Racing to third place in IBU Cup trials in Mt Itasca.

Racing in Ironwood in some nordic races as prep for IBU trials.

The Racing Season

The racing season is in full swing now. I am now in Vt for Jr World Trials. I just got back from MN from IBU Cup trials and spending some time with my family. Racing at IBU Cup Trials went really well. I skied really well even though it was a really hard course, so I was happy with the progress I have made. This was the first time that I could really test my fitness from nine months of hard work in the off season and I was happy to see that the work had paid off. I ended up third in all three races. I raced really well and felt really strong skiing but also shot really well. This was the first time that I came into the race really confident in my shooting because of all the work that I have been able to do over the off season with the help of the coaching staff.

After the IBU Cup Trials it was nice to spend some time at home. My sister was home all the way from Germany with her boy friend who is a native German. It was really nice to meet Chris and see my sister who I have not seen in a year. I had a great time at home but it was important to prepare for Jr World trials which I left for the day after Christmas.

I got to Vt on the 26^th late at night because of the huge snow storm on the east coast but I was there for official training on the 27^th and that was the most important part.

Today was the first race of Jr World trials. It was a 10 km sprint race. I did not ski particularly well of shoot well and had the worst prone shooting and tied for the worst shooting of the year but it was enough to be the top American. I am sitting in a good spot right now. I need one more good race and will have punched my ticket to the Czech Republic. I was a little behind two Canadians but that’s ok I will close that gap tomorrow.

One race down two to go and the team will be named on the 30^th around mid day so check in again to see how it goes.

Canmore

Hey All,

I am back in the county after spending 2 weeks in Canmore, Alberta. Canmore was great. I was able to get on snow earlier in the season this year than any other previous year. When we first got there, it was I high of 35 and there was only 800 meters of skiing but two days in the temp dropped atleast 35 degrees and we got a few inches of snow and they opened up a few more k of skiing. I don’t know what was better; skiing on a small loop in a headband or having a bigger loop with a few hats and a buff on. Well I really didn’t get a choice and dealt with the conditions as they came.

It was nice to get on snow, not just because it meant no more roller skiing, but also because I was able to try all the new equipment that I got this year after switching on to Madshus this year. It took some time to get used to everything, especially the boots. Well, I had been skiing in my old boots for the past 3 years and they were great but now it is time for some change.

Being in Canmore for the first two weeks of the season really set me up for a good season. I am excited to get to some racing as I feel really ready to rip up everything that stands in my way.

More info of Canmore to come stortly

A lot has been going on here in Canmore. I will shortly have an in depth account of the snow coverage here, the races and life in general in Canmore.

Packing up and moving out

Packing everything up and getting ready to head to Canmore, Alberta. We will be getting on snow for the first time this year, which will be great. Not that i haven't enjoyed all the roller sking I've been doing (which has been a lot better since recovering from a throat infection which left me a little flat for about a week) but getting on snow again will just be way better. Canmore is blowing snow right now so even if they don't get any natural snow fall there should be up to 3 k of good snow.

A few photos from Utah

A good photo of the team

It got a little washed out but before that i really liked this photo

Just one more photo of nice scenery

Utah report

I have just returned from our last off season, dry land training camp of the year in Utah. We were training at Soldier Hollow (the site of the 2002 Olympics). This was my first time at Soldier Hollow which was very cool since 2002 Olympics was one of the first winter Olympics that I really remember watching with much interest. It was cool for me to be at the place where Ole Einar Bjørndalen won all four Olympic Gold medals in biathlon. Not only its historical significance but also everyone that I met and got to train with while I was there was a real treat. Soldier Hollow, which is just outside of Park City (where the USSA Center of Excellence),is where a lot of the nation’s best cross country skiers spend some time. The Andy Newell was there for a few days, along with Noah Hoffman who are both on the US ski team. The whole Nordic Combine team was there one day including Olympic Gold Medalist Billy Demong. It felt like every other day we ran into Olympians.

