Jule already told you what we experienced in the morning of our team outing – if you missed it, check back here ;-) After we had finished our lunch, we drove to the town of Altenberg. Imagine, that’s where we met Gerd Leopold (former national 4-man bobsleigh coach)! Winter sports expert that he is, he taught us what kind of professional equipment a biathlon athlete needs. Armed with this knowledge, we drove to the former national training center in Altenberg for dry practice.
Yep, that afternoon we were made to feel like real Olympians! First we went down a concrete tube on a luge. That was a bit tricky – you had to be careful not to lurch back and forth (guess who didn’t dare go down the tube …). Afterwards, we were able to put our teamwork skills to the test in the 4-man bobsled start practice. 4 passengers were launched by 4 runners.
The 3rd discipline was biathlon rifle shooting. First, everyone shot at their own target in an individual competition. Well, more or less – because the evaluation revealed quite some interesting results: 1st place went to Christian, with 10/10 hits. 2nd place went to Flo with 12/10 hits (someone must have “helped”), and Mirko ended up in 3rd place. After this warm up, we formed 5 teams and carried out the team competition under biathlon conditions, i.e. 1 shot, next shooter in rotation. The winner was Team 5: Christian, Sophie, Micha and Luter – they were the first to clear all 10 targets.
Still buzzing from the adrenaline of the last few hours, we then had to make our way back. In the meantime, it had started to snow quite heavily (once again!). This was also the undoing of one of our vans for a moment – it took Franzi 3 attempts to get up a snow covered hill which was very slippery! However, just like in everyday office life, her tenacity and intuition paid off – the hill was conquered and everyone made it safely back to Dresden.
This day off was a treat, and we got to know each other better yet again. The shared memories bonded us even more as a team and are an important part of our journey to the next level. Thanks for that, Thomas!
Stay tuned for more adventures,
Susi
