The training camp in Beitostølen with Team Statkraft was a snowy adventure. The snow continued to fall almost ninety percent of the time from when we arrived until the time we left a week later—jumping into a pile of snow literally left me buried up to my chest. For me, the training camp started out with some much needed rest, due to coming off a two-week race period. The rest allowed me to focus more on shooting. All in all, the camp turned out great, allowing me to find a balance and settle back into the rhythm of training again. I had some good shooting performances and, despite being tired, I found the energy to put in some quality interval sessions.

The highlights of the camp for me were the long classic tours around in the area surrounding Beitostølen, and several high-quality shooting exercises. The small but wealthy town of Beitostølen is a popular winter tourist destination for downhill and cross-country activists alike. The downhill area is medium in size (comparable to Giants Ridge if you’ve been there) and feeds right into the middle of town, while the cross-country tracks circle the entire area and can be followed up into the mountains. The picture below is of us trying to figure out where to go next during a long classic adventure in some very foggy weather. I definitely had no idea where we were at the time. You can check out more photos from “Samling Beitostølen” in my photo gallery.

During the camp we did several shooting drills/tests including the 60 shot NSSF 3, the “tyskertest” (literally “German-test”), and a relay shooting drill (in relays each competitor is allowed three extra bullets in addition to the normal five). In the NSSF 3, I managed a 90% hit rate, which is a tie for my second best result. However, I was very close to setting a personal record, but the pressure must have got to me and caused two misses in the last five shots. Oh well, it was fun to be so close. The “tyskertest” is a shooting test focused on both shooting accuracy and speed. Four series of five shots are fired at five targets in the sequence prone, prone, standing, standing, and the total time for the four series is acquired.  A penalty of 10sec is allotted for each missed target. I found a good rhythm in this test and had 95% hit rate—definitely satisfactory. The relay shooting drill was a head-to-head competition involving two-person teams and several shooting series, and, looking back, was a nice way to make an easy workout fun and high quality.

The time-trail was a pursuit style (PPSS) competition that took place in some very soft conditions—lots of fresh snow. I felt reasonably good considering the conditions and ended up missing a total of five shots to finish third.

I’m finally back in Lillehammer getting into the swing of student life and training, but this coming weekend I’ll be leaving again to go up north of Trondheim for my first Norwegian Cup in Frol/Stiklestad. I’m looking forward to it!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 8:18 am and is filed under Norway, Training. 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.