January on the WC: 3 Weeks and 3 Venues

Since January 1^st, the biathlon World Cup circuit has given us a tour of central Europe.  We started in Oberhof, Germany, a biathlon mecca that attracts over 30,000 fans.  Nove Mesto in the Czech Republic, site of the 2013 World Championships, hosted us the following week and treated us to some of the windiest, snowiest and most challenging race conditions we’ve seen.  Antholz, Italy welcomed us at the start of this week with mountains, altitude, and the first real sunshine of the season.

Oberhof

Favorite moment:

Cooling down with Sara after the Oberhof sprint.  There were so many fans exiting the stadium blocking the sidewalk and road that the only place we could successfully jog was a narrow space in between the 100 or so double parked shuttle buses.  We covered about half a mile running between buses.  Weaving between the crowd and the buses made me feel like I was on The Knight Bus from Harry Potter.

Sara and Annelies dryfire to warm-up before the sprint.

Racers in the crowded finish pen at Oberhof's women’s mass start. We watched from the sidelines because none of us qualified for the race. It's fun to be part of a crowd of over 25,000 fans and have a front row spot to cheer from. I couldn't help but think it would have been even more fun to be in the race.

Crazy Oberhof fans

Nove Mesto

Favorite moment:

I used to think we had a pirate on our staff, or at least a pirate want-to-be.  He is a wax tech from Czech named Gara, and he always greets us with a hearty “ahoy!”  When we arrived in Czech, I was surprised to discover that many of Gara’s countrymen were also pirates.  Everywhere I went, I heard people hailing each other with “ahoy!”  Then I had a revelation: perhaps Gara wasn’t a pirate at all; perhaps Gara was simply Czech.

 

Banners along the Nove Mesto race course. Nove Mesto is the only venue I’ve raced at every year since I started biathlon (they often host IBU Cups.) This year they introduced a brand new course in preparation for hosting World Championships next year.

A view outside our hotel

Most reachable surfaces in the surrounding neighborhood are colored with graffiti. It's actually nice to see some brightness in a gray place.

Some of the team and staff chilling in the hotel hallway. There were very few places in the building where we could pick up a wireless signal.

Antholz

I got off to a rough start in Italy.  We had a very long travel day from Nove Mesto (made even longer by a five hour delay due to car problems) and I was feeling overly tired and depressed from being sick.  All the women on the team were starting to feel the strain of being on the road for so long away from home, family and friends.  I desperately needed to set the reset button in my brain.  The best cure: mountains, sunshine, and racing!

Favorite moment (so far):  When I left the range after my final shooting in the sprint race, I knew I was on track to have my best result yet.  I only missed one target and I was getting splits that I was sitting in about 15th place.  The rest of the race was a fight to earn a mass start spot.  Only 30 athletes get the honor of starting in a mass start- the top 25 ranked competitors from the entire season, and the next 5 best finishers from the previous sprint.  Last year Sara, Laura, and Haley all earned mass start spots at some point during the season (the first time any American women had in years), so I knew it was possible.  I placed17th in the sprint with my best finish yet, and I’m racing the mass start on Sunday!

But first things first:  team relay this afternoon!  This is only the 2nd time this year that we’ve been able to field a women’s team and we are excited.

Finally, the mountainous venue I’ve been waiting for: Antholz!

Armin, one of our coaches, standing behind the scope in his hometown. Most of the US team's staff are Europeans.

Official training under the first true blue sky I’ve seen in Europe this year.

Foghof? Rainhof? Windhof?…Oberhof

Knock, knock, knock!  On my first morning in Oberhof, Germany, I’m jolted out of sleep by someone rapping on my door.  I crawl out of bed and poke my head out into the hallway.  “Good morning sleepy head!” my teammates Sara and Annelies great me with a laugh, “you really ought to see yourself in the mirror- you’ve got a handprint on your face.”  I must have been using my hand as a pillow.  I grunt and glance at my watch: 9:25.  I slept for almost 11 hours and I vaguely remember deciding to sleep through my alarm.  Oh, the joys of jetlag!

