick. So I took a twenty minute or so break from running and did some dancing for my tree audience.