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Yesterday was a rather important test for me on my way to preparing for the competition season. To a large degree, the training plan that I have written for myself has been untested. It is based upon what has been successful for me in the past, and many new ideas that I have adopted from various other athletes and sports, but as a whole, it has never been tried before.
The test was the Mars Hill Climb, approximately one and a quarter miles of uphill running from the base to the summit of Mars Hill, perhaps the peak of northern Maine. This is the fourth year that it has been organized by Maine Winter Sports Center. My first attempt went well, and I won with a time of 13m: 13s. That was two years ago. For some reason it didn’t fit into my schedule last summer.
Before non-biathlon races, I usually don’t get very nervous. And even before biathlon races now, my anxiety levels have come down. In my opinion, it is very difficult to get worked up over something I have little control over. To get nervous before a ski race seems awkward to me because all of the work has been done in the months of training prior to the race.
As for a biathlon race, shooting is very dependent on the specific day. A biathlete can shoot perfectly one day, but miss a few targets the next day. Experience can help make shooting more stabile, but even the best biathletes in the world have bad days on the range.
The reason I was nervous about this time trial, however, is because, in a small way, it would tell me how well my training plan was working. Simply from my overall feeling in training and lactate profiles, I know that I am improving a great deal. But of course there is still a small amount of doubt. It is this doubt and anxiety that keeps me racing. If everything were decided on paper, then biathlon would be far from the interesting event it is today.
So, four other biathletes and I drove two hours south from Fort Kent to Mars Hill for the latest running of the time trial yesterday morning. The record that I had set two years ago had been broken last summer, so I was quite intent on setting a new one. After arriving, running and stretching for thirty minutes, and registering, the start loomed at nine o’clock. (Personally, I have never registered for a time trial before… so this was quite new for me.)
My strategy was quite simple – lead from the beginning. Since I had my heart rate monitor on and knew the speed I could go at without collapsing, I had a good idea of the pace I needed to set for myself. I also knew that the entire thirteen minutes or so would be painful, and that I needed to persevere and just think about moving one foot in front of the other. Because I had run the hill two years prior, I had a fairly good idea of the course and understood where I could make up a few extra seconds. The most important thing for me to do was to keep it a time trial… me against the clock, without regard for the other competitors climbing the hill.
I executed the plan perfectly. From the start, I sprinted the fifty meters to the base of the hill to get an early lead. Rather than trying to ease into the race, I kept pushing the pace faster and faster over the early part of the hill. After reaching what I thought was a very good heart rate, but feeling like I could keep going for a few more minutes, I set my body into auto-pilot and drove up the hill. The heart rate graph that my monitor recorded is very interesting because I was able to maintain a very high and consistent heart rate for the entire race.
At around seven minutes into the race, on the largest climb of the hill, my arms started going numb. They felt cold. Either the lactic acid was so high in my blood, or the oxygen in my blood was being used locally in my legs and didn’t even reach my hands. I can only remember that my legs felt heavy, but that I wasn’t in pain. I was moving them as fast as possible, but they were limiting themselves from moving faster, rather than being held back by my mind.
Perhaps that was because at around nine minutes my brain went numb. My sight began to blur and I could only concentrate on what was directly in front of me. I could hear only the sound of the massive amount of air entering and exiting my lungs and the deep throb of my heart and blood pulsing through my head. Before this, I was hording of thoughts of slowing down or walking, or just quitting outright, but once my brain went numb, my mind was clear and focused simply on the summit of the hill.
I reached the top with a time of 12m: 44s, nearly a half minute ahead of my earlier personal based, albeit two years prior. I won the time trial, but also set a new course record. I didn’t know my time until a half minute later. Immediately after finishing, I pretty much collapsed. I had a headache that I thought would kill me before being able to walk down the hill and lungs that felt so seared that I would never breathe normally again.
The only thing I could think about, though, was getting my Lactate Pro analyzer so that I could get a test done. Since there was no one to help me, I had to do the test myself, which is usually never a problem, but at the finish became an arduous task. I couldn’t even concentrate long enough to open an alcohol swab packet. Finally, I was able to prick myself and get a drop of blood into the test strip. For the next minute, while the Lactate Pro analyzed my blood, I watched the sixty seconds tick away on the screen. It felt like forever!
After getting my measurement, I tried to stand up and move around. My head was still in a lot of pain, as were my lungs. My legs felt fine, though I could barely walk. I headed down the hill, cognizant only of the fact that I my body was aching.
Later, when I found my time and that I had set a new record, I became ever more confident in my training and preparation for the winter season to date. Of course, I am mindful that an uphill run is not the same as a biathlon race, but I was satisfied knowing that I had done my best. Thinking about it now, there was truly no point on the course where I let up, where I could have gone faster and arrived with a better time. That is a great feeling.
Peace,
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