So yesterday….yesterday was ugly.  demoralizing.  frustrating.  embarrassing… you get the picture?

Its easy to beat myself up over how things went.  After all I am my own worse critic, with a knack for holding high expectations for myself.  I can’t really help it.  I set my goals high…but I still believe that is where they should be.

Biathlon is rough.  Its two sports, one of which I am still not terribly good at.  My shooting can only be described as sub par and inconsistent.  Things begin to look up.  I shoot 70%-80%, you gain some confidence… and then it all falls apart again.  and you’re sitting there beating yourself up because you think its not suppose to work that way!  But this is biathlon, its just a fact I am going to have to get used to.  And hopefully with a lot more hard work I can watch my shooting improve and perhaps even begin to catch up to that of my much more experienced competitors.

Like I said before yesterdays race was an individual meaning no penalty loops and 1min penalties for missed shots (rough yeah I know, trust me).  Good shooting is imperative and unfortunately I had a really really bad day on the range yesterday. Prone was once again marred by mechanical failure… leaving the range having missed 3 I had to give myself some major pep talks to not quit.  The wind was brutal for us yesterday…so I was not the only one to miss shots, however; for an experienced biathlete it went ahead and highlighted all my flaws.  I came into shoot standing and almost dirtied my targets (to hit zero)  I somehow managed to hit one and left the range at which point I’m sure I looked like I was going to cry…I was definitely thinking about it.  I came back in to hit four (the highlight of my shooting performance) before coming back into the range for my final standing where I would flip and miss four.  It wasn’t pretty.  It wasn’t easy.  and I definitely struggled to keep it together.

I did manage to somehow pull out a good ski time…one good enough that if I had shot even just 60% (something I am more than confident that I can do) I would have found myself nestled well into the top 30.  bummer.  yeah okay so, word of advice, don’t miss 12 targets.

On the plus side my next individual can only get better.  Being at the bottom isn’t fun but there’s alot of hope getting to look up.

We got to keep our bibs from the individual.  My bib of shame will be great fuel for those days where I think, “do I really have to dry-fire?”  The answer is yes. yes I do.