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After feeling slow and tired in the individual race on Tuesday, I skipped Wednesday’s race in order to prepare for the next competition on Saturday. I’ve never raced so much so early in the season, so it has been a bit awkward, but it is giving me a chance to assess what I need to work on before the real fun starts in January.
The courses here in Geilo are rather difficult, but they suit my strengths. The 3.4 km starts with a short flat section, crosses a bridge, and eases into a decent-sized uphill. An S-turn downhill follows, which is usually easy, but has become sheer ice and rocks from the snowplowing of apprehensive athletes. There is then a steep, very long uphill, followed by a flat section, a downhill back to the river, and gentle uphill into the range and finish. The long hills suit me because of my high aerobic capacity and efficiency. I am still good at short uphills, but they suit more powerful skiers better.
In Beitostølen last week, I had a great meeting with Joar Himle, who was my coach here in Geilo four years ago and is now the personal shooting coach of Ole Einar. Though he didn’t share with me any big secrets – mostly because there aren’t any in training for biathlon – he reinforced many of the things that I had already been working on and gave me a different perspective on shooting.
The night before and hours just prior to the race, I went over the things that Joar and I had talked about, and used some other mental strategies that I had used in the past, but had since neglected. I arrived at the venue in a good mood, with a positive attitude on the race. The time I used on mental preparation was certainly worth it.
Since I’m the young kid on the team this season, I started in the final group. I was fine with it, but it meant that I had to dodge some of the slower competitors, mostly on the S-turn downhill. I felt much better skiing than I did in the previous three races and enjoyed the feeling of gasping for air at the top of the hill. That may sound a bit odd, but to me it meant that my strength, technique, and lactate threshold were no longer limiting my performance.
I missed one target in the prone stage. During any other season, I would have been happy with one miss per stage, but my standards are much higher now, and I was furious having to ski a 150 m penalty loop.
On the second loop, I led a German up the hills, and kept up kept up with him until I went to the shooting range and he went to finish line, since he started ahead of me. Since the Germans brought some of their World Cup athletes to the races, I was proud for staying with one of them for a whole loop.
I felt very confident in the second stage and hit all five without even thinking about it. I was ecstatic. I laughed at the penalty loop as I passed the entrance, knowing that I could just keep going past it.
The race went very well and equaled my shooting record for a race, 90 percent. I really wanted to shoot clean, but I guess it will have to wait for another day. At the finish, I was satisfied.
That was for about fifteen minutes. In the changing room, Jeremy Teela looked at me with an odd face, maybe surprised by how happy I was, and asked me if I knew that I had cross-fired. What? Of course I didn’t know. Sure enough, looking at the results list, I received an eight minute penalty, two minutes for every missed penalty loop. In the first stage, I had shot on the wrong targets, so instead of missing only one, I had technically missed all five.
Without the mistake, I still had a great race and finished with a good performance. I’m just going to ignore the fact that I cross-fired. I learned my lesson and am thankful that it didn’t happen in an important race, like at Olympic Trials or a World Cup.
Though, this European Cup really has been a World Cup in many ways. Many of the teams have brought their World Cup athletes. The most successful biathlete last season, Raphael Poirée, raced. He didn’t even win! There were more than one hundred competitors in today’s race, and more than 260 competitors in total, by far the most ever in a European Cup.
Because I didn’t finish in the top-sixty, I don’t get to start in tomorrow’s pursuit race. For the next weeks, I will continue to train here in Geilo before returning to the U.S. on December 13. It is a great place to train. There is plenty of snow, dozens of kilometers of ski trails, and a difficult race course to do intervals on. I also know what I need to work on to perform even better in January. It should be a great season.
Peace,
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