O Canada!

Canmore, Alberta is by far my favorite place I’ve been to. Form the ski trails that are more like ski highways, to the incredibly huge Rocky Mountains that set the most beautiful backdrop one could imagine, I always use Canmore as motivation on those cold and rainy days rollerskiing in the summer. Come to think of it I probably should have made a mid-trip blog post because we were there for 3 weeks and there is a lot of stuff that happened so I’ll try to condense it down to a reasonable blog post. 

The town and the mountains in the background 

The view from the range 

The "Three Sisters" Faith, Hope and Charity 

Hoodoos (weird conglomerate structures) with mountains in the background 

Tall Hoodoo with the Three Sisters 

The trip out to Calgary was pretty uneventful. No flight delays or cancellations and all luggage made it across the border (backpack, duffle bag, ski bag, rifle case). Upon arrival to Canmore, Casey Smith picked us (Welly Ramsey took the shuttle from the airport with me) up and brought us to the Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge. And this brings us to our first story from the trip:

At about 2 AM I wake up to somebody clapping. I look around and see the light on, but welly isn’t in his bed (we were in the loft and Casey was in a room downstairs) I then hear clapping again and hear welly yell “Dude, wake up!” so I crawl out of bed and pear over the railing to see Welly bending over a person laying on the ground. My first reaction is Casey got up to get a snack, fell, hit his head and is now passed out on the ground. Upon further inspection however, I realize I’ve never seen this person before in my life. Welly then yells “Dude, wake up! You’re in the wrong room!” That’s when I realize this guy is some drunk guy who somehow got into our room. After we woke him up and kicked him out we took a second to reflect on the hilarity of the situation. How he got in was our fault, we accidentally left the key in the door so this poor guy was probably saw the key and was just happy to get out of the cold. We saw him the next day walking to his car but I don’t think he even remembered what happened the night before.

Drunk Guy with Welly trying to wake him up. 

The skiing was awesome! When I first arrived there was aboot a 2k man made loop but they were working hard to get more trails pushed out for the upcoming races. By the time of the first race weekend there was close to 8 or 9K. The course its self is pretty hilly but the mountains make it better.

beautiful views all around

Casey doing what ever that is... 

Under the bridge

The first scheduled races of the trip were actually cancelled due to the cold. The legal race temperature is -20*C but the range was close to -25*C so that race was cancelled pretty quickly. But Sunday’s race was trying hard to happen. The temperature when we first got to the venue was about -23*C. so the race organizers decided to delay it an hour in hopes that the sun would warm things up. At the second jury meeting the temperature was actually -20*C at the range but -22*C on the trails. So they decided to cancel it. It’s too bad they can’t predict the future because about 30 mins later the temp got up to -17*C. but its ok because once the temp gets bellow -15*C everything just feels one temperature: COLD!

On the Monday after the canceled races we decided to head up to Lake Louise to ski on an access road that gets groomed in the winter. The skiing wasn’t that good, in fact, it was really bad. But the view was worth the hour and half ski through slow, not very packed snow. On the ski we got to see the Mountain that hosted the Alpine World Cup race that weekend. The trail ended with an “Avalanche Warning! Turn Back!” sign. Didn’t see any avalanches but apparently they happen. (I didn’t know what to say for that part but I hope that’s good haha) after the ski we visited the Lake Louise Hotel. This hotel was a 7 story building tucked in to a little valley between two huge mountain faces. The hotel its self reminded me of a classic 1920’s New York hotel. The lobby was a very big common room where everybody would come to socialize. It had a grand staircase and huge chandelier. Next to the hotel was the Lake Louise. This lake is the picturesque lake you see in calendars, post cards, and nature shots. If I ever win the lottery I will be back to this hotel with my friends and family.

Skiing on the road with Sean Doherty

Trail ends with a beautiful view

Those trails you see are the World Cup Alpine trails. Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin were doing some training runs that day

Banff has a beautiful downtown 

Hotel in the mountains

Grand staircase 

Lake Louise 

Next weekend was much warmer (almost above freezing) so the first races of the season were under way. In the first sprint on Thursday I shot 2-3 (misses) 50% is less than what I would have like to hit but for the first race of the season I’ll take it. On Saturday for the second sprint race I shot another 50%, 4-1. Right after the race I realized I didn’t look at the wind flags while shooting prone so that was the lesson for the day. Standing felt solid. Then for the last race, the mass start, everybody starts at the same time and the first to finish wins. The shooting for the day went 3-1-4-2. Another 50%. My skis were pretty fast so right off the start I moved up to the front (unintentionally) came into the range and had 3 misses. My coach, Seth came out on course and informed me all the misses were close, just to calm down and take good shots. So I did and only had 1 miss and was able to move up to 3^rd or 4^th place. I started getting wrapped up in the race and began to lose shooting focus. That’s where the 4 misses came from. Despite the 50% shooting over the three races I was pretty happy with how the weekend went. I re-learned some valuable lessons you can only learn from racing. And that was the goal of the races. Remember how to race, on the course and on the range. Racing on the range is tricky because you’re not really racing in the “go fast” sense but racing in the “if I do this right I will be a head of those who do it wrong” sense. I was also pretty pleased with my skiing this past weekend. I felt my ski speed was competitive with everybody else in the field. Photos shamelessly stolen from friend Jake Ellingson: (more race photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/105337266@N06/sets/72157649249305869/ )

Start of mass start 

Entering the range during mass start

Right now I am sitting in the Chicago-O’Hare airport on my way to Grand Rapids, Minnesota for IBU Cup Trials. The IBU Cup is like the World Cup minor leagues so qualifying would be a real treat, but will be really tough.

