Football, random pictures of Canmore, and links to more interesting things

So many times I have been asked what it was like to with an NCAA title, and so many times I have been asked where I think I'm taking the sport of biathlon, how long I'll stay, what I'm hoping to achieve.  This is my answer to both questions, in a long, drawn-out monologue.  

What I like about football is energy. Energy and fluidity. I know football is a "boring" American sport with a lot of stops and go's and changing of teams, but it is deeply fluid at its base. Four tries to go 10 yards. In essence, an extremely simple game, in practice a complex one. Momentum is a powerful force of nature, and momentum is the strongest force of football. A team driving forward, fighting to the last man to gain that last yard builds momentum.  And the fan base catches the momentum of the team and turns it to energy. Energy, in turn, drives more momentum. 

Consider the home of the Seattle Seahawks. The twelfth man of the Seattle Seahawks is their fan base. Eleven players on the field, and one measurably, scientifically deafening roar. The twelfth man is so loud that the actual decibel level in their home stadium is just barely under that of the deck of an active aircraft carrier.  The Seahawks so honored their beloved twelfth man that the number 12 is borne only on fan jerseys, and never on the field. Their gift in return? Energy. Ferocious, unbridled, passionate energy which aids the momentum of their beloved team. 

This I feel when I enter the active football stadium of my alma mater. I rarely (never) watched a game as an undergrad, but I always drifted by the chaos around and in the stadium just to witness it.  This is the case of any stadium of any sport with fans who love it. The absolute and overpowering passion makes the stadium electric. 

If I enter a stadium full of 10,000 Colorado Buffaloes, I feel who I am. The times I fought for my brothers and sisters in the black and gold echo within the roar. My path has turned away from being totally surrounded and immersed in University culture, living and breathing academia and team competition.  But I am still the person who did those things, who I am now was shaped by what I did then. And 10,000 people dressed in black, on their feet in salute of our real live buffalo who tramples the very grass of the football field, has a way of slamming that reminder into your face like an knockout punch. 

It is odd to look back. If I choose to give, I give my whole self. If you had cut me open, I would have truly bled black and gold.  For the eleven other members competing on the NCAA team, I would have done anything.  For those left behind, I would have done everything. 

What was it like to win an NCAA championship? This is what it was like. Six alpine skiers watching from the sides, exhausted. Their battle was over.  Three Norwegian men, clad in the Colorado black, silently watchful. Their battle was yet to come. Two of my sisters, next to me at the start. Our battle was now. I was the twelfth man.  I had a Buffalo sister at each shoulder.  Their gift to me? Energy.  

I didn't win because I needed to win, I won because they needed me to win. I simply became one name in a long legacy and history that stretches back before I was born and will continue on for decades.  Those were my brothers and sisters, my acquired family and my adopted heritage. All I could give them in this moment was a single victory, and lay it at their feet in offering. So I did. Those three Norwegians, it was their turn to go. My gift to them? Momentum. 

I don't exactly know where I'm going, but I know who I am, and where I was. Surely that is what is most important.  No one is their worst race any more than they are their best race, which is a truth few like to face.  You are simply the average of your races, barring outliers.  That's the mathematician in me.  The athlete in me has no other thought than a promise to give, to give my whole self until the numbers of the race results reflect what I believe I am capable of.  To do something so well that I can say I mastered it, and then, like my mother before me, turn down a new road with new challenges.  But most importantly, do it joyously, passionately, and with integrity.  

If you just can't get enough of my dithering on, you can find me on Fasterskier Here and the BNS magazine Here . 

 And without further ado, here's a whole bunch of pictures from Canmore in no particular order.

If you follow Susan Dunklee this'll be a repeat, but it was the best picture I took all camp.

Clare and I spent our off day in Calgary, and I wandered over to a park

Hanging out with the newest member of the Biathlon family, Ophelia Bailey

Clare and sports psychologist Sean McCann teaching Ophelia how to adjust for wind

Susan LOVES hiking, and here we are scaling the first mountain of the day

This was before I was totally exhausted,
because we got to the bottom and Susan goes: hey, let's climb that mountain too!

And so we did

Because we can

Two days ago at SMR- holy smokes it was hot out.  Trying to get my prone shooting under 30 seconds,
with moderate success- I'm plateauing at about 29.