Following breakfast, I venture into the grey world outside for an easy jog and I check out the race venue.  The towering spruce trees along the road rock dangerously in the wind.  A thin strip of plastic fencing tape is blowing so hard that it sounds like the clatter from a rolling luggage bag.  Oberhof has a reputation for crappy weather: wind, rain, and fog.  In the race stadium, I run into Max Cobb, executive director of US Biathlon and an IBU official for this week’s competitions.  “Is it always this windy here?” I ask him.  Max informs me that the Oberhof World Cup usually has at least one day like this.

On the day before the first event, the organizers worked nonstop to truck in enough snow.

The wind hasn’t abated by the afternoon when we arrive at the wax cabins and prepare for official training.  The wax room doors are accidents waiting to happen.  Open them even the slightest bit and the wind will catch them, swing them wide open, and pin them against the wall.  Sara struggles to wrestle our door closed; it looks like a more arduous workout than skiing but I’m laughing so hard that I can’t assist her.  I’m very glad our upstairs wax cabin is on the end of the building so we don’t have to risk walking along the narrow balcony front of everybody else’s doors.

Predictably, today’s shooting is frustrating.  A teammate sums it up saying “If you can hit 3 targets [per stage], you are doing well.”  Standing is especially difficult- my whole body sways in the wind.  In order to hit anything, I have to wait out the worst of the gusts and be ready to shoot when there is a split second of calm.

The skiing is slightly better, although the snow is sparse.  The organizers have only a 1.5 km loop open for the first couple days of training and are preserving the rest of the course for the races.  Before the second afternoon of training, our high performance director, Bernd Eisenbichler, asks the team: “Who hasn’t skied here before?  Susan?  Annelies?”  The closed off part of the course includes the strenuous “Bergsteig” climb and a challenging downhill that will be featured in the race.   Last week, the world’s best cross country skiers raced down it during the Tour de Ski and there were a handful of epic crashes.  “Don’t worry,” Bernd tells us with a grin, “you only go about 60 km/hr on the downhill.”  He’s  exaggerating slightly- Tour de Ski competitors were only clocked going 58 km/hr.  We are a little worried.

Leif, a member of our men’s team chimes in: “Yeah, it’s not like it is twisty and technical or anything.”

“Shut up!” cries Annelies, and gives Leif a shove, but she’s smiling.  On the day before the sprint when we finally get a chance to preview the course, I find the actual downhill anticlimactic after hearing so much about it.

A row of coaches at the scopes during offical training. In the background you can see part of the stands, which wrap around the hill like an amphitheatre.

As soon as we arrived in town, Sara started talking up Oberhof’s opening ceremonies.  Last year, she was the only US athlete who bothered to participate, and she thought it was really cool.    Usually these events are long and drawn out, with lots of speakers (translated into a couple different languages) and hours of standing in the cold wind.  However, this one’s designed to be athlete friendly.   Sara, Annelies, and I decide to go as a group this year.  We arrive in the indoor waiting area at our assigned time and are immediately given an American flag and instructed to line up at the doorway behind the Ukrainian team.  Two minutes later, it is our turn to march outside onto a stage to the sound of some unmemorable soundtrack.  Annelies leads with the flag.  We smile and wave at the crowded park below.  The announcer turns to interview us.  “How do you find the weather here?” he asks, and thrusts the microphone under my nose.     Oh, you mean the pounding winds, the walls of mist that blast against our faces, the slushy saturated1.5 km loop of snow?  “We’re loving it!” I declare.  The announcer turns to Sara: “Are you planning to use your wax skis or your water skis?”  I’ve never heard of snow skis referred to as wax skis before.  “We hope we’ll be using our wax skis,” she responds.   The announcer thanks us, and then we are waving to the crowd one last time and parading off stage.  Barely five minutes have passed since our arrival in the waiting area.  Short and sweet- the way opening ceremonies for these events should be.

