I know that I have not posted anything in a while so I will try to cover everything that has happened over the past two weeks. I just finished up a training camp in Sugarloaf, Maine which was a lot of fun. And before that I was in Jericho VT for the US biathlon (also referred to as USBA) summer festival. While Jericho is never the most fun place to hang out because it is an army base with little space where it either rains everyday or is extremely hot and humid, it is fun to see all the other top biathletes from around the country. This year was a smaller year for the senior field as all the national team guys are in Europe for a 5 week training camp but all of the top juniors that will be vying for a spot on the Jr World Champ team that will go to Nove Mesto in the Czech Republic next January. We were in Jericho for a week leading up to two races at the end. We (the MWSC team) trained pretty hard the week coming into the races because the races aren’t the focus of the season and more just a check to see where we are at.
The first race was a sprint (10km race individual start with 2 shooting stages, one prone and one standing) which I did not do as well as I had hoped that I would. I placed 7th in the junior division 4th American. I skied well but my shooting was not so good as I shot 1-4 (biathletes count number of misses not number of hits out of five). I found out that all of my misses were just high which meant that it was a position error not really bad shooting so I went into the second day of racing with high hopes.
The second day was a persuit format (12.5 Km race starting in the position that you finished the sprint in with 4 shooting stages of prone, prone, standing, standing in that order). I skied well again and shot better. I shot 2-2-1-0 for 75% shooting which is I was pleased about but still did not make the podium because of slow range times. The time it took for me took shoot my 20 shots was over a minute slower. Since I skied faster and hit the same number of targets if I had the same shooting speed I would have won. Unfortunately I ended up 4th in the junior division, 2nd American. The race was very helpful because now I know what I need to work on during fall. My ski speed is up there or better than anyone else as I was racing on slower roller skis than almost everyone else and my shooting % is where I want it to be for the time being but my shooting speed needs significant work if I want to compete on the international scene this winter.
All in all I got exactly what I needed to out of the Jericho camp so I will be ready to train more effectively over the fall to be as strong as I can be this winter and future winters to come.
After the races at Jericho we all hopped into the van and drove up to Sugarloaf, Maine to finish our two week training camp. This was a combined camp of all the MWSC athletes so we (the Biathletes) got to hang out with the Nordic skiers as well. The Nordic guys are a little weird but in general it’s a good group. We did a lot of volume and I put in more hours this week than any other this year. We did not get to shoot our rifles this week as there is not a range around here but we did go skeet shooting with Will’s shotguns. That was a lot of fun even though it had been quite some time since I had been skeet shooting and it took me some time to warm up again but after that I shot pretty well.
The past few weeks have been fun but now I head home for ten days which should be a nice break then back to Ft Kent to start the Fall cycle of training.
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