I have to be honest.  I’m not really in the mood to blog.  I’m tired.  That’s one thing about training… it makes you tired.  But the end of the camp is near and I’ve only got a few more hours of skating left before some down time.  It’s been an awesome week here in Jericho.  There’s been a lot of activity at the range and it was nice to get some help from the Guard program throughout the workouts.  Thanks to Sarah, Travis, and Jesse for making things go smoothly this week.

For those of you out there wondering how the Blog Off is going, don’t worry – things are moving along nicely:  I’m winning.

Let’s see.  What else… How about a survey?  I’ll see if I can get this “poll” thing to work.  If not, I apologize and I’ll try to have something up soon.

Cheers,

LB

Jeremy Scott Teela: A noble adversary

It’s official:  The Blog War has begun!  Today I was informed by my teammate Jeremy that my blogging skills suck.  Although I agree with him, I’m a competitive person and not one to back down from a challenge…. So, I’m in.  And the terms:

Hmmm.  Let’s leave it up to you, the viewers.  We could go by “number of website hits” but then I know that Jeremy would just click on his own site a thousand times a day and throw the numbers off.  So maybe we should go with best comments posted by viewers other than ourselves.  What do you think JT? And who will judge?  Maybe we’ll bring a third-party intermediary.

I admit, right now, the odds aren’t looking good for Buck.  JT’s fashioned up quite the site.  He’s got a lot of media stuff on there.  I don’t have Twitting, 1080ip 9er 9er, little images that turn into bigger ones, and I just referred to myself in the third person (not sure if that is a plus or minus).  Anyone know how to post images that will get bigger if you click on them?

For now, I’m going to sit in the peloton, bide my time and wait for the later stages.  This is going to be a long and drawn out battle between two of the greatest blogging minds of our modern times.  A test where the winner will reap the benefits of fame and fortune, international noteriety, and tens of webpage hits, while the loser will be left to clean up the broken pieces of a shattered blogspace.  It’s on.

Thanks to Billy D for getting this jem out of the archives. Vintage NYSEF shot!

Jeremy Teela and I at Bernd's wedding. Check out Jeremy's site, jeremyteela.com.

Ahh yes... Spring skiing!

After an epic start to the season – I left April 22nd and didn’t get back until May 14th – I’m back in LP.  I guess I’ve been here for about a month now but I just haven’t got around to posting a new update.  It took some prodding from a certain Jacked Up Old Man* to get me off my @#$ and back in “update mode”.   So… the update:

*Jacked Up Old Man, see also “Robert Duncan Douglas”, or “Basement Bob”. www.jackedupoldman.com.

I took a trip out west to Utah in April to tele ski for a week with Jeremy T, Casey S, and Billy D.  That was an awesome experience.  I never get the chance to just tele ski for a week unless it’s April.  Usually, I just stick around here and ski Whiteface for a few weeks.  But this time I felt like hitting the Western powder.  I skied 7 different resorts in 8 days and had a blast!

From there, I flew back to LP for a few days and then left for Europe on April 22nd.  Landing in Munich, I drove five hours over to the Czech Republic to spend some time with my girlfriend.  Then we headed back to Munich for my team manager, Bernd Eisenbichler’s, wedding.  Then, directly to Colorado Springs for some shooting training with the position shooting head coach.  Two days later I was skiing on the Olympic trails in Whistler, B.C.  Four days later, we hopped across the water to Vancouver Island and trained for a few days at the Washington Mt. XC Center – three feet of snow in May!  Then it was down to L.A. for an NBC photo/video shoot.  That took a full day and was an interesting experience in a world I’ve never had the chance to see.  And finally I made it back to 4589 Cascade Rd., ready to get back to the real nuts and bolts of what we do.

So that’s what I’ve been up to this last month – nuts and bolts, the day-to-day biathlon training regiment.  Dryfire, rollerskiing, shooting, running, biking, etc.  And of course, I’ve made time to fit a little bit of music in on the side.

-LB

The Vancouver Olympic icon. Just as you enter the biathlon venue. It's about 20ft tall and solid granite! (see other photos at the bottom of this post).

Hi Everyone,

I’m in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia right now, about to race the Sprint tomorrow.  Conditions are good and it’s going to be an exciting end to the season.