Upon exiting the back of the building, we are mobbed by a group of 20 or so autograph seekers.  Oberhof is one of the most popular World Cups in terms of fan attendance.  On a Wednesday night race, in the worst weather imaginable, 15,000-20,000 fans will show up to watch.  Thousands more appear for weekend races.  The small group around us right now wields sharpies, event posters, and printed out athlete photos.  They ask for our autograph cards.  I hadn’t needed them until this year.  Right about now, I’m feeling thankful that Annelies and I made a last minute decision to design some cards for ourselves.  We each printed out about 100 the day before we flew to Sweden back in November.  Fans in Europe expect you to have them on hand, and I like having their support.  Let’s face it, American Nordic skiers can use all the support we can get.  The tricky part is that if you give out one card, or sign something for one person, the entire group crowds around you.  Luckily, there is a security guard in a bright yellow coat ready to intervene if necessary.  At this rate, I am going to run out of cards before I even race this week.  As we leave the crowd, Sara gives me a piece of advice: “If I were you, I would make sure to save some cards for Ruhpolding.”

Another section of the stands. 3 hours until the men's relay, and fans are already claiming their places.

On my second morning in Oberhof, I wake up at a reasonable early hour.  On my way to breakfast, I run into one of our coaches, Per and he looks cheery.  “Come here Susan,” he calls me over to the window.  “I have to show you something.  Look!”  We peer through the blinds and he points to the sky.   I can see some clear sky among scattered clouds.  It’s threatening to snow.   It’s even threatening to sunshine.   It’s beautiful weather, for Oberhof.

Welcome to the World Cup!

This is a belated post about my experiences leading up to my World Cup debut last week in Ostersund, Sweden.

Looking out the window… there are men setting up a television camera on a raised platform.  They angle it so it will catch racers hammering over the course’s last uphill.   Volunteers are unraveling sponsor signs, stretching them over large wooden frames and inflating them into balloon arches.  A media truck pulls into the stadium and unfolds a jumbotron.  It comes to life broadcasting a test screen of technicolor blocks.  Towering spotlights gaze down, spilling brilliant white light over every activity and night transforms into a bright day.  Like worker ants, wax techs haul a dozen pairs of skis at a time to the course using wooden carriers.  They swarm around and around the tracks, always testing, always wondering.  Which is the best ski?  The most suitable grind?  The fastest wax?  We still have a couple days before our first race, but looking out the window at all this activity, I already feel nervous.

In the days leading up to the races, we are bombarded with schedules.  I’m accustomed to having specific practice and rifle zeroing times, but we also are given designated times to report in for ski testing and course tactic discussions.   Outside of training, we must fit in visits to equipment control and the media center where we get headshots and photos for equipment sponsors.  Life suddenly becomes more complicated, but in a good way.  Our staff is three times bigger than the staff I’m used to having on the IBU Cup or European Championship level.  They all tell me that I need to act needy and that I shouldn’t hesitate to let them know if I could use any help with equipment, training, recovery, health issues, etc.   I’m a little overwhelmed.

One of the first things our team takes care of is passing through equipment control.  When we arrive, the German women are already there.  I watch as the IBU officials write each woman’s names and country on a sheet of white paper and then take a photograph of their rifle next to the sheet.  I suddenly realize what name is on the sheet of the girl standing in front of me… Neuner.  I stare for a moment.  This is Magdalena Neuner, the German national celebrity, one of the most talented biathletes in the world, and she is standing right in front of me.  I don’t know what I expected, but it somehow surprises me that she looks so human and normal.  I remember something my dad, a former XC ski racer, told me a few years back: “The Europeans may be fast, but they put their pants on in the morning the same way you do.  There is nothing magic about them.”  The shock passes.

Later that day, we each test our skis one-on-one with a wax tech.  I don’t have very much experience with ski testing and I’ve always struggled to feel small differences in glide.  In order to figure out which pair glides the most freely, I wear a different ski on each foot and imagine that there is sandpaper on the bottom of my skis.  Then I ask myself which sandpaper feels less gritty.  The techs give us about a minute to feel out each combination and then it’s time to compare results and switch to a new combination.  The differences between skis sometimes feel so insignificant, it is easy to second guess yourself.  After practice, one of the coaches said he heard that I “did well” during ski testing.  I couldn’t help but wonder whether that first ski testing exercise was more a test of my own testing abilities than a test of my skis.

