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It was fun to have the USBA summer nationals in Jericho over the weekend! Throughout the week leading up to the races, tons of biathletes descended on the trails at the Range and lots of setup was taking place…grass was cut, bleachers were erected, and a “misting station” for sweaty athletes was even piped-in.

Over Saturday and Sunday we had more overlap than usual with these races. Juniors, Masters, and Pro athletes competed throughout, and MNC athletes ended up helping here-and-there with various duties to help the races run smoothly.

In pure racing terms, it was Chloe Levins of Mansfield Nordic Pro who put down some of the fastest ski times and best shooting to take 3rd on each day, and 2nd place over the whole weekend. For years, we’ve seen Chloe at the Range on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, as throughout her years in high school and college she would drive up from the Rutland area or Middlebury area to get in specific biathlon training.

Now, these trails and this area is her actual home and it is so cool to see that tangential biathlon connection become a full team situation!

Many athletes of other ages and biathlon backgrounds also took part, from longtime biathletes like Taylor, Pat, and Virginia to relative newcomers like Logan (Mansfield Nordic Pro) and Seven. Don’t forget about the masters athletes, either!

I had a lot of fun on Sunday running the water table with Daisy, Rory, and Oliver. At first we were doing the usual “marathon running race thing” of holding up water cups for thirsty athletes. But as the races wore on, and the temperature rose, people got the splash treatment. By the later races, I even remembered that we had some squirt guns nearby that I stashed-away after an earlier summer practice.

Liam helping his dad cool down during the race!

Of course, spending a whole day watching a biathlon scene play out inevitably got me thinking about development, sport structures, systems, and more…biathlon is such a small sport in America. We think NORDIC is tiny, but the scale is so different. There’s a lot to piece together in terms of balancing the growth of the sport with the support of the current strong and developing athletes.

It seems like USBA has taken a bit more of a centralized approach in recent years. Craftsbury and Lake Placid are certainly hubsin the Northeast, and there are other regional outposts, but in the past couple years it would seem like athletes from Crosscut (Bozeman, MT) would always be at the top of the results for adults but especially Juniors. This was a huge, new facility with impressive resources, and it drew athletes in. I think there was also some sort of USBA connection.

Now, Soldier Hollow has become the new central home of US Biathlon in large part because of the upcoming Olympic games there. Both Virginia and Seven are on the National Team (at the Junior Level) in the past few years and have been given the option to basically spend their entire offseason in Utah being supported by that program/infrastructure. That’s pretty amazing, but likely something that could only really work with a small sport like this: in Nordic we have a wider system of clubs and a couple camps/trips each year the bring folks together.

Does it work better with biathlon because of the intensive nature of the sport (shooting) along with the limited access in many parts of the country? This might be the best system to get the most dense collection of up-and-coming athletes together to live, train, and grow together. But does it also create a bigger divide between the top and the bottom as far as spreading the resources and access?

I don’t have an answer, it just was something that struck me over the weekend. There’s a lot of “right” ways to structure these sports, and both biathlon and nordic skiing are always trying hard to up their game on the international competitive scene: it’s cool to be exposed to each other and ponder things like this!

The sun was shining bright on a saddle between Mt Adams and Mt Jefferson, somewhere around 5,000′ in elevation and well above a bank of smoke that socked-in the valleys below. I laid back on a rock daydreaming as part of the Mountain Camp group ventured down a spur trail to collect and filter water. Clouds drifted overhead.

A lobster.

Two race cars.

The swirl of a galaxy in dense water vapor form.

I rested the small of my back on some alpine vegetation, no doubt the kind you aren’t supposed to tread upon. I spun the brim of my hat from back-to-front, pulling it down over my face as I listened to the indecipherable hum of passing hiker conversations, the scratching of poles on rocks, and a light breeze.

People have these mountain peaks as a bucket-list item. Hikers utilize the huts for overnight stays just to reach the summits. Frustrated novice mountaineers probably turn back and give up all the time trying to get to where I was just lazily dozing off and debating whether to get pizza or hotdogs at the summit of Mt Washington, some 6 miles and another thousand vertical feet away.

Do we realize this? What we are capable of as skiers? I don’t mean compared to our fastest Nordic rivals on Strava or social media. I mean compared to what average humans get up to on a daily basis.

We are effectively superheroes, although I admit I am an aging one. Each year I get a little older, but each year the Juniors stay

Juniors. But what we do is nonetheless crazy when you think about it sometimes. I think we can all spend more time appreciating that. I know I certainly didn’t at a younger age…

We can put ourselves atop a mountain with such little relative effort that we can actually explore, relax, and climb around before we venture back down. Then later that night we can make an impromptu decision to go on a search for swimming holes at 8PM and still wake up the next day for a 3 hour rollerski.

There’s opportunity to see so much more of the world, and try so many different things, when we have the fitness and energy to take it all in. Skiers often think of training as a means to an end. Put time in, and get results out of it. And that is part of the equation, sure. But the more I witness the stress, pressure, comparison, and fear that pervades aspiring Junior skiers with big goals and aspirations, the more I find myself trying to enjoy the parts of training that don’t seem like training at all: clouds, grass, water, history, summits, valleys, stories, music, jokes, pranks, and growth.

I hope that the athletes themselves can embrace that while they are in their superhuman state!

We have been BUSY this summer, and the Junior program has gotten in some great versions of our favorite workouts, as well as a few new surprises and adventures. Here’s a few photos and descriptions of what we’ve been up to!

Skate intervals at Road 101 near Smuggs. A very scenic and lengthy hill for some good work…the only problem was the thunder and lightning that rolled in near the end of the workout. We ended up cutting the whole thing short which was a bummer (especially because this road isn’t exactly nearby) but safety has to win-out in these cases. It was still great to see a big pack of really strong skiers working together, and we definitely caught the eye of some locals as this is not one of our typical rollerski areas.

Good old running at Gov. Chittenden road near Catamount. This flat dirt road is the best way for us to get in some quality intensity training while sticking to smooth paces and not over-doing it. The heat and humidity was already starting to take effect by 8:30AM most every morning this summer, but we usually have enough Capri Suns on-hand to keep ourselves hydrated.

We are in a continual quest to practice our skiing on slippery snow, tough transitions, and unpredictable terrain! Sara had some good ideas to modify our usual “wet leaves striding drill” to incorporate turns and simulate what skiing is like outside the tracks on that rutty, slushy, broken-down snow we so often see on steep hills in bigger races.

A picture that really displays what the weather has felt like…HOT and HAZY and HUMID. Even when it’s not wildfire smoke in the air, it’s nonetheless about as thick as it can get. We’ve used a number of methods to fight off that heat though, everything from water gun fights to a rollerski slip-and-slide!