Here I am with two of the most important things I have in the Olympic Village, my rifle and my green laces!

Hi Everyone.

Just a quick Opening Ceremonies Day post for you all.  I’m in the Olympic Village now and things the preparation for the first race is almost over.  Today I just have a short jog and recovery day.  And, I will be heading over to Whistler to meet up at an Opening Ceremonies reception that US Biathlon has set up for athletes not walking in the Opening Ceremonies.  Unfortunately, since our race is only two days away, and the entire Opening Ceremonies is scheduled to take 11 hours from door to door,  I won’t be participating.  It’s a tough call since I missed the Torino ceremonies for the same reason.  But, I’m here to compete, not for the pomp and circumstance!  You should still watch the Opening Ceremonies because my friend Mark Grimmette from Lake Placid – a five-time Olympian and two-time Olympic medalist in luge – will be the flag bearer for the U.S. Team.  Congrats Mark!

In other news, Brian Martin (US Luge) and myself will be featured on the Greenlaces.org website as the Green Olympians of the Day, today, Ferbruary 12.  Greenlaces will be featuring a different Green Olympian for each day throughout the Olympics.  Be sure to check out their website

Wynn Roberts at check-in for the Olympic Village

Jeremy Teela, Me, and Tim Burke

Hi Everyone.

Just a quick update from Vancouver.  We spent the last ten days on Mount Washington, Vancouver Island, B.C. training.  It was a great camp and I feel ready for the Games as we head towards Whistler.  After the island training, we took a quick flight back to Vancouver where we have spent the last few hours undergoing Team Processing for the Olympics.  We now have all the apparel and will soon be heading up to Whistler and the Olympic Village, our home for the next three weeks!  I am excited and ready for the Valentines Day Olympic Opener – 10km Sprint on February 14th!

-Lowell

Me and Jeremy with some new winter gear

Mt. Washington

15 ft. of snow on the Lake Trail on Mt. Washington

Taken after the 6th place finish in Ruhpolding this Sunday. From left to right; Me, Jay Hakkinen, Tim Burke, Jeremy Teela.

Just got to Antholz in Northern Italy for the last world cup before the Olympics.  It has been a whirlwind biathlon tour of Europe over the past month.  After the third world cup races in Pokljuka, Slovenia, I traveled to Jablonec, Czech Republic to train and spend Christmas with my girlfriend.  We arrived in a snow storm and the weather looked favorable for good conditions.  However, a couple of warm days and there was just a 900-meter loop of man-made snow.  I trained there for a few days and then we hit the road again, in search of better conditions.

This is an excerpt from the article in this month's Men's Health Magazine. The article talks about how Olympians train and discusses some workouts that might transfer over to their readers. We had to omit about 99% of my training regiment in order to come up with something that the editor was happy with.

We managed to secure housing in Oberhof during the week of New Years – thanks to Tim and Andrea!  It was a good week of training but I still had the Olympic qualification in the back of my mind.  Three of the five available spots had already been filled and I was hoping to qualify for the fourth or fifth through the last trials races in Altenberg, Germany.  USBA had planned to use the Altenberg IBU Cup (IBU Cups are the division of biathlon racing just below the World Cup) as the setting for their final selection for the last two men’s slots and three of the four women’s spots.  It just so happened that the Czech’s planned to take their World Cup team to the Altenberg IBU Cup, so Zdenka and I left Oberhof and headed to Altenberg.  The racing went relatively well and I qualified for the fourth position on the Olympic Team.  No matter how prepared you are, how much experience you have, and how much support you are given, it doesn’t make Olympic trials any easier.  But on the other hand, this was my fourth Olympic Trials (The Nagano Olympic trials were some of my first biathlon races) and I knew what to expect.  Congratulations to Wynn Roberts, who qualified as well.  The final men’s team will consist of myself, Tim, Jay, Jeremy, and Wynn.

Out for a classic ski in Ramsberget, Sweden during our November world cup preparation camp.

From there, it was on to Ruhpolding.  25,000 people showed up for the five-day World Cup just south of Munich, Germany.  The Sprint went poorly for me and I was looking for a better result.  The Relay went much better.  I used one extra round during the race and finally felt decent on the ski course, tagging in 5th, a few seconds back from Norway in 4th.  Jay actually moved up to third during a portion of his leg.  Ultimately, we finished in 6th just a few seconds off of 5th and 4th.  The main positive point is that we were finally knocking at the door of the elusive relay medal.  The Olympic Relay will be the next relay race for the four of us.

Out for a morning jog in Bled, Slovenia. A church on an island on a lake.

Kevin Padzoldt, throwing down at Czech Championships in Jablonec. Both the Sprint and the Mass Start took place on a 900-meter loop of artificial snow... that's a lot of loops!

View from the observers bridge. Jablonec Biathlon Stadium, Czech Rep.

And now, I am back in Antholz for the final week of world cup racing.  This week is more geared towards training and preparing for Vancouver.  This means, depending on what my coaches and I think is best for top results at the Olympics, I may or may not race.  I am looking to perform at my peak in just over three weeks.  After this week, Tim and I will head to Vancouver Island for a short training camp prior to team processing and entrance to the Olympic Village.

I would like to thank everyone who has helped me get to this point – my family, my coaches, US Biathlon, and my sponsors.  The next month will surely be one of the most important times of my life.  I am looking forward to it and I feel very fortunate to have enjoyed such loyal support throughout the last two decades of my athletic life.  See you in Vancouver!

-Lowell

Yesterday was a great day for U.S. Biathlon in the first men’s race of the World Cup Season!  Tim had a great race and got on the podium for the first time in his career, placing 2nd, just behind Norway’s Emil Svendson.  Congrats to Tim and all the rest of our staff who have worked so hard over the last few years to get us in a position to vie for a podium.