On the first day of “official training” I put on my skis and head out into the brightness of the stadium.  There are already fans hanging out behind the course fences and snapping pictures as athletes glide by.  We are on display.  Everything I’ve experienced in the last 48 hours feels so foreign and so far from biathlon as I have known it.   Even the shoot mats seem to glow; I find their neon green color distracting as I lay down to zero my rifle.   Somehow the essence of biathlon has been buried under all the flashy preparations for the World Cup.  I must rediscover it.

Following the first race of the season, an IBU Cup that I felt pretty good about, I had a discussion with our team doctor, Ed Merrins.  “You wore a smile in the start pen before the race,” he observed. “And you were wearing one after.”  Smiling and keeping a light and free attitude works well for me in races.  Sometimes I weigh myself down with my own expectations (or those of other people).  When that happens, I don’t have as much fun and I don’t think I can tap into my full potential.  With that in mind, I decided to force a smile during training and racing the next few days.

Back to that first official practice…  After zeroing my rifle, I ski out onto the loop, away from the craziness of the stadium.  I follow a trail of spotlights fading into the far reaches of the course.  The skis are fast and familiar under my feet and I feel like I’m flying.  This is the skiing I know.  I travel around the loop, playing with different tempos on the hills, throwing in a few playful hop skate steps.  Then I accelerate into the track’s sharpest downhill S-turn and thrill in the adrenaline rush.  Returning to the range, I pick up my rifle and drop onto a shooting point.  The targets look just like they always do:  small dots 50 meters away, and all I have to do is breathe consistently and squeeze the trigger gently.  I can do this.  It’s just shooting.  All of this is just shooting and skiing.  Nothing has changed really.  I wear a genuine smile on my face and revel in the joy of simply being here.

Fast forward to race day…  I step out our front door to head down to the stadium for my zero.  Immediately I taste wood smoke on the air from the volunteers’ warming fires.  As I walk down through the wax cabins and across the warm-up track, a cool wind brushes against my cheek and I shiver.  This is it; I’m about to race in a World Cup.  Nothing can get in the way now.  Or can it?  I have a sudden vision of tripping on the slippery stairs ahead and hurting myself in a freak accident.  But I walk down the stairs and I don’t slip.  Minutes later, I pass through the stadium entrance tunnel, rifle on my back and skis in hand, and I emerge into the glaring light.  It’s time to warm-up.

At the start of the warm-up hardly anybody is in the stands, but they fill up by race time when I make my way to starting chute.  It funnels racers one by one into the inflated arch containing the start gate.  For thirty seconds, I get this quiet balloon cave entirely to myself.  I wave and smile at the camera like I’ve seen so many other athletes do, although I doubt the TV will show an unknown rookie.  All the top dogs are already battling it out on the course.  I don’t fear the television cameras tonight; I don’t believe they will bother showing any footage of me.  I watch the seconds tick by on the start clock.  The light turns green and my start time appears.  I shoot through the timing wand and the race has begun.

Photo: US Biathlon/NordicFocus.com

Just ski, I tell myself.  It’s no different than training.  My mind is clear and I react to the terrain, switching between V2, V2 alt, and V1 techniques as the hills and snow conditions dictate.  I think about picking up my tempo around corners and accelerating over the top of each hill.  After a couple minutes, I remember that this is a 15 km race and I should probably pace myself, but I’m closing in on a pack just ahead.  I’m still fresh and the skiing feels easy.  I weave through to the front of the pack and settle in behind a red, yellow, and black uniform of the German team.  As we start up the longest climb of the loop, I match the German girl’s rhythm and we cruise up the hill together.  Before I realize it, we are already back in the stadium.  I check the wind, drop onto a shooting mat, load a clip, and take 5 shots without being fully aware of what I’m doing.  It’s only then that the excitement creeps in- I hit all of them!  I just cleaned the first stage of my World Cup career!  With no penalties yet, I begin lap 2.

