Antholz, Racing and Training before World Champs

Hi CBC,

It turns out I'm not a very good blogger (surprise).  We are finishing up our long stretch in Antholz- just one more week, and then off to Hochfilzen for World Championships.  Somehow, when I arrived here in the very beginning, way back when the World Cup was here a whole two weeks ago, my standing shooting took a vacation.  I'm not sure where it went, but I'm guessing someplace tropical.  

As best I can describe what happened, I'm an incredibly high energy person.  I like to sleep, a LOT, but as soon as I wake up I'm going. I don't really nap, and I don't really slow down much (ever).  Some point on the road between Germany and Italy, my energy levels overloaded.  You know that freshman stunt where you drink an entire pot of coffee before your first final, before you realize that's a horrible freaking idea, and then you get more and more jittery and it feels like your eyeballs are about to shoot lasers?  That's roughly how I would describe this feeling.  Every time I stopped skiing to shoot I felt like I was going to leap right out of my boots at the massive amounts of jittery energy raging through my body.  And really, it didn't stop much when I was skiing, either.  I felt like I was skiing like a sort of spastic fish, arms and legs all disconnected, and my glide phase totally gone.  And downhill cornering when your legs are shaking like you took a straight shot of adrenaline?  Yikes! Well, it was one hell of a ride.

For a week and a half, this lasted, before, during, and through the races.  That's a damn long time to be riding what feels like an epic caffeine high, with no way to slow down.  I took a lot of days of off shooting after the races here, in attempt to re-center my shooting, specifically standing. It has slowly, ever so slowly, come soaking back into me as I've resettled back onto planet earth.  

Things that re-centered me...

-Firstly, my amazing family often gets up to watch me race, and from the West Coast that's one heck of a time change.  Every time I clean a stage they all get a piece of chocolate.  They are happy skiers themselves, and they really couldn't care less how often I miss at standing.  They're going to be so mad I put them on the internet :D. 

Since Truckee got that ENORMOUS snowstorm of doom, they’ve just been playing in the snow for the last couple weeks (at least that’s how it seems from the pictures).

My mom, conquering the world

My dad, proving that all black is still the most intimidating ski outfit. Fact.

My second oldest brother, Carl, who apparently ran into some wet Sierra snow.

My oldest brother, Garrett, who has never let anything in life bring him down.

-Susan freaking Dunklee.  Seriously, that woman can do anything.  I have what I would best describe as an occasional breathing problem, where it feels like a mountain landed on my chest.  Susan came into my room when I was having an argument with said mountain, and sort of having a loser-like spazz on the floor.  In the next ten minutes, I was changed, up, moving, walking, and breathing like a normal person again.  

I got to do a bunch of workouts with Susan this week, and I decided that I was just going to shoot as fast as our rockstar, and screw where the bullets actually landed.  This worked out really well about half the time, and about half the time I probably sent some fliers right over the mountaintops.  It's really good practice, and really fun to get to shoot with one of the fastest shooters in the world (Susan) and one of the best in the world (Maddie).  Anyway, riding the ski tips of Susan was really fun, because her strongest skiing sections are totally opposite than mine, which forces me to get technical and press sections that apparently I usually just slack the hell off in.  See, this is why you should have friends who kick your ass.

We locked up her crazy though, we'll unleash it for World Champs

I re-f**ked my shoulder on the bench press.  That's the last time I'm EVER doing that workout.  Either I have fragile shoulders (? tendons?), or it's maybe just not the best workout for me to be doing in the middle of ski season, regardless, I don't care what the training plan says, it's out.  Another thing I learned from Suz- stand up and fight for what you believe in.  Anyway, it's not nearly as bad as last time- I can get my arm over my head! I've been giving it a break on easy days so that I can still engage it on intensity days, and it has been soldiering on.  So, all eyes turn to Hochfilzen now.  

-MOUNTAINS.  Woohoo!  

-Also, you guys.  The emails poured in telling me they forgave me for singlehandedly tanking the American relay.  I promise I'll do better, and a special thank you to CBC sharpshooter Julia Collins for sending me a sweet email and some tips on how not to miss :). 

