The Last Few Months - Part III

A couple of days after being part of a stellar Cords performance at Fenway I flew to Oklahoma to spend a few days with relatives at a family reunion. Mind you, this was no ordinary reunion. Indeed not. At last count, over two hundred relatives were in attendance. The craziest part? That's not even half of the family members. Try remembering that many names and then figuring out the branches of the family tree. Good luck.

Of course, during all of my hopping around, training goes on. City streets or Kansas corn fields, the daily workouts are top priority. This year I finally have the luxury of prioritizing training as number one and that is going to be the key to success this year.


I returned from the Midwest and got settled into my room at the Olympic Training Center. Almost immediately those of us on the Development Team got thrown into a two-week camp with the U.S. National Team. The National Team coaches were here from Sweden and the Team's High Performance Director flew in from Munich, Germany. We spent time learning new strength and balance exercises, did lots of shooting drills and, of course, got to do most of the interval and distance workouts right alongside the National Team. That was definitely one of the most intense two weeks of training I've ever been through. We continued with high-volume training for another two weeks after the National Team camp ended, racking up almost 75 hours of training in the four-week block. To put that number into perspective for you - last year I trained roughly 525 hours. Getting adequate rest and nutrition has been paramount for me being able to absorb the jump in training. I'm excited to see where I can go in the coming seasons.

At the end of our last block of training I got to fly out to Boise, ID to spend a week with Sara and her family. I should mention that Sara is also on the Development Team, so our schedules coincide pretty closely most of the time. Anyway, back to Boise... I spent three days backpacking in the beautiful Sawtooth mountains of Idaho and a wonderful few days at a cabin on a lake in McCall. It was a much needed rest before jumping back into another big block of training. With that, we're almost caught up. Yesterday I finished my biggest week of the year - 22.5 hours. I was exhausted, but with a full rest day under my belt I'm looking forward to jumping back into training tomorrow for the last week of this block. We're here in Lake Placid tomorrow and head to Jericho, VT Tuesday to take advantage of the roller skiing loop and firing range there. We have two time trials on Friday and Saturday so I'm excited to see how my shooting and skiing are coming together. There probably won't be internet available since we're staying on a military base, so I'll update you the next chance I get. Until then...cheers.