Since I last wrote, I headed out to Vancouver, Canada to race the 8th World Cup of the season.  It was nice to get some head-to-head racing in and experience what that venue will be like at the Olympics.  The Vancouver venue combines biathlon, cross-country, and nordic combined stadiums in an area less than one square kilometer.  It is an amazing place and I think when the crowds show up for the Games next year it will be an incredible sight.  The racing didn’t go so well for me there and I struggled a bit in the shooting range.  But that’s biathlon!  After a week, win or lose, you pack up your stuff and head to the next venue.

This time we left our hotel at 3:45am and took a few flights (four to be exact) to Trondheim, Norway.  After two days on the ground there, we were back racing in the 10km Sprint.  This race went much better for me.  I cleaned (hit all my targets) and skied reasonably well, placing 20th.  During the Pursuit, two days later, I started out really well, cleaning my first two stages and getting up to 8th place before falling back with some misses in the final two shooting rounds.  Again… that’s biathlon!  I have to say though, this season has been great- not just because I have made improvements in my results – but because I feel like I have learned a lot about the sport and what I really need to focus on going into the Olympic season.

So now, after another quick flight I’m another four time zones east and getting ready for another 10km Sprint race tomorrow (Thursday) evening.  Khanty constitutes the final stop on the world cup tour this year and it is always a great venue to race at.  They draw a lot of fans and this time of year, Siberia usually isn’t all that cold!  I’m ready to go, ready to focus for two more races!

Cheers,

LB

On the shuttle from Squamish, BC to the biathlon venue in Whistler (about 50 mins each way!).

Gara the wax guru.

Downtown Trondheim. About 1 km from the Ocean.

"In Dopers We Trust"! Yes, that right. In Russia, they don't take down posters with convicted blood dopers on them. In case your wondering, Yaroschenko (third from the right) tested postitive for banned substances not once, but three times this year before he was yanked off the world cup and slapped with a lifetime ban!

One of the many crazy downhills on the World Champs course!

Hi Everyone,

This one’s going to be short because I’m on my way to Vancouver soon and I have to pack!  Just wanted to let everyone know how the World Championships went in South Korea.

After a year of physical and mental preparation, it was great to see the work pay off in Pyeong Chang.  I started off pretty bad on the shooting range in the first race, the 10km Sprint, but my skiing was faster than it had been all year and I was able to just squeak into the Pursuit (top 60 qualify) in 56th place.  The next race was different.  The conditions were very gusty and I was able to hit 16 of 20 targets, moving up to 22nd Place.  I would say this is my best performance of the year so far and definitely the farthest – “place-wise” – that I have moved in a Pursuit all year.

After the Pursuit, we moved on to the Individual.  I felt great all week up until the morning of the race, when I woke up feeling nauseous and dizzy.  But, it’s World Championships!  This is the most important race series of the year.  So I decided, even with the upset stomach, that I would start the race and see how it went.  As it so happens, I did feel awful on the tracks, but I was able to move up in the standings with better-than-average shooting.  I missed two on the day and placed… yes… you guessed it, 22nd!

So after three races, I had two respectable finishes under my belt and now the prospect of qualifying for the Mass Start competition became a real possibility.  During the rest of the year, the 30-competitor Mass Start field is filled with the top thirty ranked athletes based on the overall World Cup score for the season.  However, at World Champs, the Mass Start field is filled with: 1st – Medal winners from the Sprint, Pursuit, and Individual, 2nd – those athletes ranked 15th or higher in the overall that were not medal winners, and 3rd – they backfill the with the top-30 ranked athletes bases solely on rankings determined by the first three races at World Champs.  With my two 22nds, I qualified for the 29th bib!

Racing in the Mass Start at W. Champs has been my goal (I even wrote it down) since the beginning of the year so seeing it come to fruition was for me the most satisfying point of the season… so far!  I had a mediocre race, but since there are only 30 athletes allowed to race, you can’t be worse than 30th place!  I finished in 18th with 5 penalties.  I was satisfied with my performance but I know I can do better… just need to qualify for more Mass Start opportunities.

