The season that never was continues at it's steady pace. I was not named to any team after the NorAm races in Jericho. The effort and motivation were there in full force, as well as the stress surrounding team selection. Unfortunately, it didn't work out and yet again, I'm back training on my own in Stockholm. So what happens from here?
Despite a nasty cold and sore throat I felt a little fresh in the sprint race. The conditions were decent. Northern Maine is pretty much the closest thing to winter in New England has right now. That weekend in Jericho had us on a meter of artificial snow. It was basically a ribbon of forced winter curving around in spring time. The wind was a severe limiting factor in the sprint race. If you were lucky you would get a brief window of calm to shoot in normal difficulty. That was not the case for me. I "camped out" during standing. It was a gamble and I lost with six penalties total. I was a ways down the result list.
The pursuit was, for the most part, a significantly better race. It was full spring racing mode condition wise. This meant thrashing around in the slush. This has never been my strong point, but thanks to the trends of the past five or so years I've learned to work with these spring like conditions. Seriously, this is what winter has been in central Europe year after year lately. So, to my liking I actually made a strong case for ski speed. This was best performance on skis I had done in a month. Prone was decent with three misses, but it was standing that held me back. It's unclear what happened to the reliability of my standing.
So anyways, training is still revolving around something in the near future. I'm back home marking up the trails around the house. I can't say I miss travailing or the drawn out team dinners, but I do miss the European racing atmosphere. The next chance to make a case for myself is the North American Champs. Which, happens to be in Fort Kent, ME this year. How convenient. The focus has been on volume this week. The next two weeks will have some more shooting and eventually a brief race intensity block. Hopefully this will put things into a late season peak. After that point, I can't tell you what the plans are. For now, it's all NorAm champs.
