Eleven BKL skiers and one coach tried their fitness and sharpshooting at the 13th Annual Mt. Top Paintball Biathlon race on Sunday. Everyone had great results and a whole lot of fun!
Brady on course.
Mt. Top’s big open field looked deceivingly bare when we arrived, but conditions on the 1km man-made loop were great as you can see in these photos.
Skiers skied various numbers of loops depending on their grades starting with 1/2’s skiing one loop with one visit to the shooting range to 7/8’s skiing four loops with three visits to the shooting range. At each visit to the range, skiers got to shoot five shots at a row of targets. If they hit a target, ten seconds was deducted from their ski time!
Sharpshooter Virginia!
Our MNC skiers Taylor, Brady and Virginia have also been learning to do biathlon in the Youth Biathlon program at the Range with Coach Yves and the Ethan Allen Biathlon Club and I can see that the practice is paying off! Taylor hit 7 targets, Brady hit 5 and Virginia got a sharp-shooter prize for hitting 8. Mia hasn’t been doing biathlon but maybe she should be: she hit 6 targets today!
Mia receives her ribbon from Olympic Gold Medalist Biathlete Algis Shalna.
In biathlon, you can’t just hit targets, you also have to ski fast. These MNC kids are amazingly fast and they all looked great out on course today and had great results! Kate, Ryley and Virginia all won their age classes and we had six others finish in the top ten of their age classes. Wow!
What’s even better is that they all had great fun skiing, playing and hanging together on a beautiful winter day outside surrounded by gorgeous Vermont mountains and fun people. What could be better than that!
MNC gals: Tessa, Mia, Pippa, Kate, Ryley and Virginia
For more photos: MNC Flick
Seventy-four racers came out for the Range Ramble on Saturday, Jan. 20 and about 40 of them were from Mansfield Nordic Club! We drew racers from Frost Mountain (Middlebury area), Craftsbury, Sleepy Hollow and even Onion River (Montpelier area). Although the day dawned partly sunny, by race time clouds covered the skies keeping the race course cold and fast, as the thermometer was threatening to move into the thirties. First off were the 8 Lollipoppers. They were followed by the 1/2’s, then the 3/4’s, the 5/6’s and lastly, the 7/8’s who skied 2 loops for a total of 4 km. Thanks to Juniors Kai Richter and Ali Priganc for acting as “rabbits” and showing the racers the way. I think the juniors got more of a work-out than they were counting on because these BKL kids were FAST!
It’s nice to have hot cocoa and snacks after the race for everyone! Bring a snack to share and a jug of water so that we can make hot cocoa for after the race (Range water is non-potable)!