Photo: US Biathlon/NordicFocus.com

Sometimes, it is best to not know certain things.  Throughout the entire race, I heard the US coaches and staff cheering for me at different points along the course.  They were telling me that I was having a fantastic “running time” (i.e. ski time in European lingo), but they chose not to tell me that I was in third place after that first shooting stage.  I also found out after the race that the German girl I skied with was in fact Neuner (which had a lot to do with the fast split time) and that I did get a lot of TV time because I was near her.   I’m not exactly sure what would have happened had I known any of these things during the race.  I likely would have slowed down because I didn’t believe I belonged with Neuner and I probably would have felt a lot of pressure on the shooting range and missed more targets.  As it was, I still managed to miss a bunch of targets in the last three shooting stages, earning myself seven minutes in penalty time.  I finished in 45^th place (out of almost 100) with one of the top 25 ski splits.  This far surpassed my own expectations.  The race was a blast and I’m glad I made the “mistake” of skiing with Neuner and going out too hard in the first lap.  The experience boosted my confidence and showed me what is possible.

Photo: US Biathlon/NordicFocus.com

The Greater World of Ostersund

This has been a very special week for me.  Yesterday was the first World Cup race of my career; something I’ve been dreaming of and working towards for several years.  It was an exciting race in some rather surprising ways, and I promise I’ll write a detailed blog post about it in the next few days.  However, first I’d like to share some cultural experiences from today.  I apologize in advance for a decline in photo quality- my camera had a little accident and will only work on one mode and without flash (I’ll try to get it fixed over Christmas).

In Europe, the Advent season is often associated with Christmas Markets and many cities have one of these open air street markets.  I had never heard of them until Haley Johnson, a former member of the US team, had told me about Ostersund’s Christmas Market, which is held during the 2^nd weekend of Advent.  From her description, I knew it was something I very much wanted to see, even though I didn’t fully understand what it was about.  This morning, I wandered down to the Market with Laura Spector, Ed Merrins (our team doctor) and Ed’s son Sam.  Imagine hundreds of street vendors selling foods and crafts: artisan cheeses, dried meats, baked goods, glögg (Nordic mulled wine), knit socks, felted mittens, leather pouches, word carvings, wrought iron candle holders, paintings, jewelry, angel ornaments, homemade paper, knives with moose antler handles, straw reindeer dolls, embroidered pillows… you get the idea.  Ostersund’s Christmas Market is held in Jamtli History Land- a museum village much like Colonial Williamsburg or Vermont’s Shelburne Museum.    Between my fascination with historical buildings and the numerous vendor stalls to check out, I could have happily wandered around for an entire day, but I limited myself to an hour and a half.

After returning from the Christmas market this afternoon, I got an invitation to share some glögg (non-alcoholic in this case) and tea at the home of a Swedish couple I had befriended earlier in the week.  Nina and Staffan live in a cute house in a nearby residential neighborhood.  Staffan is one of the municipal lawyers in Ostersund and did a lot of permitting work for the biathlon stadium.  He shared stories of skiing down the streets to get from place to place when he was growing up.  Nina isn’t as interested in skiing.  Her favorite activities are gardening in her back yard and working on crafts projects.  They gave me a tour of a “typical Swedish house” and showed me pictures of some beautiful National Parks in northern Sweden.  Someday I’d like to travel to Sweden in the summer and see the Parks.

My final adventure of the day involved a quick elevator ride to the top of a giant mystery tower called Arctura that sits beside our cabins.

When the wind blows (often), the tower shrieks and howls and keeps me up at night.  I’d been told that there was a restaurant at the top but I had no idea what the tower’s purpose was beyond that.  Today I finally put 2 and 2 together and realized that when the coaches have been referring to “the thermos” on the course, they mean the tower.

Sam Merrins at the foot of the tower. Sam races for Ford Sayre and has been helping the team out a lot this week with race support.

Turns out it’s a giant centralized hot water storage unit for the entire town and its high location ensures good water pressure for everyone below.  It is part of a cogeneration power system capable of storing 26 million liters of hot water and up to 1500 MWh of power.  The energy comes from burning trash and biomass.  Neat.

View from the top

And to end with, I’d like to include this pic I took several days ago.  Yes those are poles and skis she is carrying.  It’s just a way of life here.