June, July, August

June, July, and August

Hey CBC,

I returned to Boulder for some time, longer than my coach would like, and shorter than I would have preferred to stay. 

a brief interlude to display reasons why I live in Colorado ... 

Somewhere outside Telluride

This is what happens when our range is closed during the week... 
Shooting at poor, unsuspecting dead trees in a yard in Ridgway colorado

My beloved car and I decided to make the journey to New York. This may have something to do with the fact that by the time I looked at tickets, three days before I was supposed to get my rear in gear towards the East, they were quite pricey. NO PROBLEM, I'll drive, I figured. 

I drove out one day, and I called my grandma from eastern Colorado. "Hey grandma!" I said enthusiastically into the phone to my incredibly liberal and ferociously political grandma, "you wouldn't believe how many Trump signs there are in eastern colorado!! Hey, can I crash with you tonight?" There was a moment of silence, as there often is at people trying to digest my chaotic life in the span of a few seconds. "...tonight? In Madison?" At my affirmation, her voice perked up, I imagine she was still recovering from picturing the Trump signs. 

And sure enough, I rolled into Madison that night. Well, that morning. I drove through a world-ending thunderstorm in eastern Iowa, the lightning flashing in 360 degrees around me, the sound so loud I wondered if there was a rock concert in the sky  I wasn't invited to.  I lost my right windshield wiper in that storm, it's somewhere in Iowa, and I think it'll stay there for a while. By the time I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, the storm had blown through, ripping down entire trees, taking out power lines, and making roads impassible. It took delicate navigating (I drove through some yards) and a lot of patience (I yelled at the unyielding, fallen trees blocking my way), but I finally arrived in Madison to the Heiden home.  

I stayed here a day to visit my grandparents, my grandfather being the owner of my starting biathlon rifle named Forget-Me-Not (Partial story here). My grandmother, whose social life must rival that of the Queen of England, tired me out. We ran around town finding inventive ways of charging our phones, since the power was still out in her house. 

The University Memorial Center at University of Wisconsin, Madison, on the shore of Mendota.
Both my parents and my grandparents went here

I journeyed out the next morning with a new wiper blade, a hug to my little dog, who resides there in Madison, and one for each of my grandparents. 

one grandfather, one dog

His name is actually Einstein

I charged East. Or rather, they charged me to go East. Once you get past Wisconsin, the states make you pay for the privilege of passing through. I kid you not, I saw a brochure in a gas station that said, "seventeen fun things to do in northeastern Indiana!!" One of those seventeen things was probably paying tolls. 

I arrived in Lake Placid at 5am and slept until 2pm.  If nothing else, I'm a champion sleeper. Here I stayed for a week or so, but no more, to the never ending frustration of my coach. 

Halfway through this week we were shooting a 30/30 test. That's where you shoot.... You guessed it.... 30 shots prone and 30 shots standing, and then your coach takes it down and looks really displeased if you didn't put all those shots into the 10 ring (scored based on rings). I went for the spray and pray method here, a most beloved tactic of the CBC. It was going rather well until both my top and bottom butthooks broke, my riser block came loose, and then my cheekpiece actually fell off completely (huh, should have glued that). 

Because I'm a graduate student in engineering, and a bonafide adult (I know this because I can purchase both tobacco AND alcohol), I did the reasonable thing. I called my dad.  "DAD, IT'S BROKEN," I helpfully explained. 

So the next place I arrived was the Bay Area of California, where my parents call home. The trick to flying into the Bay is not to come in during rush hour. So you can fly in between 1 and 4am. I picked 1. Guess who got me from the airport- isn't my mom great?  

My dad is basically a wizard. That's a fancy word for an engineer without an official engineering degree, but with a PhD and a really high IQ. I did the important work of pointing to the parts that were either falling off or broken, and I left ten days later with everything fixed. The bandsaw, tablesaw, dremel, drill press, and the other toys kept in the garage probably had to take naps after all that working overtime. 

My mom is a magician. That's a fancy word for someone who picks up a new skill, sport, or knowledge in the span of a day.  While I performed the helpful task of pointing out my broken butthooks and ghetto looking rifle, my mom molded and remade the butthooks out of carbon fiber, redesigning the entire attachment system to be more robust.  Then she took out her woodburning tools, and adorned Tunkasila (duen-kah-shee-lah, that's the name of my rifle, passed down from my dad, it means grandfather, or great spirit) with the aforementioned naked lady (the lovely lady herself), sanding and re-varnishing the entire stock, complete with riser block.

