Settling in

I have made it through the first week here in Ft Kent. I feel that I have held up well with living away from the parents. I have done all my cooking and clean and lived to tell about it. That part of the transition has gone extremely smoothly which is surprising because I thought that that would be the hardest to get used to. There have been a few glitches in this perfect plan. I first day of training we went for a three hour mountain bike ride and I had never ridden a mountain bike. So I bought a mtn bike specifically to come here and train but my bike came in a box, as they normally do, and I thought that I could put it together and get my ride in. As it turns out there were two problems, first, the pedals and shoes that I got at different bike stores did not match up so my feet would not clip in which would not of been such a big deal it that was the only problem. As it turns out the bike was not completely ride ready as the derailers were not working properly so the bike would buck me around instead of shift so I was almost thrown off multiple times. And that was just the first day of training. I thought that it would only get better but only two days later I impaled my leg on a sharp rock after I slipped while going for a 4 hour run in the rain. But after a few days all I have is a little sore hip and a cool story to tell. Otherwise living in Ft Kent is not as bad as everyone says and I would almost say that I am enjoying it.

The Begining

I Started driving out to Maine today to join up with Maine Winter Sports Center (the team that I will be training with and racing with for the next year) with both my parents. It should be around three days of driving with the stops that we plan on making. As I started the drive I realized this is definitely a new chapter in my life. The thought of doing nothing but training and racing for the next year is weird for me coming from trying to juggle school and training and everything else in my life. The past few years I race biathlon pretty competitively but afterward I always came back and went to school. I am excited to see how fast I can get now that I am focusing all my attention on biathlon.

I spent the first day of my full time athletic career sitting in a car but I was able to sneak out and get a short run in on a beach of Lake Michigan. The beach wasn’t the greatest and I will have to say that the beach up in Duluth is much nicer but as my run progressed I started to enjoy the run more and more. Either jumping over a log that went across the length of the beach (there was only about 2 to 5 feet of beach the whole time I was running) or looking for the oddly squishy sand that is in between the dry sand and the really firm sand that takes the brunt of the waves aggression which is so fun to run on it always kept me engaged. It wasn’t just the put your head down and try to get somewhere through the deep sand it was doing something different and was a lot of fun. I think that Maine will be the same way. Training with new people in different ways should really help me.