A random assortment of pictures:

This is how we attend morning lectures at 8am.
Me and Susan just chillin in the back getting outraged at bad statistics because we're NERDS. 

Recovery drink..........?

Russell was pissed that I podium swept the high scores on his Tetris
So.....he finally beat me. 

Susan has a grill sponsor, so we did some biathlon tailgating during the men's race

Picture from my friend Gwilbaud of France, who always has a smile for me when I'm warming up, something nice to say after the race, and is his own entire amazing cheering section, singlehandedly.  

This guy... this guy actually kicked me off my mat during zero, because it wasn't as laser-sculpted flat, or something.  I also got booted off my mat during pre-race zero by one of the overly aggressive brass sweepers.  I mean... which one of us is really more important? Not me, apparently!

Grilling pizza out on the deck (courtesy of Susan's grill sponsor). Or, as my mom said,
"A Hawaiian pizza cooked by orange munchkins outside in the snow😋"

Let's just say... we're sort of derpy at picture taking, but we skied to the top of the pass and it was lovely.

That time I started less than an hour after the first starter, and actually got to warm up on the course.

That other time I got to ski a lap with MDH herself.

See you back in Colorado, someday!!

-Joanne

Ruhpolding and our first relay

Well, in case you missed it (I did!), I didn't race in Oberhof because I got the norovirus, also known as the stomach flu.  It was a lot of deja vu, as I got the stomach flu at almost the exact same time last year, along with Maddie Phaneuf, and the two of us raced the IBU Cup anyway, and it was about exactly as comfortable as you'd imagine.

A successful quarantine (did not leave room for three straight days), some long and gentle classic skis in the woods, and some easily digested food later, we traveled south. We arrived in Ruhpolding where the weather was warmer, the trails were slightly easier (but not by much!) the food was better (maybe? I never once went down to breakfast, lunch, or dinner in Oberhof, but instead depended entirely on the food drop-offs of my friend Russell Currier, who not only fed me but scored his first world cup points of the season in Oberhof), and the crowds are bigger.  I like Ruhpolding because it's familiar to me, and is the site of my first world cup, so regardless of the trails that don't really play to my strengths, it holds a special place in my heart.  It's becoming a little easier to travel places now that I'm learning where all the paths to the start are, the rifle check and the ski checks, and I don't spend ages searching for the bathroom.  For instance, in Sweden I spent about ten minutes trying to find the secret door that led to rifle check and eventually gave up and skied into the range to find the start, the tunnel leading to it, and work backwards from there.  I am oddly grateful to Adidas for giving us the electric orange jackets purely because it's so much easier to find our coaches wherever they may be.

We adopted Maddie from the IBU Cup to field our first relay of the season, which didn't yield the best result ever, but there were no penalty laps from our team, which we considered a victory.  The snow was deep and slow, and skiing was a battle.  With a relay team that had never once skied together, and various levels of preparedness across the board, we look forward to moving up in the field in the next relay.

Germany actually requires you to lock up your rifle when you are..... we're not exactly sure, here.... not dryfiring? Can you get it out and clean it? Can you touch it? Luckily it came with this fantastic picture explanation.

What I get from this is that you can just tie a rubber band around it
 and then lock the rubber band

When I first arrived in Germany I had the wrong serial number on my paperwork, which caused a lot of head shaking and clucking, but they let this American problem child into the country anyway.  Wonder if they'll let me leave!

I encourage you to check my website (HERE) if you want to know where in the world I am (my brother requested that I turn on "find my friends" so that when those pesky people asked him where in the world I was he could just know instead of having to look at that gosh durn world cup schedule, but that seems a little creepy in my opinion), I tried to put in estimations of where we're training and racing.  Plus, I linked in my instagram so you can enjoy my journey of bad picture taking and #excessive #notatallwitty #hashtagging.


Countdown to sprint start!

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.

Canmore

Hi CBC,

It was eighty degrees when I left Colorado.  Packing for on-snow skiing when you've spent the last couple days with your air conditioning on and avoiding working out in the middle of the day is a weird feeling, one I haven't had often since I ventured out of the great state of California.

