We touched down in sunny Seoul, South Korea on Sunday around midday after a 9.5-hour flight from Amsterdam.  I really appreciate the fact that we were able to stay in Europe during the two-week break proceeding World Championships because the flight from the US would have been much more taxing on our acclimation abilities.  This year the IBU volunteers from Korea who met us at the airport led us straight to customs with our rifles and everything seemed to go many times more smoothly than last year when South Korea welcomed their first biathlon world cup event.  We then took a 3.5-hour bus ride through some more low-lying but hilly fields that still didn’t show any promise of snow.  At the very end of our journey we began to ascend toward the Yong Pygong alpine resort, a relatively upscale village of condominiums and high-rise hotels by the side of the alpine ski hill. 

Pyeong Chang is bidding for the 2018 Olympics.  You can tell without seeing the signs “Pyeong Chang 2018” and “Remember, Dream of Pyeong Chang” because they have constructed from scratch ski jumping hills, a cross-country course, and a biathlon course all with the appropriate stadiums and buildings (and you can see where they’ve been altering the true terrain because much of the outlying ground is not covered with snow).  The courses are made strictly for the competitive athlete who is comfortable on his skis; you can tell this isn’t going to become a touring center after we leave in two weeks but is meant to host athletes accustomed to skiing on world cup-level courses. 

Below a certain elevation there is not much snow to be found.  Even on the sides of the course there is not much, or really any, snow to be found.  The snow is old and very granular, becoming deep and sometimes soft on the hills but with a layer of ice underneath that becomes exposed on the harrowing downhill approach to the range.  But I don’t think that is the biggest challenge pervading the athletes’ minds:  it would be the gusty winds at the venue that not only require constant surveillance on the range and sight corrections, but also impede one’s progress across the open stadium and sections of the course.  Happy to have arrived enough in advance of the races, I think I’m gaining a good handle on the strength of the wind in the range, which is the only place I have an ability to counteract the force of nature.

Since our last intensity workout in Ruhpolding—a truncated time trial last Thursday—we’ve begun a taper for the first race at world champs:  a 7.5k sprint on Saturday night.  We did a short intensity workout yesterday, 5-6k total at race pace proceeded by some impulse sprints and followed, if we desired, by 1-minute lactate tolerance hill climbing intervals.  After two days of flying sandwiched in between two days of easy training, I felt really good doing the intervals.  I used the opportunity to test how hard I could approach the range by easing up at different points along the long flat section in the stadium.  The wind is another decisive factor once in the range that requires additional steadiness.  The only thing that remains is to become comfortable on all sections of the course before having to race them in the semi-dark this weekend! 

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