The Wasatch Mts. in beautiful Utah
Training day.
During the camp we had two competitions. The first was a 10K sprint race and the second a 20K individual. In the 10K I had a nearly perfect day, shooting clean for the first time in my career and finishing second behind Tim Burke, the top US Biathlete. That was a fantastic result and gives me confidence going into the Olympic season. In the 20K I again had great skiing and shot very well putting me in 5th place overall.
Clean shooting in the sprint race.
Rewards of a two-hour uphill ski!
Rewards of a two-hour uphill ski!
After finishing the camp at the end of October I made a brief stop off in Boise, ID before heading back east for a few more weeks of training on my own. While eastern weather in September is always iffy, November weather is typically nasty. Usually we see rain and snow mixed on several days and daily precipitation is almost a given. I'm not sure what was going on, but of the three weeks I was in Placid training we saw temps in the mid 40's and 50's and only one day of rain. That's no fun for the locals because they want snow to come early, but dry, cool weather was a gift as far as we biathletes are concerned. We'd prefer to have great roller-skiing than have to deal with the in-between mess that happens when snow comes but doesn't stick. Needless to say, training was great and I was able to get in a solid block of volume training before heading to Canmore, Alberta to get on snow for the first time.