Not Quite Winter in Sweden

A week ago, I arrived in Ostersund, Sweden for US Biathlon’s first on-snow camp of the winter.   With temperatures in the 40s (Farenheit), rain pouring down, and more of the same in the forecast, we felt very lucky that  the Ostersund staff had the foresight to stockpile a tremendous amount of snow last spring (under a thick layer of sawdust).  They saved enough to cover a 4 km race trail 6 m wide and still have some in reserve.  Tomorrow, Sunday, we will compete in our first race of the season: an IBU Cup sprint.  Following that, some of us will remain in Ostersund for the first World Cup next weekend, and some of us will travel to IBU races in Austria and Italy

This is my first visit to Scandanavia and my biggest adjustment has been adapting to the short amount of daylight.  Although it gets light around 8:00, we don’t get that soft golden yellow light that I typically associate with early morning until around 10:30.  The sun starts to set around 2:30 and by 3:30, it feels like nighttime.   One of my favorite moments so far came one evening as I was walking through town under some street lamps.  I was feeling a little bummed about the darkness until I noticed tiny ice crystals on the sidewalk catching the light just right and sparkling in the dark.  As I walked, I felt like I was passing through a shimmering tunnel.

We are staying in some cabins at the race venue, along with the French and Japanese.   We share a common dinning room where we are served buffet style.  During meals, there is often a giant projection screen set-up with Eurosport TV.  We’ve been able to watch XC World Cups (including Kikkan’s 4th place finish in the classic sprint) and our Lake Placid luge friends competing in Innsbruck.

The race course following a midday rainstorm.

One of our favorite pastimes is watching people ski by out our window.

 

Me, out enjoying an easy classic ski. Photo: Sara Studebaker

My goofy teammates, heading out for an afternoon jog.

With limited ski trails open, we've had the opportunity to explore a lot of the single track biking and running trails. The venue sits at the edge of a large spruce and pine forest. A lush carpet of spaghnum moss covers the forest floor. Blueberry bushes and lingonberries seem to be the other common ground plants.

The weight rooms that we train at have lots of ping pong tables. Ping pong is the team's 2nd favorite sport. Our European coaching staff are especially good at it. Here you can see Lowell and Leif taking on coaches Per and Armin.

Coach Armin shaving down my rifle stock. Some of the modifications I made to it got in the way of the race sponsor stickers, so the material control officers wouldn't pass my rifle until it was fixed.

The Norwegians have gotten a lot of attention the last couple years because of their giant mobile waxing facilites on the World Cup circuit. Apparently the trend is growing.

Hot dog anyone? We've been eating lots of fish, potatoes and pasta, but this caught us by surprise the other day.

We celebrated Thanksgiving a couple weeks early while we were still in the States. Annelies's parent's invited us to their home in Saranac Lake, NY. I'm very grateful that we celebrated early: Thanksgiving dinner in Sweden consisted of fish and potatoes. Photo: George Cook

Mainstreet Ostersund. The city is decorated with many lights. I explored the downtown and waterfront areas last night after dinner. The stores were already closed for the day.

I think this beautiful building must be the townhall or regional government seat.

Ladies movie night

 

A Magical Morning

When I woke up today, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.  I wanted to rush around the house and wake everybody up and show them the beautiful snow outside.  Unfortunately, there was no one to wake up except Emily, a rower, and I figured she’d appreciate being able to sleep in on her day off.  The first thing I did instead was to email out to the Craftsbury junior skiers to cancel morning rollerski practice and replace it with ski practice on the Center’s fields.

We convinced Lisa Schlenker (one of the Center's rowing coaches) to put on some skis and join in the fun.

These apples still taste amazing

A game of "cut the pie" (a type of tag) on the upper soccer field

No need for kick wax

We ditched the skis for a short game of snow soccer

By late afternoon, the snow was already beginning to disappear

Wasatch Mountain High

The end of the Utah camp ended on a high note for me.  First of all, I’m going to Sweden!  The Utah rollerski races, along with the Jericho races back in August, served as qualifiers for the first international races of the year.  I saved my best race for the last qualifier and hit 90% of my targets.  I was named to the team with 5 other US women.  Once we get on snow in Sweden during late November, we’ll be divided into different groups- a World Cup team and an IBU Cup team (IBU Cup is the race circuit just below the World Cup).  Either way, I’ll be racing in various places in Europe until Christmas.

