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With two false starts to my season… first, the pole fiasco in the Austrian Cup in Obertilliach, and second, the freak snowstorm that kept my skis from arriving for the start in the European Cup… I was really looking forward to World Cup 3 in Hochfilzen last week.
The first two weeks in Obertilliach (early December), I was over-eager in my training plan. In hindsight, there is no surprise that the feeling of over-training started to creep into my legs… In the European Cup, I started with training skis and wax and decided to race it as an intensity workout. Despite the extremely slow skis – new, wet snow mixed with man-made snow is perhaps the worst snow condition to not have the right flex, grind, and wax – I felt really good. That I could do well in Hochfilzen began to creep back into my mind again.
Whereas World Cup 2 in Hochfilzen was raced on snow heaved down from glaciers by trucks, the snowstorm that kept our vehicle stuck in the parking lot in Obertilliach dumped about eight inches of new snow in Hochfilzen. The trails were in perfect condition. About half of the course was fast corduroy, a quarter was average corduroy, and another quarter was screech-to-a-halt-slow powder.
When I arrived in Hochfilzen, one of the first things I heard was that Thursday’s race had been switched from a 20-km Individual to a 10-km Sprint. Not enough snow. Disappointing because I was looking forward to the Individual. I have been shooting really well all season – at least, I have been shooting accurately, maybe not rapidly. And I’m not the quickest skier, but I can maintain my “high” speed for a long time. Especially so considering all of the three and four hour workouts I somehow thought I needed to do in November.
The other three guys on the World Cup, besides Jay Hakkinen, flew home after World Cup 2 in order to better prepare for the January World Cups and World Championships. Only by this default did I get to start in Hochfilzen. Jeremy, Lowell, and Tim had a great start to the season in Östersund and Hochfilzen. I had a lot of schoolwork to get done the past month, so I didn’t watch every biathlon race, but consider this: in the past, we would turn races on, and try as hard as we could to see a limb, a hat, just something of one of our teammates. When I turned the television on periodically to check up on the race? There were entire scenes dedicated to these three. While it definitely raises the expectations for the rest of us, it also changes the perspective of the entire team from looking in and up, to around, even if we are not all there, yet.
The first day of training in Hochfilzen was eerily normal, or rather, it was actually abnormal in a counterintuitive manner. Whereas in Obertilliach there were 400 athletes fighting spastically over the 30 shooting lanes, in Hochfilzen, there were 120 athletes methodically zooming around the course, staying out of each other’s ways, with little apparent stress on the range. The sun was out. Life felt incredibly relaxed. I must have spent my “elite level” anxiety at the Olympics last season. Shooting was good. Skiing felt decent. I was easily going to be in the top-forty. No problem.
On Thursday, I started #72 in the first of two 10-km Sprint races. (Saturday’s race was going to remain, as scheduled, a Sprint race.) Warm-up went well. I had a good zero. I knew the course. I was relaxed. I got my skis on time. I looked at the blow-up starting arch that I’ve seen so many times on Eurosport, but it didn’t phase me. The crowd was marginal, owing to it being a weekday. But it was still loud and rambunctious.
On course, I started the first lap at a reasonably quick pace. I felt a bit tired on the uphills, but overall, I felt good. In the middle of my prone shooting, the announcer said, “Brian Olsen, USA, currently on shooting lane number five.” Then, I missed the last shot. No catastrophe. No dirty shooting. Things weren’t going so badly.
The second lap, I picked the speed up a bit, especially on the flat sections. I was still having some trouble on the uphills. It was not that I felt tired, per se, but that I didn’t feel quick. On the slow section of the course, where the track is in the shade, the powder really zapped my speed, as it did everyone else’s. In standing, I came in really easy. Beforehand, I figured that I would be coming in harder than normal anyways, owing to the level of the people around me changing my perspective, so I told myself to just go overly slow. Standing felt okay. My legs weren’t shaking. I didn’t have any confidence issues. I just had two bad shots where I lost my focus. It happens. Three misses total? Not bad. Still top fifty, I probably thought.
The last loop was good. I gave it everything, but still felt like I had more. Maybe I should’ve started harder. Across the finish line, I looked at the clock. It only gives bib number, finish time, and current finish place. I was 61st. But with more than 50 left to finish, that was a big shock. In the end, it was even worse, a shocking 93rd place. The third page of the results.
As much as I’d like to say that I had a bad day, I didn’t. Overall, I felt like I had an average day skiing. From my impressions and looking at race data, I’m skiing faster than I was last season. But it is still two and a half minutes back. Not horrible, considering that is 150 seconds behind an Olympic champion. Shooting was also slow. With the three misses, I lost about one and a half minutes from shooting times, the approach to the range, and going around the penalty lap. As much as I wanted to be disappointed in the race, I couldn’t be. What I was more disappointed about, and had reason to be so, was that I had to admit that, on this day, I was 93rd. No excuses, no reasoning.
