The past week has been interesting. Things were going pretty well until around noon Tuesday. I had just finished up my usual 15-km biathlon time trial when suddenly my body felt like it'd been hit by a semitrailer.
For the past two years that I've been training at Soldier Hollow, I have done a 15-km biathlon time trial on rollerskis during each visit. This month, I've planned two time trials. The first, held today, was the best yet, with a time of 39:46 and 16 hits out of 20. That's more than a minute faster than August, 2:30 faster than June, and thirty seconds faster than last September. I'm happy with that kind of improvement.
I was originally planning to do two more time trials today and tomorrow, but the chance of doing that is now zero. Today, during training, we were told that we would only be able to ski for an hour. Beitostølen is trying with all its might to make and truck in enough snow for the FIS World Cup that starts here on Friday. They have snowmaking machines running all over the region and are using dump trucks to retrieve snow from those facilities, as well as from far-away mountains.
The rollerski loop in Fort Kent is about 1.2 kilometers long. That makes for 27 laps during a two-hour, easy classic rollerski session. The loop of man-made snow here in Geilo? 800 meters, though that might be a little too confident. Number of laps in yesterday’s three-hour skate ski session? Sixty.
Over the past few weeks, I have completed a number of time trials and tests to determine how much I have improved since the beginning of the season. The most astounding of all was my 11 percent improvement in a 2 km time trial over the same test conducted only five weeks earlier. Other good news:
- Record accuracy shooting test result. - 75 percent shooting result in Fort Kent time trial. - New record for the Mars Hill Climb of 12:35. - Significant strength improvements.
The workers stoke the engines with more and more coal. From the heat, they rumble. So unbearable is the heat that, finally, they must evacuate. Such is what I am thinking to myself yesterday during my first time trial of the season. In my mind, I am sending orders down to the engine room for more power, asking my muscles to forego collapse in the burning of the lactic acid that is building within them. The pain and agony fuse together with my motivation to keep going. I reach a mental state that has my mind in synergy with the physical, perhaps a wee bit on the crazy side.
On Wednesday, I drove down to Mars Hill to climb its mountain of the same name. The point is to run up the side as fast as possible in order to determine such physiological strengths as leg power, aerobic capacity, and lactate tolerance. Last July, I set the record for the climb at 12:44. That was with two months of good training. Last week, I was only a few seconds off of that time with only a few weeks of training, all of which could be considered counter-productive to hill running. It’s a good sign that I am on my way to a good season and haven’t been too lazy this spring.
Yesterday, I took a specific strength test to gauge how powerful I am and in which muscle groups. I was surprised to find that I was nearly equal between my lower body and upper body. The test was an uphill of about two kilometers in New Sweden, done first double poling (only arms and core muscles) and then no-poling (only leg muscles). What was remarkable about this test, which took just over five minutes, was that the two tests were separated by just one second!
I had my first accuracy shooting test the other day. The first few shots hit the ground and everything except for the target, but the test results show that I am starting this season on a level equal to where I was last August. Having not touched my rifle since my final race in Switzerland in mid March, I was amazed at how accurate I was in standing, which is usually my weaker position. This season, I will be following a new shooting plan that is much more structured. I’ll let you know how it is working.
