September 11, 2009 (Lake Placid, NY) – It’s nearly the end of July and I am well into the thick of the summer training. The women’s team here in Lake Placid just finished up a huge volume week with lots of skiing, biking, kayaking, swimming and shooting. Needless to say, sleeping in on Sunday felt great. After a day of rest, Monday starts up the training week again. After a volume week, I head into a week where the emphasis is back to high intensity training and shooting. Monday and Tuesday’s training sessions are quite representative of our summer training life and give you sampling of what a biathlete’s day looks like:
Monday
7am – Skype conference call with my coach Per in Sweden
Morning dryfire session before breakfast (dryfire = shooting without live rounds, used to work on position and the mental process of shooting)
AM
10km Sprint Time Trial (3 loops, prone and standing shooting stages) at the new shooting range in Lake Placid 1:45 hrs
– This includes a warm up with sprints before zeroing in our rifles for the day as well as a cool down ski or run.
– Stretch and cold tub after training.
General strength at the Olympic Training Center
– I do a mix of traditional weight room strength and more specific Nordic upper body and core exercises. At the end I will intermix dryfiring with my core exercises. This creates a little bit of physical stress and challenge to my shooting training.
Jog – then stretch to recover from the day.
Tuesday
Morning dryfire session
AM
Shooting drills – a variety of precision tests and speed drills that both test our precision on the target as well as train our shooting accuracy and endurance. One test for example is out of 50 prone shots, how many hits can I get? In one session we will shoot anywhere from 50 to 150 shots.
– No pole and double pole session on River Rd. and Bear Cub Rd. 2 hrs
– Stretch and relax after training before lunch and a nap.
PM
Red Cord session – I have a 20-minute core strength routine using a device – two red cords actually – to create an unstable surface to work with when doing exercises like planks for example. Similar to working with a physio ball, this really engages your deeper core muscles.
TSS – Technique specific strength. This is a workout designed by my coach that helps us really emphasize the power and balance that goes into a dynamic technique. On this particular day I have 21-30sec repetitions to accomplish of V1, V2 and DP. We also combine this workout with shooting so that we can also benefit from shooting with a higher heart rate. 1:30 hrs
– Stretch after training.
It has been a great summer of training so far. However, I am not surprised that it is almost the end of July even though the summer has felt like it’s gone quite quickly. I’ve worked backwards from my first World Cup competitions in December and realistically, they are not that far away and there is still a lot that I want to accomplish.
Coming up next are some summer biathlon races in Jericho, VT. These will be our first races of the year and it will be exciting to get back into race mode. Mid-August I am off to a National Team Camp in Ostersund, Sweden and Ruhpolding, Germany. These events feel like big “boulders” in my schedule, surrounded by hundreds of rocks and pebbles that are the daily efforts and accomplishments that are arranged in a way to bring about peak performances.
The USOC just recently put up an article about the women’s team, along with some other interesting press releases about our teams on www.biathlon.teamusa.org . So, check them out when you get a chance.
Thanks for following and enjoy the rest of your summer!
– Haley