The venue was great (but to be expected as a former Olympic site). It boasts the nicest roller ski loop in the country and in general is a great place to get ready for the season. But we did not just roller ski every day at the venue. We took advantage of everything that the surrounding area had to offer, including going on hikes both in the mountains outside of Park City and at Sundance resort (site of the Sundance Film Festival). I came to understand why the film festival was put there and why everyone loves going so much. The scenery in the area was just beautiful. We tried to get to the ridge line so that we could look down on the valley but that would have required another hour hard hike and we are no longing in the summer when long hikes are the focus. We are now in the fall were intensity workouts like intervals, time trials and races are the priority so we had to sacrifice the better view because we had a time trial the next day.

We did three time trials while there. One went well, one I was pretty tired and the last one I broke my pole and I was pretty much out of it. I was pleased that I was able to win one of the time trials that included 3 of the 4 top Juniors in the country even though it was at altitude which seems to affect me worse than most. I did not have the fastest ski speed but made up for it with good shooting and won 17 seconds over Eliot Neal.

Utah was great but I am heading to Canmore, Canada in a week or two to get on snow and that should be even better.

Photos

Here we are skiing up east canyon outside of Park City.

The guy in the background long boarded all the way down then ran back up.

Utah

We made it to Utah and it is awesome. It was great to change it up with everything from housing arrangements to skiing on a different ski loop (Roller ski loops with ranges are often very small so they can get somewhat boring if you are on it every day). This training camp is great to really focus on training 24 hours a day and it is good to get some altitude training. We are going to be here for 2 weeks so we will get used to the altitude (which normally takes about a week) so we will get some easy distance work and some technique work until we get used to the altitude then we can get some really good physical training. This is so important to get everything physically and mentally ready for the season as we are really getting close to the start of the season. My first race is on November 16^th so that is just a little over a month from now. Right now things are looking good for the season with everything skiing and shooting going really well. I will try to put up some more posts with more information about how the camp is going and some pictures of the awesome scenery.

I seem to talk a lot about the weather in my blogs but I guess that kind of makes sense in a way as I spend so much of my time outside that the weather is a very legitimate concern. That being said, it was started to get cold here in Maine and the rain twice a week or more only gets harder to stomach as it gets colder. But luckily there is an out. On Sunday we head to Utah for a two week training camp. I hear the nights are just as cold but the days really warm up which should be nice. Besides the fact the weather looks pretty good I am excited to be at Soldier Hollow, the site of the 2002 winter Olympics, with both the men’s and women’s national team. A lot of the upper level biathletes in the country normally are in Utah for some duration during October. It should be fun to interact with the Seniors men and see what it takes to race at on the WC and the Olympics and it will be a good test to compare my progress to the other Juniors in the country. The main goal of the camp is to continue to improve shooting and skiing with the added benefit of being at altitude which increases red blood cells which will provide more oxygen to muscles in need which will really be helpful in the skiing aspect of biathlon. I will give a full account of Utah while I am there along with some pictures.

fall training

Fall has really started to affect my training mentality. During the summer everything was pretty casual (or as casual as things can get) but now psychologically things are really starting to change. For a while the training hours have were not that high and we did not do particularly that many hard workouts and it kind of seemed like we were in limbo waiting to leave for Utah before anything real happened. (We leave for Utah for a training camp on October 10^th and will be there till the 24^th) Stagnation is the hardest thing to deal with as a full time athlete for me because I am not doing anything else so if I don’t feel like I am getting any better than I just feel like I am wasting my time when I could be doing other things that would be more productive.

While I was feeling down, I actually was getting better. Even though everything felt normal all my work was really paying off. We did to Time Trials as a team and both my shooting and my skiing felt a lot better. Shooting wise, I came in to the first shooting stage and cleaned (hit all my targets) in 34 seconds. My range times were my Achilles heel at the races in VT over the summer where I shot around 55 seconds so I was happy with the improvement there. My standing shooting was not great but it also did not take me the rest of my life to shoot so I was happy about that but also knew what I needed to work on. With three misses in the standing stage I ended up shooting 70% which I am ok with right now but it will need to be closer to 80-90% come Jr Worlds if I want to crack the top 30. I was also a lot faster skiing which made me feel good. The combination of the technique work and the right amount of intensity to volume training really made me feel strong and use that strength and turning it into speed with as little waste of energy as possible. I skied well in both the 3km and the 6km time trial even though I went out a little too hard in the second one and thought that I was going to die pretty hard I did not and I held the shooting together to shoot 70% again. The second TT was a little more interesting because I started 15 second behind Raleigh and we played a cat and mouse game the whole 6 K where I would chase him then he would chase me. It was fun and range times made so much more of a difference because a couple of seconds could mean the difference between gapping Raleigh or being in a pack where it would be harder to put any distance between me and him because he would be able to react to all my increases in pace more easily. I ended up pulling away from Raleigh and out shot him to win.