The Lady Fortune and me chilling on my front balcony.
It was actually too hot to be wearing this long sleeve shirt,
but the orange is too lovely to pass up

United delayed my flight (surprise), so I spent two hours sitting outside in the sunshine, watching the strange new artwork of the Denver airport, which has finished its new transit center and added "artwork."  Look at those klister scrapers billowing in the breeze...

But I get ahead of myself.  Remember my rear sight acting up?  Turns out that isn't super uncommon.  In flew the cavalry.

When your bullets are stuck on the left side and won't move right.

The Oppligers (Team Oppliger Biathlon) are close family friends from Houghton,
 and one of my major biathlon catalysts

My dad decided on Friday that he was showing up on a plane Saturday morning, so suddenly he was there.  Rather than tangle with my rear sight and its newly acquired attitude problem, we decided to swap it out entirely, and analyze the part later.  Apparently sometimes sights don't appreciate you asking them for clicks, and therefore just don't bother to move.  Mine actually had a major wobble where the aperture is inserted into the sight.  Odds are that I, the Human Hammer, as my dad has thus titled me, probably whacked it somehow.  I also whacked my snow cover, speaking of.

Human Hammer at SMR, wooden firing line vs. snow cover

I also became the new owner of this sweet one piece "whale tale," courtesy of my talented mother.  Yeah, my mom is cool enough to mold my rail and butthooks, and then recreate them in carbon fiber wrapped wood.

After some drilling and tapping, more drilling and tapping, reinforcing, stabilizing, and gluing, the required visit to McGuckin Hardware (greatest hardware store ever?) my dad flew out again on Sunday.  No daughter of his was going to go cavorting around the world with a wobbly cheekpiece.  How awesome is he?

What I would like to know, if any of you guys have done this, is if this Anschütz nameplate can be removed.  It's heavy and it's metal, and it's advertising a company that I had to give money to.  So really, why keep it?

this is actually Clare's new action-
 she swapped over to the sprint barrel

So delayed United flight notwithstanding, I arrived in Calgary and caught a ride with the rest of the team to Canmore.  We decided to go to Canmore because they have this early season situation they call "frozen thunder," where they take stored snow from the previous year, and roll it out on top of woodchips.  So yeah, we got on snow on October 25th- how cool is that?

If you haven't been to Canmore, I recommend you go.  Encircled by Canadian Rockies, bisected by the Bow River, and just to the southwest of the border of Banff National Park, Canmore is lovely.  I do recognize that everyone can't just spend their time traipsing about in pursuit of snow, but I imagine in the summer this place is even lovelier.  I would like to declare this one of the loveliest places I've ever been.

I present my argument as follows.

The rarely-captured smile of the elusive Russell Currier

Leif disappearing up the road to Lake Moraine.
This is actually natural snow, up higher in the mountains in Banff

The range on intensity day, otherwise known as:
get your butt mostly kicked by Susan Dunklee day

So, we spent Halloween here.  And between the three of us, Clare drew the most laughs.  Can't see her in the picture?  She actually is wearing a fake mustache and sporting a Ukrainian suit.  To get that, she actually went over to their hotel, used google translate and pantomime to try to explain Halloween, and managed to acquire the goods for that costume.  The Ukrainians were so excited by this they spent the whole day (which was interval day, mind you), cheering for her, and in one case actually pushing her uphill.  When they saw us taking the photos, they came over to join in.

But really, the best way to suffer through intervals is to follow Susan Dunklee's fake grass skirt around the ski trails.  In case you were wondering, our coaches were of course THRILLED that we showed up to intensity decked out in ridiculous attire and taking ourselves overly seriously.

#squad

There was too much snow to classic rollerski (oh darn),
so we suffered through this beautiful run instead

Susan really wanted to climb this rock, so she did

Susan and I just finished some of the slushiest, sloppiest intervals I've ever done (it was over fifty degrees and we were skiing on post-race snow), so I'm off to go faceplant on the couch.


-Joanne

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