Thanks for reading, I know it was a long post but I hope you were somewhat entertained to see what I was up to. Friend me on Facebook, Follow me on Instagram: @Brhalligan4 and twitter: @bhbiathlon

P.S, in case you missed it here is the MWSC highlight video from Canmore:

Canless? no, Canmore!!!

Quick blog update because I'm here in Canmore, Alberta and I'm having a lot of fun. There was aboot a 4k loop of man made snow until they opened up some more this morning, All in all there is close to 6k of skiing but if you ski it the right way and double up on some trails you can get close to 8k. The whole Candain national team is here so thats cool to ski around with them. But enough of me talking about how awesome Canmore is, see for your self:

Blood, Sweat and Jericho!

As you may recall from my last blog post (which was an eternity ago) I mentioned I was thinking about getting a job, you know just to have some money coming in. After a very short conversation that went something like: “Hey, is the deli hiring?” “Sure, when can you start?” I found myself a new job. The first process of working in the deli was watching hours and hours of safety and instructional videos. Due to the sub-par computers in the back office, the whole video process took about a week, other than three days. Once I was finally able to begin work, I learned to slice meat and cheese on the slicer, skew rotisserie chicken, place bread on a pan, and clean the ovens and coolers. Ok, so the deli isn’t the hardest job in the world but it fits in well with my busy training lifestyle. 

Chickens in a bag of boold and guts

Skewed rotisserie chickens

On the training side of things, I had a pretty busy week by myself in Fort Kent. While pretty much everybody else was out in Utah for a training camp, Mikaela Paluzek (http://mikaelabiathlon.blogspot.com/) and I were back here in the east trying to finish our Over-Distance training in the pouring rain. 

skiing in the rain

And even when it wasn’t raining my rollerskis were refusing to roll. On a ski with the PG boys from Presque Isle, my front left rollerski wheel decided to just stop turning… while I was going down a large hill. Due to quick thinking/natural reaction I was able to twist onto my back and let my drink belt take most of the impact. I was a little cut up on my side and my elbow but I was able to escape with no major injuries.

Battle scars

Ripped my favorite shirt

As the calendar moved into the later part of October, it became time for Jericho part II. The Jericho rollerski races are a set of trial races for USBA to decide the team for the first World Cup in Sweden. I was a very, very, very long shot for qualifying for the team and guess what, I didn’t make it.  But it’s ok because qualifying for the team was not the goal for me. My job at the rollerski races was to begin to get back into race mode and be read to race fast in December.

Bib #1 at Jericho

Upon returning to Fort Kent from Jericho, I will admit was feeling a little unmotivated. Both pairs of my skate rollerskis were delaminating and cracking, my classic skis weren’t rolling (see paragraph 3) and my training boots were being held together by three pounds of duct tape. All this combined with sub-par results in Jericho was making me feel a little depressed and made it tougher to get out the door. But thankfully Mother Nature saw me in my time of need and delivered a much needed gift.

Waking up on November 3^rd to a beautiful coat of white, powdery gold was just the thing I needed to remind me what I’m training for. Although there was only 3 inches (8cm) of snow here in Fort Kent, Presque Isle received close to a foot (30 cm). Instead of going to scheduled team practice up at the 10^th mountain center here in FK I decided to drive down to PI and do some rock skiing on a 2K loop groomed out by my MWSC teammate, Welly Ramsey (http://wellyramsey.blogspot.com/) . Although the trail was groomed with an old snowmobile dragging a palate, it was great to be on skis again!

Beautiful day for a ski!
Me(L) Casey Smith (R)

Olympian Russell Currier 

Welly doing some trail maintenance 

Welly raking off some leaves

Kat Howe skiing on the "Carabou Glacier" 

the "groomer"

Again this year MWSC is doing the Skiers to Schools program. This year, Kelsey Dickinson (http://kelseyjdickinson.blogspot.com/) and I will be visiting 2 schools together, Eagle Lake and Fort Kent Elementary Schools. The first visit to the EL 3^rd grade class was pretty tough. Coming from a school of 2000 kids and class rooms with 30 kids in them, the Eagle Lake School of 7 kids was pretty unusual for me. These kids did not want to talk and really did not care about biathlon. But the FK class on the other hand had about 20 kids who were firing off questions as we were walking in the door. I like visiting the schools because even if I can’t teach anything about biathlon or healthy lifestyles, it at least gives me an opportunity to practice my public speaking.

