The Warning Signs Were There.

It has been a while since my last blog post. And that is mostly due to two reasons: 1. I’ve just been so darn busy and 2. Most of the places I’ve been the past three weeks have had very limited internet. But I am here in lake placid, completely saturated of Wi-Fi so gather around and I’ll tell you my story.

My month started off in Massachusetts actually. I drove down to Cape Cod to see my cousins. They just moved in to a nice new house in East Sandwich. Although I was only there for two days it was nice to relax on the beach and catch up with my family whom I hadn’t seen in two years. While I was there I was also able to get some riding in. from their house, up the canal and back was 26 miles round trip, with a very strong head/tail wind, depending which way you were going. 

Riding the canal with Dad

Packed car with me, my mom and two of my cousins. Plus all of our stuff

On my trek from Mass to Vermont I stopped at home in Saratoga just for a day to visit the Track. Last year was the first year I was able to bet at the track and I was never home during track season so I wanted to make a point of going this year. I limited myself to $20 of gambling money and despite winning $3.15 on the first race, I went home $20 poorer.

The next day I finally made it to Jericho, Vermont for the North American Rollerski Biathlon Championship’s junior races. In the first race, a sprint, I felt like I was skiing at about 85% of my max race speed but shot poorly and finished 5^th. The next day however, for the pursuit I was able to shoot much better and move my way up to 2^nd. Still feeling a little tired from the first day, I felt my skiing had suffered a little but was still fast. Maybe about 75% of my max race speed.

Junior Pursuit Podium

On Monday after the race I went to the Shelburne Museum while waiting for the rest of my team to arrive from Maine. I have driven past the museum for years but never realized how big it was. The property covered about 40-50 acres and featured an old locomotive, steamboat, many barns and houses with “over 150,000 pieces of art”

Big steam boat at the Shelburne Museum 

Interesting Barn Bridge at the Shelburne Museum

Once my team arrived in Jericho we trained on the rollerloop for the upcoming senior races. These were to be my first senior races of my career so I wanted to start off on a good foot. The signs of fatigue and tiredness were there leading up to the races but unfortunately I failed to see them and suffered in the races. A combination of poor shooting and really, really slow skiing resulted in some unfortunate results. But, I am not too worried about it because it is only August and I know what the problem was: not enough recovery in the week before.

Senior race sprint leaving the range ahead of Tim Burke

After the race on Sunday, me and my Development, X-team and B-team teammates traveled to Craftsburry Vermont for a camp with our new coach, Jean. The First 24 hours in Craftsburry developed some good times and stories that I will remember for years to come. The first night there we decided to head to the Barton Fair. Where the highlight on the night was the demolition derby. I had never been to a DD before but It was awesome and can be summed up in this one sentence: Loud cars smash into each other until only one car is left functional. 

Then next morning, as an active recovery activity the team went kayaking. Despite the “Brian, I think your kayak is taking on water” from my teammate Clare, I couldn’t find the entry point of the water till it was too late. I’ll try to keep this story short but it’s pretty funny.  In the middle of the lake heading back towards the dock (about another 10 mins of paddling) I realize the front of my kayak is way in the air and the back is deep under water (no wonder no matter how hard I paddled it seemed like everybody was pulling away from me). So my first instinct was to look for land, a dock of some sort. I happened to be in a very narrow part of the lake (about 20 feet from shore either way) but there were no signs of a dock or beach anywhere, and there was no way I was going to walk through the muck bare footed. 

So I jumped out of kayak and tried to find some way to get the water out. I realized I was going to be in the water for a while so the first thing I did was put the life jacket on. After flipping the kayak over multiple times and not seeing any results I decided to just start swimming back. With a water logged kayak, swimming is pretty tough so Just as Clare was about to paddle out of view I yelled for her and thankfully she saw me in the water next to an upside down kayak waving my arms. Clare dragged me to shore (where I had to walk through the muck) and waited for me to drain out the water. Once it was empty, I jumped back in and sprinted to the dock before I could sink again. 

The "Wave" part of Craftsburry's MTN bike trails

the "Wave"

Demo Derby guy crashed through the wall (they let him keep going)

The rest of the camp was pretty uneventful. Just some good training and a lot of shooting. So much shooting actually I am mentally exhausted (I can’t believe I wrote this whole blog post without falling asleep) tomorrow will be a much needed day off where I can just relax here in Lake Placid and regain the physical and mental strength needed for this upcoming week’s camp.

Thanks for reading my post. I realize it was long but hopefully you enjoyed it. Follow me on Twitter: @bhbiathlon Instagram: @brhalligan4 and Facebook.