Just back from another long session. Luckily it wasn’t too hot out because most days I find myself going through a liter of water per hour and that’s more than I can carry on a long bike ride. This week is a volume week, which means 24 hours with one intensity session yesterday and a time trial with my teammate Haley Johnson in Jericho this weekend. There’s a biathlon camp going on so we’ll be joining a large group of biathletes that includes national team, development team, and junior national team athletes. It’s the one camp of the year when everybody has a chance to come together so all the women, juniors and seniors, have the opportunity to gather and discuss anything from training to life beyond sport. In the past few years the senior women have made a point of opening lines of communication with the junior athletes. They started a mentoring program last year that will continue this year, changing only in that it will allow junior women to seek advice from any senior woman, not just their mentor. Last year when I was a junior the mentoring program was immensely valuable to me because I could get advice and encouragement from a senior athlete who has many years of experience under her belt. Now that I’m a senior, I’m hoping I can provide the same to junior women coming through the program.

I’m excited about having this blog on FasterSkier.com. I can finally give you an insight into what biathlon training is all about and how it is split between physical training and shooting. Writing here will also get me to reflect on my training to evaluate how it is progressing.

Sundays are usually when I try to organize my week. Not the training; that’s already done for me. This week midterms coincided with my intensity week. I had to figure out exactly when I was going to finish this paper, do research for that presentation, and study for a physics exam. It’s important that I get this planned ahead of time because I know that once the intensity sessions start I’m going to be both physically and mentally fatigued and I need to squeeze in the schoolwork when my mind is fresh. It’s important not to get overwhelmed by poor planning because stress is by far the biggest antagonist of training.