The Wohnwagen adventure contiuned down the road from Garmish on to Rupholing. I was excited to have the chance to race in Rupholding for a couple reasons. It is also a huge hub of biathlon. Biathlon seems to be the heart of the town. And it will also be home to the 2012 World Championships. They have changed the race course and are continuing to build MORE buildings around the venue in perperation for this big event next year.
We had a couple of beautiful days of training early on in the week, with cold nights and sunny warm days, making the snow nice and fast in the morning while softening up by the afternoon. Come race day things weren't looking so nice. Our sprint race on Saturday can only be described as wet. It was pretty much pouring rain all night, (which was great to listen to pounding on the roof as we tried to sleep in our little portable home). Things did not get any more dry as the morning went on, so we all just acepted the idea that we were going to stay wet for the next few hours and continued to do our normal prerpartions for the race.
For some unknown reason the officals wanted to spice up our normal sprint race by adding relay rounds into the mix. Relay rounds are three extra rounds most often placed in an extra round holder on the side of each competitors stock. During relays you have to single load each of these rounds to hit any remaining targets left after shooting your normal five shots. It enables you to have a total of eight rounds to hit five targets, so in most cases it is a safe bet that you can stay out of the penalty loop during relays. Our race was an individual sprint race with the addition of these three extra "relay" rounds for each of our two shooting stages. I was happy to have hit nine of my ten shots without any relays. Unfortunatlly I had to use all three of my extra rounds in prone to hit my one missed taret. The rain got to me and very wet hands froze so I struggled a bit with the loading. I wasn't happy with the time loss I took for this, but was very happy to have avoided the penalty loop for the race.
The race field in Rupholding was more on the international side with Great Britan, Norway, Canada and of course the U.S. all having great representation. The twins and I were excited to join up with some of our fellow American's during our time in Rupholding, as part of the U.S. U-26 team was there racing as well. It was great to have a little more company and some additional help on the range and with our skis.
My race on Sunday started off well. It was exciting to jump into a mass start race with so much compeition. We don't have many racing opporutnities like this in our regular season. My skiing continued to go well and stayed right up with everyone until my last stage when I may have had approached the range a bit too hard and found myself shaky and a little on the light headed side while trying to shoot. This is something I don't recomend for anyone! It is not a recipe for good shooting, as I am sure you can imagine.
Over all, the races went very well during my trip and Lanny, Tracy and I faired quite well living and traveling in our little RV for the three or so weeks. Despite one or two cold nights, it was a pretty smooth trip. We never even had to pull the tire chains out! Getting the chance to race internationally like this in biathlon is a priceless oportunity. I feel very lucky to have been able to go on this trip and want to thank everyone who helped support me to help make this trip happen.
Now home again, I am catching with all that I missed while gone. I am excited to move forward with my training and start putting in the work necessary to get myself back to Rupholding next March for World Championships! Can't wait.
cheers,
BethAnn
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