So, now, after a brief training block at home in Lake Placid, I am about to head for Vancouver for the start of the Spring World Cup’s (the last three World Cup’s in the 08/09 Season).  We head first to Canada, then Trondheim, Norway, then Khanty Mansiysk, Russia for the World Cup finals.  After three weeks of intense racing and travel, I fly home to Lake Placid on March 31st.  I’m really excited for the last three race series!   Hope this post finds everyone well and enjoying Spring skiing (or fishing/running/ swimming) wherever you are!

Best,

Lowell

Dr. Ross Flowers, USOC Sports Psychology consultant, enjoying the Antholz weather

It’s Tuesday, February 3, 2009 and I’m back in Ruhpolding, Germany after a two-week swing through the southern part of “Biathlon World”.  Our latest world cup took place in Antholz, Italy – a beautiful venue and one of my favorite courses to race.  It’s sits high up in a mountain valley, about as far north as you can get without hitting Austria.  Even though the venue is at about 5,000 feet above sea level, I still enjoy the racing here because the course flows really well.  Most of the climbs are longer gradual V2 sections and there are a lot of transitions.  This is quite different from other world cup venues like Oberhof and Ruhpolding which feature steeper ascents and descents.

An afternoon trip to Vipiteno, Italy during our post-Antholz camp in Ridnaun, Italy. That clock tower was around before Columbus!

Although my ski time (compared to the rest of the field) improved in the Antholz 10km Sprint, I had an awful day on the shooting range and fell out of contention for the 12.5km Pursuit the following day.  This was a big dissapointment but it forced me to step back and re-evaluated my training going in to World Championships in South Korea.  It was nice to see Tim come back to form, placing 15th and 11th in the Sprint and Pursuit.

Recovery.

So now, I find myself back in Ruhpolding, Germany, preparing for the biggest races of the year, World Championships.  We’ve spent the week focusing on longer intensity sessions and a lot of highly-monitored shooting training.  Ruhpolding is a great venue, both during it’s annual World Cup event but also as a place to train.  The staff is passionate about creating world-class skiing and shooting range conditions whether it is World Cup Race Day, or just another training day for the local Bavarian teams.

A tough day at the office. Ridnaun, Italy.

Just a few more days here, and then we head across four more time zones to Pyeong Chang, South Korea!

Cheers,

Lowell

A quick picture before the flower ceremony

After three years of working towards a top-five result in the relay, we finally reached that goal on Thursday night, here in Ruhpolding, Germany.  It was an awesome feeling to be a part of the best relay finish in recent history for the U.S.  Like I said, the relay has been a main focus since we placed 9th at the Olympics in Torino in 2006.  At that point, people finally started to realize that we had a legitimate chance of medalling at the next Olympics… provided we made the right improvements.  I big part of that journey involves taking the right steps along the way.

17,000 fans!

We took the right steps but, for the past couple of years, we couldn’t quite get everything to click in the relay events.  Individually, we all made big steps and broke into the top of the pack on several occasions.  But it wasn’t until this Thursday that we proved – to ourselves and everyone else – that we were a legitimate medal contender.  Jeremy, our fourth leg, finished within 24 seconds of the bronze.  In a race that takes around one hour to complete, that is a tiny sliver of time.

As much as this took a lot of hard training and preparation, I have to say that we have a lot of people to thank for helping us make this step.  Per Nilsson (head coach), Bernd Eisenbichler (Team Manager), and Andi Elmslander (Head Was Technician)  have been at the center of this process for the last three years and their guidance has been a huge factor in the U.S. team’s recent success.  Everyone on the staff deserves a write-up but I’m afraid that would take all night.  Suffice it to say that we have one of the hardest working teams on the world cup and their enthusiasm is a huge motivation for all of us (athletes).

Best,

Lowell

Carving up the Christmas turkey with my sister, Kendra

It’s back to work this week, in Ruhpolding, Germany, site of IBU World Cup #5.  Last week was a good step forward for the team in Oberhof.  We managed an 11th place in the opening relay event, but the big improvement came in the Sprint competition on Saturday evening.  The events drew in 25,000 people each day so it was a great atmosphere!  Oberhof is the only place in the world where, for most of the course, you can’t hear the sound of your own breath as the crowd noise drowns everything else out.  In order to get splits on the course, most of the coaches have to write the information on a dry-erase board because they can’t be heard over the cheering.

