Stepping up to the plate.

I recently returned from my final training camp of the summer and now I'm at home getting things together before I make yet another trek out West to Bozeman for the school year.  Camp went really well, it was a 24 hour drive on both ends of the trip but the time spent at camp was delightful.  We stayed at the ethan allen training facility on the army base outside of Jericho Vermont for 9 days of biathlon training and racing.  Jericho is a dead zone, no wifi, no cell phone reception... it made our jobs there very clear, we ate, we trained, we slept (and of course hung out with the rest of the biathletes from around the country).  A strong group of athletes converged on the base including the top juniors and seniors in the sport, so it made for an incredibly intense and competitive week.

You could say I am the newest member of this biathlon scene and so every day is a learning experience for me.  My shooting is gradually improving, I'm definitely heating more targets now than I was in June.  I even managed to shoot some really good groups (tightly bunched shots) that impressed my coach.  His reaction was, "Corrine you need to come see this target, someone must have cross-fired, it is very good!"

I didn't exactly feel the strongest or fastest all week, and I definitely had some pretty dead legs the first few days... but I'm thinking it was just the traveling catching up with me after a long hard summer.  We had two races at the end of the week, or to make them seem more prestigious, "North American Rollerski Biathlon Championships"... I had a lot of fun, going into them expecting nothing more but to learn as much as I could.  There are some things you can not learn in training.  The first race was done in the Sprint format so there were three ski legs and two shooting stages.  The women did three loops of two kms, shooting once in the prone position and once in the standing position.  My first shooting stage the wind was gusting and I ended up missing four targets, in the second stage I missed three.  The second day of racing was done in the Pursuit format which totaled in ten kms for the women with 5 ski legs and four shooting stages.  The first shooting stage I got wind corrections from the coach but the wind died as I shot and I missed all five (a real bummer) I went on to miss 2, 3, and 2 in the next three shooting stages respectively.  I felt pretty good about my performances during the camp but also know that I have alot of work to do before trials in December.

I will have to shoot alot, dry fire often, and train hard if I want to make an impression come December, but I think I have what it takes.