Kelsey and I at Fort Kent Elementary 

So what’s next for Brian Halligan, you ask? CANMORE! The start of the season! On Wednesday Nov. 12^th I am flying out to Alberta, Canada to ski on the manmade loop they have out there. The rough schedule goes as follows: Canmore to Minnesota (Dec. 14^th to 25^th) to Alaska (Dec.25^th to Jan. 1^st) then back to FK, or who knows where. Unfortunately that means I will be on the road of Christmas, but I guess that’s one of the sacrifices I have to make to achieve my goals!

Friend request me on Facebook. Follow me on Instagram @brhalligan4 and Twitter @bhbiathlon

Oh and I might as well mention something about the Ebola, since it did make world news and kind of put Fort Kent on the map. Just the fact that Kaci Hickox lives in a tiny town up in the northern Maine woods, the same town I live in, a town 3 hours away from everything else is just so ironically funny, it’s hard for me to not laugh.

The scene out side the Ebola house. So many TV cameras

Back in the New York Groove!

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 2^nd 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!

The view of Mt. Marcy from the top of Algonquin

hiking with the Talent ID group

Kind of gotten into taking landscape pictures

The view of the ADKs from up by the jumps

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.

Grammy and Grampie visited me in Lake Placid

Front row for Black 47!

Papa (green shirt to the right (left of the pole)) back stage at Black 47!

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. 

Russian free style skier. 

I caught a sweet picture of Max catching a sweet picture 

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. 

a blast from the past. second from the left, that's 14 year old me.
Saratoga XC '09

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. 

July!

Sorry for the long wait. Here it is! The July Recap Video. Another blog post will come this weekend to wrap up this great time I'm having in Jericho (and that's not sarcastic).

The Names Roy, Brian Roy

Hello, I know it has been a while since my last blog up date, sorry about that. I’ve just been so focused on training. I’ve been having some technical difficulties with my computer lately so I don’t have the End of July video ready yet but it’ll be up soon.

My last post was right after Maine Team Camp in Sugarloaf. The week after that was one of my biggest weeks of the year. 19 hour week was capped off with a camping trip to Kamouraska, Canada. Being right on the St. Lawrence Seaway Kamouraska is a pretty cool place. After running, walking around town and a 5 hour, 78 mile bike ride (my longest ride ever) plus not getting much sleep in that little tent I was pooped.

low tide on the St. Lawrence

My Tent

The campground next to the St. Lawrence

Team bike ride

Luckily the next week was a rest week. A much needed rest week. As opposed to my 19 hour week before this week only required 9 hours of training time. One of the high lights of the week was the week was the Thursday bog run. Unlike the bog in Sugarloaf (Muck, Leaches, disgustingness) this bog had been completely grown over by moss. I’m not sure of the since behind it but the moss had covered all the water, then grew down to the bottom of the lake. So when walking on the moss it felt like a wet trampoline that didn’t bounce back up. The 15 times 15 second intervals on the bog were fun and all but the ultimate Frisbee game at the end was the real highlight. It was soon discovered that hitting the ground didn’t hurt at all so the friendly match turned into full-contact ultimate.

Epic game of chess with Ben Allen (Yellow)

This past week was back to regular training. A bounding workout in Presque Isle that was best summed up by my quote after interval number 6: “when bounding I’m like ‘Yes! Coffee’ but when shooting I’m like ‘Oh no! Coffee’” needless to say I’m still trying to figure out how coffee affects me.

Some County news. The new bridge connecting USA and Canada opened the other day. It now has two way traffic and doesn’t feel like it’s going to collapse any second. This coming week is the World Acadian Congress. I’m not 100% sure what’s going on but what I’ve been able to piece together is hundreds of years ago people from France settled all over the world and once a year they all meet up in a place with Acadian heritage this year for the first time ever it is in the St. John Valley (Fort Kent, Claire, Edmundston, Madawaska and so on). So out of nowhere 3000 (mabye more) French speaking people from all over the world will show up to check out the area and meet their extended family. What does this mean for me? Nothing. I won’t be here (see next paragraph) but one of the families that will be getting together is the Roy family (among the Cyr’s, Daigle’s, Paradi’s, Bouchard’s Michaud’s, Ouellette’s and many more that rule the St. John Valley). My middle name being Roy helps me fit in very well here. Just the other day when signing up for DVD rentals at the grocery store the girl asked to see me drivers license to put my info into the computer, only to find out a few days later she put me in as “Brian Roy” it’s not her fault, Halligan just isn’t very Acadian I guess. If you know more about the Acadian Congress and I'm completely wrong, please let me know.

there are about 100 of these that line Rt.161
 (they don't all say Roy)

Next in my life is the “Tour de North East”. For the next Month and a half I will be driving back and forth between Lake Placid, Jericho, Craftsburry, and Saratoga for various camps and races. But first I will be heading down to Cape Cod to see my mom’s side of the family, the Roy part of me (whom I haven’t seen in two years) I’m excited to see my family and get ready for the Jericho Races.

I’ll try to have the End of July video up by the middle of the week so stay tuned for that (It’s a good one).

Thanks for stopping by. Follow me on Twitter @bhbiathlon and Instagram @bhalligan4. You can also find me on Facebook.

Maine just likes to remind you you're in Maine