During the Sprint, Jay placed 17th, Tim in 22nd, I came in 39th, and Jeremy place 44th.  It was a great day for us as a team and I think it is a good point to be at going into the middle part of the season.  After travelling home for christmas, it is always some anxiety as to how your shape will be coming back after a long break (almost three weeks).  It was good to see that my ski speed was a little bit better and I felt good for the races.  In the past, the post-Christmas world cup has been one of the more challenging events for me so I am happy that this time around, things went well.

The view of the Thuringen region from my hotel room in Oberhof

After the races, it was just a 6-hour bus ride from Oberhof to Ruhpolding on Monday.  Normally this trip takes a little over three hours (if you are driving fast on the autobahn).  Our head wax tech, Andi Elmslander, took every chance to remind me of this when I arrived at dinner that night, three hours behind the others.  Andi, however, has the benefit of Kati Wilhelm’s German Team-issue Audi Q7.  I’ve driven with Andi on numerous occasions and I know he wasn’t joking when he said his top speed during this trip was 250km/h (155mph).  I also know that the Q7 handles a little bit better than the tour-bus I was on.  And I got to brush up on my Russian as the bus entertainment system showed back-to-back Russian blockbusters.  So 6 hours and two Russian films later, I arrived in Ruhpolding ready to prepare for Thursday’s relay competition.  The weather has been great here in Germany so far this year and I’m hoping the trend continues through the end of the month.  Hope all is well in the States.

Best,

Lowell

2009… wow, that happened quick!  Literally, I got on the plane in Washington at around 6:00 pm EST on Dec. 31, went to sleep, and woke up in Frankfurt at 7:00am CET on Jan. 1, 2009.  So, yes, I missed the New Year.  I’m guessing I was somewhere over the North Atlantic when it arrived, but then again, I’m not really sure because I was flying through six different time zones that night.  Oh well.  The point is that 2008 is over.  It seems like the theme among written work this time of the year involves some sort of “recapping” of the memorable events that took place in 2008.  So here goes:

Let’s see… 2008 started out in the exact town where I happen to find myself at the moment – Oberhof, Germany.  That was the first world cup of last year (and the last time I cleaned a race!).  After that; Ruhpolding, Antholz, Ostersund (World Champs), South Korea (11th place), Khanty Mansiysk (food poisoning), Oslo (nearly missed my flight back to the states).  Springtime: Tele skiing at Whiteface, short trip to Washington D.C. to help my sister move (also involved a missed flight and an unexpected train ride down the Eastern sea board), training camp in Colorado Springs and Vancouver.  Summer: Played a lot of music, good training in Lake Placid, headed to Sweden for end-of-summer camp.  Fall: More training in LP, October camp in Utah, November world cup prep in Ostersund, world cups #2 and #3 in Hochfilzen.  Christmas at home… and now it’s 2009.

Wow. a whole year in one paragraph.  Not sure what to think of that.  As far as new year’s resolutions go, well, let’s just say I’m hoping to improve on last year.  Hope everyone is enjoying the New Year.  I’ve got to get to bed.  Early training tomorrow morning.

-Lowell

During Wednesday Night's 20km Individual Race

After a long season of training, it is always a little nerve-racking to hit the starting line for the first time.  You have the whole “newness” of the scenerio, plus the question of “Where exactly am I going to fall in the mix ‘this time’?”  It seems like after the season gets underway and you have a few races under your belt, you get a good idea of where you are compared to the rest of the field.  But for the first few races, that general breakdown is up in the air.

So, it was good to come away from Wednesday night’s Individual race with a 15th place – my second best career biathlon result.  The race itself was one of the harder 20k’s I can remember.  Snow fell throughout the day and during the race, making the tracks very deep.  This, coupled with a grueling course profile, made for some tough skiing.  I was definitely dissapointed with my ski speed and I am determined to improve that going into Saturday’s Sprint competition.  Nevertheless, it was a great day overall and I’m psyched to get started on such a positive note.

Before I sign off today I’d like to thank our team doctor, Dr. Ed Merren’s and his son Sam for making the trip over to Ostersund and helping out with the final prep work going into the season.  Ed is a great asset to our team and we’re lucky to have him.  And Sam, well, I’ve never seen a kid more psyched to go out skiing… I guess I’d be pretty excited too if I got to miss a week of school and go skiing in Sweden!