| |
I was originally planning to do two more time trials today and tomorrow, but the chance of doing that is now zero. Today, during training, we were told that we would only be able to ski for an hour. Beitostølen is trying with all its might to make and truck in enough snow for the FIS World Cup that starts here on Friday. They have snowmaking machines running all over the region and are using dump trucks to retrieve snow from those facilities, as well as from far-away mountains.
With zeroing, a good warm-up, the race itself, and cool-down, the times just did not work out to allow for the time trial. So I ended up doing a hard workout. Much to my chagrin, after an hour, the organizers said we could train another thirty minutes. While I was thankful that they were giving us more time to train, if they had told us this information earlier, then we could all have done our workouts as planned.
Some people just keep skiing, thinking that their reputation would keep anyone from stopping them. I am guessing that is why Lars Berger and Ole Einar Bjørndalen kept doing their workout. Finally, the organizers decided to halt the king himself, but they did it in a very passive, Norwegian manner:
Instead of asking people using the communication skills we humans have come to possess over the past tens of thousands of years, the organizers thought the best way to stop training was to just starting producing snow. They dragged the snow hoses across the trail in various locations and aimed the snow guns at our faces. Who exactly did they think we were? Would these tactics keep gun-toting biathletes from training? Of course not! Only until they resorted to moving some vehicles onto the trail that we could not jump over did training come to a halt. If they had just asked…
So now, my biathlon training is over for a few days while the FIS World Cup is in town. Apparently, the cross-country skiers are afraid that we biathletes might take aim at them while they are touring the course. Or, maybe gunshots alone would scare them from showing up at the starting line. Whatever the reason, the next few days, we will all be training up in the mountains where snow has finally fallen. Though it would be an excellent hark back to the old days of biathlon – skiing around the mountains hunting reindeer – we will be leaving our rifles in our hotel rooms.
Peace,
|