Our last day of training in Utah was another reason I flew back east with a smile. We got to hike Mt. Timpanogos- one of my (many) favorite mountains.  Timpanogos’s snow covered peak looms teasingly over Solider Hollow.  The first few times I went to the Heber Valley, I would gaze longingly at it’s ridgelines but I didn’t get the chance to climb it.  It often has too much snow in October.  Last year, we finally had the chance to hike part of it, but we had an easy workout on our training plan, and our coaches only let us go to the first saddle.  I can’t say I successfully summited this year either, but Laura Spector and I made a valiant effort to run further up.  We were within sight of the final ridge climb and then decided to turn around so that our teammates (who turned around at the first saddle again) wouldn’t have to wait for hours in the parking lot.  The elusiveness of that summit is intensifying my desire to get there.  So next year…  Still, it was a spectacular day in the mountains, the type of day that fuels your soul and makes you feel psyched to be alive.

The lower slopes ablaze with color

Ah, the life of a mountain goat. They live in the best places on Earth.

Snow fields at higher elevations

YEEESSS!!!!

Another reason we had to turn around early is that we had been invited by the US Speedskating team to have dinner with a bunch of the long track athletes and then watch a World Cup (short track) in Salt Lake.  Our coaches have been talking a lot lately, so perhaps in the future, we’ll have some training collaboration between our sports.  The World Cup was fascinating to watch.  I hadn’t realized how short the short track loop actually is and how nearly impossible it is to pass your competitors.  No wonder there are a lot of crashes.

The biathlete cheering contingent

The art of cornering

I flew back to Vermont early the next morning and got to see my Craftsbury GRP teammates for a few hours before they departed for a month of skiing in Finland.  The team house at Elinor’s is very quiet: Emily Dreissigacker (who is training for sculling races) and I are the only ones here right now.  I love the seasonal rhythms of life at Craftsbury.  With the colder weather and shorter days we are shifting into winter mode.  In between training sessions, I’m working on winterizing the house: pulling out all the screens, installing insulating plastic over the windows, cleaning up the flower beds and skirting the old foundation.   It doesn’t seem like there are enough hours in the day to get everything done.

As the race season approaches, I would like to invite all my Facebook savvy blog readers to “like” my athlete fan page “Susan Dunklee” on Facebook.  (This is something that US Biathlon recommended that we create, and it is separate from my personal private Facebook page.)  It’s relatively new and I already have 23 fans- hurray!  Basically it is an easy and centralized way for me to keep in touch with all of you and you can post stuff to the wall too.  This page will be the most comprehensive and updated resource for tracking my race season and travels.  I’ll try to post pictures, blog entries, links to results, and other various things.

Altitude and Sunshine

It’s October, which means I’m training in Utah’s Heber Valley for our biathlon team’s annual fall altitude camp.  Every day so far has been warm, sunny and beautiful on the valley floor.  The surrounding Wasatch mountains are capped with fresh snow; a promising reminder of the skiing soon to come.  Solider Hollow, the venue where we are training and the site of the 2002 Olympic games, sits at 5,500 feet.  The thinner air at this altitude makes it slightly more challenging to train and race.

The US Biathlon Association board members were in town last weekend for a meeting and banquet, as were the US Biathlon Foundation members.  We gave them some shooting instruction and then enjoyed a variety of activities together such as horseback riding, golf, and fly fishing.  At the banquet, I had the honor of sitting next to Bitsy Kelley who runs a west coast weekly radio show about everything outdoors.  We chatted about hunting, gardening, farming, and shared ideas for living self-sufficiently.

I went horseback riding with the board in the town of Sundance, home of Robert Redford. The scenery was beautiful with the aspens, oaks, and maples at the height of foliage season- almost as colorful as the Green Mountains back home. photo credit: Laura Spector

The first week of training was great.  We’ve shared the range with Maine Winter Sports Center, Twin Biathletes (the Barnes), the Junior National Team, and a contingent from Canmore.  A couple of times, we even saw our xc friends from the US Ski Team, Central XC and Sun Valley sprinting around the Soldier Hollow trails.  Although all these groups are on different training schedules, it is inspiring to train around them.  At the end of this week, we’ll also have the chance to meet some of the US speed skaters.  They invited us to watch their World Cup competition in Salt Lake.