I couldn’t say that I hadn’t tried hard enough. But I did have to admit that I had not prepared well enough. Though I might have trained harder, for longer, and in a manner that seemed downright more methodical than those who beat me, it might not have been what was right. The proof was in the result – it wasn’t the right training. Because I plan my own training, I had to not only admit that I wasn’t fast enough, but that I was also wrong about training. As depressing as this might sound, it was more of a realization than a “boo hoo, woe is me, I suck” kind of moment.
Immediately after that realization, I shifted my focus to the fact that I had a second chance on Saturday to try to make up some of that time. What a blessing. A second chance.
Come Friday morning, I vowed to shoot with the aggressiveness that I shot with last season combined with the accuracy I now have this season. In shooting, being too perfect in taking shots can actually result in more bad shots. Perfecting a shot means that there is some mental thought taking place, judging how the shot looks. The body is much more capable when the mind does not interfere, telling it what to do. Imagine driving down the road with your grandmother in the back seat. If the body is trained properly, then shooting without the interference of the mind will be more accurate and quicker. So I resolved to do so. In the workout, I shot 95 percent with shooting times between 26 and 30 seconds, about ten seconds faster than what I shot in the race.
On Saturday, I resolved to not only be aggressive in the shooting range, but also to start harder so that I didn’t finish the race feeling like I could have given a bit more. I started #79. The warm-up and zero went well again. The first loop, I powered up the hills in V2 much further than I had on Thursday. I pushed hard on the flats and downhills. I came into the range a bit faster and didn’t give my mind any room. While the final analysis shows that I took a long time in prone, part of that time was adjusting my sights for some wind. I hit them all down. Now I felt like I was moving. Definitely top-forty now! The second loop, the same thing. I felt good, except, of course, in the slow powder section. There my legs were screaming even on the first loop. I came into the shooting range for standing and my legs were a bit weak. But I chose a point, relaxed, and shot. I missed my third shot, which I over-held, but hit all of the others. 90 percent shooting in what really amounted to my second World Cup race! Pretty good…
The third loop, I felt energized, but lacking energy, meaning I had a lot of drive, but little with which to drive. The flat sections were fine. As long as I could V2, I was moving at a good pace. But as soon as I hit a steep uphill or slow snow, my speed dropped considerably. I’d started to fast. But I felt like I had skied fast enough the first two loops, and shot well enough, that I must be having a good race. Certainly better than on Thursday. Maybe I hadn’t trained wrong, I thought. I tried to hold things together. The final 1 km was painful beyond belief, not only in my legs, but also in my head because I couldn’t get those legs to glide any longer or push any harder. I knew that I had lost some time on the last loop.
When I came into the finish and looked at that same timing board, I expected to see a top-forty, knowing that more would finish behind me. And I expected that I’d stay in the top-sixty. I could “accept” that. But it said 61st and the time wasn’t much faster than on Thursday, even considering that I had two more misses that day. In the end, 85th place.
From discussion with the staff, it seems that I lost a lot of time on the course on both days by using my energy in the wrong places. Our service technician was watching a long downhill section on the course. Whereas everyone was gliding almost all the way to the next uphill, I started tuck skating about 200 meters earlier. He thought for a moment that my skis were bad. What really happened was that I thought that I, if I was not working on the course, then I was losing time. We had great skis. It would have been both faster and a more efficient use of energy had I remained in a tuck. There were many parts on the course where I made such technical mistakes.
Now I am back in the Heber Valley. The snow is perfect and it is cold. The season is most certainly winter. It was disappointing that I did not do as well as I had believed I could, but it in no way makes me feel beaten and done. There are many moments, in training and in testing, where I feel and show a vast amount of potential. Where my body feels like it has reached another level. And, whereas up until this season, I was limited primarily by erratic shooting, now consistent shooting is my strength. I feel like a diamond in the rough. I hope that doesn’t sound too arrogant – at least it is better than thinking I was a diamond in perfection.
I have many strengths and some skills waiting to become strengths. Among these, strength and power are two. While all that I have been doing for training has not been wrong, in retrospect, much of it supported my strengths, rather than improved my weaknesses. And because I have been very insistent on planning and doing my own training, I became somewhat blind to that reality. Another reality is that our two coaches have successfully refined three very different individuals into top-30, if not podium contenders. It’s time to adjust to these realities.
My next races are in Cesana-San Sicario, Italy, the venue at which I spent three weeks last season training and watching the Olympic Games from the inside. I trained for those races so hard, but didn’t get to put that preparation to good use. I still have that preparation inside me, ready to go. Now, I’ll finally get to use that energy. And with some adjustments to my training in this short break period, which I’m spending at high altitude with the greatest snow conditions in Europe or the U.S., I’m confident that I’ll be ready.
Peace,
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