Right after the TT where over I got to look at the two stocks which MWSC just bought off of Olympian Tim Burke. I was able to pick the one that I liked and have started shooting with it. In the past three days I have shot 800 rounds so that I get used to the way it feels and the new procedure I have to go through because the clips or magazines are held in a different place from my old one and time is everything in Biathlon. In those 800 rounds of shooting I was able to get my range times back down to where they were before set a new record on the so called “American Test” which is a speed and accuracy test where the goal is to shoot 4 clips but if you miss more than 2 shots total then you have to stop. Finishing the test is sometimes hard but I not only finished it a good number of times I also crushed my old record. I also did a 30/30 shot test or a 60 shot test which is solely an accuracy test where you take 60 shots on a paper target with the best shot being a 10 and the further you get from the middle being lower and lower scores. The top possible score is 600 points and the top guys (or girls) in the country score around 510 to 515. My previous best was 430 but the first time with the new stock I shot a 452 which is a sizable increase. My prone shooting was slightly lower than I have done in the past but my standing shooting really made up for it. All in all, I like the new stock as it is lighter is better made and I shoot better with it, what more could I ask for.

This last 3 week training block had a lot of ups and downs but now we have a low week to recover both physically and mentally to get ready for Utah and beyond.

This is the best standing paper I have done on a 60 shot test. We put 15 shots on two targets each. So the highest possible score on one paper is 150. this targets score is 112 out of 150.

This is the best prone that i have done. I did not shoot this this week but i kept it as my personal best. We on shoot 10 rounds on prone targets because it gets hard to tell separate shots apart when there are too many. On this target I scored 94 out of a possible 100.

Just fyi a prone hit is in between the 7 ring and the 8 ring.

Some Pictures

The Start


Willow Koerber on her way to third



Here is "young Jack" on his way to 45th place

Here pictured is the statue of the Mass 54th which i went and visited while in Boston. The Mass 54th holds significant to me as I wrote a research paper on the importance of the Mass 54th on the social and political changes of African Americans in the late 1800's.

We really know that it is fall up here in The County. The weather has taken a drastic turn for the cold and rainy side. Last week we were complaining about the 90 degree heat and the scorching sun, this week we did not even see the sun as it rained on us almost all week with highs around low 50’s to high 40’s with lows around mid 30’s.
Before the training really got serious this week (which it did) we traveled up to watch Mountain Bike World Champs in Quebec. I got to watch a majority of the cross country races, including the men’s U-23 race which my friend which I raced against in high school was competing. It was fun to see him race even though he got pulled from the race with a lap to go. I also saw the Women’s elite race which included a very exciting finish from Willow Koerber of the United States. Willow battled it out with a Russian and a Canadian for 2nd. The Russian ended up getting away but she held out for 3rd which was a hugely exciting result.
While there, Raleigh and I volunteered to help out at the 4 cross race where we clipped off the transponders for the electronic timing. It was cool to get a close up of the action and see the athletes right after they were finished. I feel confident in saying that I was the first to congratulate the women’s World Champion. All in all, it was a great event.
For now it’s all about the training in the County. I will shortly post any results of time trials or anything else that is interesting.

Back Home

I returned home on the 17^th for ten days of catching up with family and friends. Even though I had only been gone for two months but it’s great to be back. Did some training but mostly just resting after a very tough summer of training and want to make sure that I come into the fall well rested and ready to hit the training hard this fall. One of the highlights of my trip, besides catching up with everyone, was going to the Minnesota State Fair. The Fair just started so I recommend that anyone in the area (by in the area I mean the Midwest) should make sure that you go to the fair. Now I am heading back up to Ft Kent.