We’re just about finishing up our first week of camp in Fort Kent. Despite the warnings for 30% chance of rain every day, we managed to make it through to Friday afternoon before anything fell from the sky. We drove up to Fort Kent on our day off, Sunday, and jumped right back into training with an interval combo workout on matched roller-skis on Monday, 10×1.8km at race pace. A new section of roller-loop was recently completed at Fort Kent, providing some hillier terrain for training. On Thursday we had a biathlon pursuit time trial. By then I was feeling a little beat from the accumulation of interval and distance sessions over the previous week and a half, so I wasn’t able to push as hard as I would have liked. I was pleased to see an improvement in my shooting rhythm and I think that my diligence in dryfiring during the last few weeks since school ended has minimized my barrel movement while shooting, allowing me to shoot more quickly. The area where I need the most work right now is on the last lap of the race because I don’t seem to be very good at “laying it all out there” and often have slower final lap times compared to other people, contrary to the initial and intermediate laps.  We finished off the training week on Saturday with 80 minutes of threshold combos.

We’ve accomplished a lot of quality training so far, but I have the say the most exciting event of the week was the Acadian Festival Bed Race in Madawaska on Friday evening. The Acadian Festival is a three-day event that takes place every year to celebrate the Acadian heritage of the families in the St. John River Valley (You can find out more about this event at http://www.acadianfestival.com).  We rode our bikes the 30 miles to Madawaska to help fill the women’s and mixed teams for the Four Seasons Trail Association. The bed was spectacularly made with bike wheels to move on and trail signs, skis, snowshoes, and even a small bike decorating the frame. The course was no more than 50 meters down Main Street, at which point the bed had to be stopped and the person laying in the bed wearing a one-piece pajama suit had to switch with someone else on the team before the bed could be raced back to the starting line. Of course, costumes were highly encouraged. Our mixed team, of which I was a member (along with Grace Boutot, Susan Dunklee, Austin Ross, and Tyler Leveque), took second, while our women’s team (Lanny and Tracy Barnes, BethAnn Chamberlain, Susan Dunklee, Annelies Cook) won their division!  Check out the pictures below (courtesy of Gary Colliander).

Tomorrow we have a rest day and will make the trip to Eureka Hall in Stockholm, ME for a nice breakfast before spending some time at the lake. On Monday we start off our third tough volume week with level 4 intervals.

Women's Team

Mixed Team

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.