Don’t panic! You’re at the right blog. I’ve just changed
some colors around and mixed things up because why not.
Well it’s been a while since I updated my blog. A lot has
happened since my last post, aboot three weeks’ worth to be exact. When I last
left off I was in Lake Placid at the OTC trying to recover from a few busy
weeks of racing and training. That week was just as hard as the ones before it.
We did two time trials, one up Whiteface Mtn. and the other down a 3k road across
from the OTC (Bear Cub Rd). Both started out ok then I just fell apart half way
through and struggled to finish. Needless to say I was very frustrated. The
best way I could describe how I was feeling was I stuck in 2nd gear.
I wanted to go faster and harder but my body was reaching its max RPMs and not
going any faster. Other than that It was great to be back in NY!
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| The view of Mt. Marcy from the top of Algonquin |
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| hiking with the Talent ID group |
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| Kind of gotten into taking landscape pictures |
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| The view of the ADKs from up by the jumps |
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| The ski jumps in Lake Placid |
My
goal for the next week was to relax. I went home to Saratoga for the week to
make sure I was doing more relaxing and less training. The first night I was
back in Saratoga my dad and I decided to drive down to Kingston, NY to see our
favorite Irish band, Black 47 one last time (this is their farewell tour). Also
my computer has been acting like crap so I brought it in to get fixed and it
turned out the hard drive was broken. Oops. But I got a new one and everything
works well now. I don’t really remember what else happened that week but I know
it was productively unproductive. I wanted to make sure to get some good rest
for my upcoming testing camp in LP.
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| Grammy and Grampie visited me in Lake Placid |
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| Front row for Black 47! |
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| Papa (green shirt to the right (left of the pole)) back stage at Black 47! |
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| Shooting at Saratoga Biathlon Club with Matt Forshey |
Our testing camp consisted of 2 shooting tests, a biathlon
Time Trial (TT), 3 skiing TT’s, a Mtn. run and a weird “see how long you can
glide on one ski” kind of test. I’m not going to lie. I was pretty nervous
going into these tests. I could tell my coaches were pretty unimpressed with
last week’s camp and I was worried my problems weren’t just an issue of being
fatigued and I actually have a problem (mono, lymes disease, or who knows
what). The first test we did was a shooting test which combined shooting for
precision with shooting for speed. This was only the second time I had one this
test and scored higher this time than when I did it back In Craftsbury two
weeks ago. Next was the Biathlon TT. This was the first time I had done hard intervals
in two weeks and I felt great. It was such a sigh of relief to be able to push
myself for 10k. The next two events were the Bear Cub Rd TT and the Whiteface
uphill run. And this time round 2 was much better than the first time. I was 2
mins faster on Bear cub and a 1:30 better on the whiteface hill climb. These
results helped me regain confidence in my training plan. The fact that I was
able to train myself to the point of exhaustion then recover and preform much
better shows me my training plan is working perfectly.
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| Russian free style skier. |
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| I caught a sweet picture of Max catching a sweet picture |
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Max Durtschi trying to fight the wind atop Mt. Marcy.
50 MPH winds and 30 degrees F. Plus rain. |
As for now I am back in Fort Kent until the October Jericho
roller ski races. Most of my team is out in Utah these next two weeks so it’s
definitely a little lonely here in FK. But it will be some time to do school
work and maybe find a job for some extra money. since I got a new hard drive I
had to re-install some of the programs on my computer but ended up installing a
much better video making software so I’m sorry I didn’t have an August recap
video but the AUG/SEP recap video will be awesome.
Thanks for reading my blog. Follow me on twitter @bhbiathlon
or Instagram @brhalligan4 and feel free to send me a facebook friend request.
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a blast from the past. second from the left, that's 14 year old me.
Saratoga XC '09 |