Group training on the range. photo credit: Pat Coffey

Today was our first of two sprint races out here.  Racing at altitude tends to be very painful, the lack of oxygen makes it harder to recover.  My goal was to start at a relaxed pace and keep getting faster as the race went on.   I also applied a similar strategy on every uphill: ski at a controlled pace until the last few meters, when I would accelerate and carry more speed over the top.   It paid off- I had the fastest ski time of the American contingent (not by much), but I missed 3 out of 10 targets, while several of my teammates shot clean or only missed 1 or 2.

Standing shooting. Notice the new custom stock that I got a few months ago. photo credit: Jonne Kahkonen

To read more about our Utah training camp and see more pictures, check out this Fasterskier article

Autumn in the North Country

Elinor's Field: The view from our front door in Craftsbury.

Misty mornings.  Waking up engulfed by a cloud.  Trees slowly materialize out of whiteness. Half an hour into our rollerski, the fog has completely burned off in the Black River Valley.  A perfect fall day.

King Farm Road looking towards Little Hosmer Pond

GRP teammate Dylan McGuffin works on building a sauna in the front yard out of scrap wood.

Many of my favorite memories from this fall involve food harvests.

Returning from a local orchard: 300 lbs of crisp fall apples are stacked, crammed, into the back of a red minivan.  They totter and shift precariously as we wind and rattle over dirt roads.  Parking behind the Craftsbury dining hall to unload, we open the trunk carefully in case they fall.  We carry them in waxed cardboard boxes, salvaged from the recycling, and the bottoms threaten to give out.  In the coming weeks there will be plenty of apple dishes on the menu.

Winter squash that we grew at Elinor's for the Craftsbury dining hall.

During an off day in Lake Placid, a few Olympic Training Center resident athletes decided to go apple picking. I found this interesting specimen, probably caused by an apple sawfly.

Pat and Annelies shared their new hobby with me on a recent hike. Foraging mushrooms is something that I'm cautiously embracing. These oyster mushrooms turned out pretty tasty sauteed in butter with salt.

Running on a forest trail, through a tunnel of blurry color.  Bright splotches of yellow and red leaves crunch underfoot.  Later in the week, it rains and they compress into muddy mats.

A hiking adventure with the biathletes

Fall near Paul Smiths in the Adirondacks. This area was a favorite haunt of former president Teddy Roosevelt during his teenage years and he documented almost 100 species of birds here.

I fall asleep to the rhythm of rain spilling off the roof and wailing gusts of wind surging against the windows.  It is cozy inside, warm and dry under a down comforter.  But it hasn’t let up by morning.  It is time to go out, to train, in the pouring rain, in ski boots still waterlogged from yesterday.   Following practice I’ll have an immediate date with my rifle cleaning supplies.  These are the hardest days to motivate.

Back in Vermont: Lifting up a heavy boulder in Elmore State Park.

A week in photos: Craftsbury

Some scenes of life with the Craftsbury Green Racing Project.

The start of the weekly 5 km trail run

Tim Reynolds and Ida Sargent hammer to the end of a team time trial.

Craftsbury's newest coach, Jeremy Nellis, hard at work

Skiing under a beautiful sky

Coach Pepa Miloucheva helps Maria Stuber perfect her double pole.

Algis Shalna and Mike Gibson oversee a biathlon relay during Bill Koch League practice

The BKL kids check out their paper targets while learning about zeroing and shooting group size.

Tara Geraghty-Moats, myself, and Mike Gibson at the range before the kids' practice

A sad day in the garden: Hannah Dreissigacker pulls up blight-infected tomatoes

A baby raccoon visitor in our front yard

Ida Sargent and rower Emily Dreissigacker making pickles to pass the time during Hurricane Irene. We were lucky and had minimal flood damage and never lost power. The rest of Vermont was not so lucky.