For me, it has been a challenging fall given how well training went up until October.  I feel that, generally, my immune system is fairly strong and I don’t usually get sick that often.  Yet, at the end of October, I came down with a bad cold, then a few weeks ago I got the flu.  After recovering and having a good two weeks of training in Sweden, I again find myself fighting another, albeit milder cold.  I chose to sit out the 20km yesterday hoping that it would allow me to recover for the next race on Saturday.  I have my fingers crossed and I’m hoping to be ready to race then.  I’ll head out for some easy training this afternoon and see how it goes.  I’ll keep ya’ll posted on the progress.

-LB

And that’s just it.  I’ve been out sick for about a week now.  Yes, I did get the flu.  Yes, it was most likely H1N1. No, it wasn’t that bad.  What can I say… at least now I’m immune and I can’t get it later on in the season.

As promised in my last post, here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.  Namely, some shots from our 3-week training camp out in Utah and a few shots from a brief trip down to New York City for the 100-Days To Vancouver celebration.  Enjoy.

Here’s to winter and all it may bring!

-LB

I apologize for the lack of multimedia experiences.  Pictures are coming… soon… I promise.  For now, a few words.

I am back in Lake Placid for a brief respite from The Road.  And I do mean brief.   I am scheduled to fly over to Sweden on Saturday.  That being said, I am looking forward to getting on snow and getting in “World Cup Mode”.  It has been a great training season so far and now, it’s really just a matter of maintaining the gains made in Spring, Summer, and Fall and putting it on the line for the first World Cup in December.

It has been a nice transition back to Lake Placid.  The weather has cooperated nicely, which, as everyone from the North Country knows, is a rare occurrence in mid-November.  We’ve had some good training on the new venue over at the Jumps.  Other than that, not a whole lot is new.  This is always the hardest time of year for me.  The daylight is short, there’s little or no snow, and the racing is still a little way off.  So, I’m biding my time, training, playing a little music, and waiting for winter.  Hope this update finds you all well.

- LB

Training is going well.  Other than that, I’ve been asked to get involved with the Greenlaces movement.  Greenlaces is a program set up to motivate people about environmental awareness and conservation.  As Greenlaces participants, athletes pledge to do something that is environmentally conscious and, in order to promote the movement, they either wear green laces in their competition shoes or wear a Greenlaces patch/logo.  Since the laces of my skiboots are covered, I guess I’ll be going with the patch.

So sorry. no pics right now.  I’m tired and it’s a little bit of work (like 5 minutes) to get the pics uploaded in the right format.  I’ll try and get some up in the next few days.  For the time being, I just wanted to get back on the board with a new web post.

Cheers,

LB

From Left to Right: Matt Cook, Tim Burke, Sean Burke, Paul "The Bass-Assin" Ames, Casey Simons, Dylan Macguffin

There are times in the season where you have to buckle down and really focus – train hard, eat your vegetables, visualize fast skiing and targets falling, etc.  This week was not – but I’ll get to that later.  Last week was one of those weeks.  I had a decent volume mini-block at the front end followed by the North American Rollerski Biathlon Races in Jericho, VT on the weekend.  The races went OK but I definitely felt a little mentally fried on the shooting range.  After three weeks of intense training, your focus starts to erode and your fine motor skills/ability to hit targets goes south (or north or east or west – just not in the center).  The races were a good chance to get back in competition mode but they weren’t anything to write home about – unless you like letters about missing 6 targets in the Pursuit.  All in all, it was a solid three-week block.

The Rig: Honda Odyssey, Grummin 18'er, '52 Dumphy w/ Honda 50, Various Provisions.

So, on to this week, the all-important Recovery Week!  I look forward to these more than Christmas – I had intervals on Christmas last year.  And this was really the last opportunity to get out and recover in the Adirondack Summer as I will be leaving for Sweden tomorrow.  That being said, we made the most of it and rented and Island on Lower Saranac Lake.  This was to be the site of Bass Attack ‘09 – a fishing competition (that’s right, a competition) between anglers from all over the Nordic realm (namely, myself, Tim Burke, Casey Simons, and Dylan Macguffin).  I prepared by reading the latest issue of “Bassin’” (yes, no “g” in the title) and watching videos of Bass Pro Tour on YouTube in my spare time.

Myself, Dylan, Casey, and Tim (just his arm), headed for lunkers.

We hit the water at the crack of noon, ready to wet a line and hit the lunar cycle right at the sweet spot.  And… well… we floated around a lot, worked the water pretty well, covered almost every inch of that lake, and only turned up a handful of puny rock bass and a few small mouths.  Dylan looked to be headed for vistory until johnny-come-lately angler Paul “The Bass-assin” Ames of Saranac Lake took the high honors with a late-day catch in the final hours of the event.

The prize-giving ceremony was tense, as many anglers questioned the legitimacy of Ame’s catch.  There was some discrepency as to whether Ames had been using a banned lure, but after a post-competition test by the World  Anti Lure Fraud Association (WALFA) he was shown to have hooked the lunker on a standard worm jig.

I’m dissapointed in my showing on the water.  I felt like I was really prepared for success going into the event.  I new the lunkers would be down deep, below the thermocline.  I knew they weren’t going to be hitting surface.  But that’s the way these tournaments go.  Maybe next year.  FYI, my pics are now “clickable”.  Click on any of them to see the full res shot.

So now I’m back in biathlon world, packing for Sweden, about to head abroad for a 7 week biathlon safari.  I’ll throw up an update once I get on the ground over there.

Peace,

LB