So with a new pistol grip, new cheekpiece, new butthooks, other modifications of things I just thought about and my parents actually did, and much more stylish than before, I returned to Lake Placid and subsequent World Cup trials.

I decided I didn't like my pistol grip the way it was (small hands).

my mom was super thrilled about the enormous mess I made on the kitchen table

Getting all prettied up (and protected, since a lot of the coating had to be taken off to make those nice designs)

I don't know why the drill was exactly right there, but stuff was obviously gittin' done 'round there

Having a roller range is so great, they said! Just not for the toes of your boots....
Grand prize for anyone who fixes this problem
(I have heard that they make plastic pieces for the shoes of baseball pitchers, who have a similar problem)

-J

The Beginning

Hey Colorado Biathlon,

As your only club member on the World Cup (though I fully expect this to change any year now- I'm looking at you, Walter), I'm trying to keep you all up to speed on my doings, so you can make sure I'm representing you appropriately.

I just landed back in our colorful state last night, fresh in from Jericho and Lake Placid, and a brutal test week with U.S. Biathlon.  The sharpness is back in the air, the light has turned from the softer yellow of summer to the whiter, harsher light of fall.  I have been away from Colorado too long, and September has already passed.

What I like about fall is all of its beginnings.  Boulder exists quite independent of our university, and most of my daily life no longer interacts with it. Still though, the 30,000 students who return for the semester changes the cadence of the city.  This I love. 

Education is a lifelong process. It is accelerated by the halls of great universities, and slowed by the grinding repetition of life itself. Fall will always be the start of a fresh round of learning, from the youngest children to the oldest professors. Education is the very foundation on which humanity stands. In many places in our union it is crumbling and it is faulty, but still it stands. It is the nature of humans to learn, it is why we came into being and why we build great cities, create beautiful artwork, accomplish great feats, love, hope, and dream. 

To some people, fall is colors, the rising dark, and the cold of rain. To me, looking down from my balcony at the matching roofs of our state's flagship university, it is a new beginning.  It is passed from the old generation to the new, whether forcibly or voluntarily, whether in the classroom, the practices of professionals, or out in the open air.  It is a time of introspection, because in the end, no one can teach you to grow, or change, or learn. These things you must do yourself, and it is your duty, your honor, your heritage, and your privilege to do so. 

After attending this University for the last six years, I have less than ten photos of it.  How sad is that? 

She (Ralphie, the buffalo) faces East because Nebraska used to be our big rival, but I guess now she's just catching the sunrise.  This was about 20 minutes before I gave myself a nasty shoulder injury on the bench press that's still healing.  All I think when I see this is,  DON'T GO TO THE GYM, YOU IDIOT.

I told you I looked down on campus.

That's probably not what you wanted to hear from me.  You wanted me to tell you what test week is, and all the secrets of USBA training (so you can outshoot Lowell next year), and what Susan's favorite color is, is it true that it's always hot and wet in Jericho (yes!), and Joanne, do you REALLY have a naked lady on your rifle? 

See, it's not as blasphemous as you thought.

Test week is a whole bunch of intervals, rollerski time trials, running time trials, biathlon time trials, shooting tests, shooting drills, and general mayhem.  Jennie Bender and I did some brutal intervals up the toll road on Whiteface Mountain before it even started, and then pretended we weren't tired at all. 

Jennie: Joanne, do a superman pose.  Me: Looks indecisive instead.

We ran up some huge hill (Jennie won).  We rollerskied up some not very long hill (Jennie and I tied), we did a mini-biathlon time trial (I won), we shot at things (Maddie definitely won), then we went to Jericho for a full length time trial (Susan finally showed up and made us all look pathetic).  Guess what? I cleaned some stages!

It was wet.

Be brave!

-Joanne

P.S. I started a gofundme for my commuting back and forth between Colorado and Lake Placid, a lifestyle choice that USBA isn't overly thrilled about.  I haven't decided if that's an appropriate fundraising reason. But really.... our state is better, right?

https://www.gofundme.com/JFiresteel