Well the last few weeks have been pretty busy.  First starting two weeks ago, coach Armin came over from Italy for a shooting camp in LP.  We had one week of some serious shooting action.  Though it wasn’t too over the top for the athletes, Armin was going full speed for 10 hours a day, everyday.  All of the athletes had two hours of one-on-one shooting per day, one hour in the morning, one in the afternoon.  Usually the morning session was live shooting, working on things like position, timing, precision etc.  The afternoon sessions were split, sometimes they were live fire again, other times we were on the SCATT shooting simulator.

The SCATT is a laser shooting program that runs through a computer.  The computer is able to track exactly where the rifle is aiming at every moment.  It also measures barrel speed, the timing of the shot, and can hook into a pressure sensor for the trigger.   When its all working together like that, it’s a really good tool for the coaches to monitor our shooting!

The second week we were back into a more normal training week.  Though the 27 hours of training wouldn’t normally be too bad, the heat during the first few days of the week was pretty overwhelming.  With temps reaching around 90, with plenty of humidity, I can personally say I was experiencing a little bit of heat exhaustion.  You have to stay especially hydrated for weeks like this one, otherwise you just can’t maintain a good level of recovery…

So now I’m back home in MN.  I have almost 10 easy days of rest and recovery before I head off to our Europe camp starting July 28th!

Thanks for checkin in!

L

Since this is my first post I guess I’ll have to quickly bring you up to date on my summer so far!  I started out this spring being named to the National A team.  Most of the members on the team choose to live in Lake Placid, NY, home of the Olympic Training Center.  The level of support there is what makes it such a great place to live.  Not only are there superb sites for training, there is also a cafeteria(very important), full medical team, recovery center, rollerski treadmill, etc.  So in mid-May, the day before Lake Placid National Team camp, I packed up all of the belongings that I would need, and made the move to the OTC.  The move went very well, the camp went very well, but after getting all settled in, I was off again!

This time I was off to the far Northern biathlon center of Ft.Kent, Maine to train at the Maine Winter Sports Center.  There is a beautiful facility here, with almost 3km of paved rollerski trails, and a full paved range, the training for biathlon is excellent!  Not only that, but the terrain of “The County” is quite hilly, so everything from Road Biking, to Running/Hiking, and Mountain Biking is great training.  There are even quite a few nice lakes to get out and paddle on. Ft.Kent will be hosting a World Cup race this February, so maybe training here for a few weeks will pay off?

This last three weeks, I have been in a gigantic volume block of training.  With almost 80 hours of training over three weeks, this will be the most I have ever trained in such a time.  On average, most days have been anywhere from 4-7 hours of training, everyday.  Yesterday was one of the longest days.  I went along with the MWSC team on Tuesday night for a little camping, and on to run/hike to the summit of Mt.Katahdin on Wednesday.  It was over 7 hours of moving, but we got a good start at 6:45AM so we had plenty of time!

There are 2 more days of this training block, at the end my teammate Russel Currier and I will make the 8 hour drive back to Lake Placid.  We have a much needed off week with minimal training coming up and a short shooting camp, before the next training block takes off! I will be back on soon, to update on our shooting camp that takes place next week!