Often in outdoor magazines and on cross-country ski websites there are these little features on finding the perfect place to live as a skier or outdoors-person. For biathlon, such a study is nearly impossible since there are so few actual shooting ranges in the United States and Canada.
Last year, I chose Burlington, Vermont, because that was where the Junior National Team, which I was a part of, would be training. Additionally, it had a university that I liked and mountains that I could climb. I was tired of Minnesota and all of its flat land. Plus, being the teenager that I was (and for a month, still will be), I did what most college-bound kids do: go as far away as possible from their parents! Actually, the latter was not a factor in my decision, but they like to remind me how far away I live.
In Vermont I have again decided to live. Classes started at the University of Vermont last week. I am taking only two classes, German and Russian language. I started Russian last year because I wanted to be able to chat with the Russians at competitions and be able to find my way around town when I go back to Siberia again - that might be a while, however much I love that place. German was a natural addition for this year. It is certainly the language of biathlon. Many of my frozenbullet.com visitors are German-speakers, and central Europe hosts more international biathlon competitions than anywhere else.
The fall season followed me down to Vermont from Maine, and now the leaves are already starting to change color. In fact, it seems that we are a little ahead of schedule this year, which is both a good and bad thing as a winter athlete. It is good, of course, because hopefully it means that snow will come early. However, it is bad because the oranges and reds of the leaves will taunt me for the next two months before snow actually does arrive here.
Training is going very well for me at the moment. My shooting is the best it has ever been, mostly thanks to countless shooting sessions this summer with Tracy and Lanny Barnes in Fort Kent. You know you have shot a lot when you touch your barrel after a shooting workout and actually burn your hand!
In fact, I decided this week to record myself shooting as part of a workout, partially so that those non-biathletes out there can see what biathlon shooting looks like, and also to add some mental pressure. You can see the videos by going to the multimedia section.
Of course, this was an accuracy-shooting workout, so my shooting is quite fast. One of my theories is that if you push your shooting to the fullest extent - meaning shooting as fast as possible while retaining accuracy - it will transfer over to the competition season.
One method of shooting known to every elite biathlete is called "machine-gunning it." If you are tied for first place, with five other athletes, and you know that you are a slower skier, and that it might just be possible to make up time by shooting quickly, then the thought crosses your mind to just go for it. I did this last year at World Championships, though unfortunately we were not tied for first place, and shot maybe 27 seconds, missing one.
During shooting sessions now, I am shooting this fast and even quicker, so that my confidence builds and my body reacts immediately, instead of my mind needing to process the image of the target and deciding what to do. I have been able to bring my shooting to the edge, where I am capable of shooting clean in 18 seconds in standing, and 20 seconds in prone - without physical intensity, of course. For some perspective, top World Cup athletes average about 28 seconds per shooting bout during a race. During the season, I will never shoot this fast because it would require me to go extremely slow while skiing, but I believe that it will both save me time on the range and make me a more confident shooter in the end.
