With the afternoon off Kelly and I decided to take a stroll into town.  A little lunch of coffee and quiche followed up by what? More coffee and a dangerously large piece of cake.  All rounded up with a little light reading and sunshine!

Thanks to Kelly for letting me borrow her photos!

Oh and a little ps.
I will be attending European Championships as a member of the Junior Team in Ridnaun Italy!!!

Yeah, that me…second from the right…the really short one!

We’ve been in Ruhpolding for a little over 4 days now and its been amazing.  The weather has been incredible, sunny every single day now.  Where is my sunscreen!?   Bavaria has been living up to my expectations.  The people are friendly, the food is delicious, the coffee is bountiful, and the trails are amazing!

Our first day here we went on long classic ski up to the base of an alpine area and around on the touring trails at the top.  There is such an abundance of trails here, it is a dream come true!  We skied around for two hours before grabbing a snack and skiing back down the valley to our van.

The town is adorable with lovely little cobble stone streets and a dangerous supply of cafes and bakeries with outside seating and views of the mountains.  This is what they mean when they say you’re “living the dream.”  I definitely stick out as a waltz around town, thanks to our captain america jackets and my lack of german…  it makes me really want to learn german (put another language on the list!) and as our amazing host at the brandstatter hof say, “Bavarian is very good speak!” I couldn’t agree more.

We’ve skied at the venue a few times already and the place is astounding.  They’ve been working tremendously hard to get the trails ready for Biathlon World Championships that will take place here in March of 2012…and it is incredible!  The stadium is incredible and the trails are both challenging and wonderful.  The course doubles back on itself a lot so virtually everything you ski up you also ski down and they’ve gone big in both directions!  …and just think I’ll be racing a german cup on the future world cup trails this weekend!  The range is sheltered…that or we’ve just had some incredibly tame weather, but in training I’ve been shooting really well here.

I understand why this place is such a biathlon mecca!  We can ski out our front door and ski to really anywhere my heart desires…including other towns, talk about a good trail network.  Every day I see couples and groups slowly meandering their way from place to place, classic touring around through sunny fields and all I think is, “Wow I could really get used to this life style!”  A favorite seems to be the ski to the restraunt, or up the mountain to the beer…  Germans really do have it all figured out.

So World Juniors is finally done and over with.  My first and last World Junior championships… weird.

We finished out the week with a nice little relay.  After borrowing a youth (since there are only two junior women) we were on the start list.  Its the first junior womens relay for the US in three years!

Grace led us off to a great start.  She shot well and fast, only using one spare round and tagged off to Kelly in 5th.  Kelly was a young one to race up and did a good job.  She skied one penalty loop and tagged off to me in the teens somewhere.  I took off about 20seconds down from sweden.  We had awesome skis and I was FINALLY feeling good on my skis even in the slow conditions.  I was making up ground and passing teams.  It was awesome.  Unfortunately as good as my skiing was my shooting was equally terrible.  I ended up skiing 5 penalty loops, which in a relay is really bad….

on the other hand I had the 4th best time on skis and the 3rd best closing lap.

So these championships have been amazing.  I mean there were moments of joy and moments of great disappointment but its been an incredible learning experience that I am very grateful for.  Here are my thoughts.

– My shooting is inconsistent but I do have the ability to shoot well.  and displayed that.  However with work I can gain the skills and confidence to take my performance to the next level.

– My skiing isn’t bad.  I can hold my own with my age group internationally and that is exciting and motivating and really really just really cool!

– I am so ready get better.

We are now in Rupholding, hunkered down with Kelly, Grace, Ethan, Casey, Raleigh, and Ben in germany to get some more races under our belt this upcoming weekend.  We will be racing in a german cup and no one really knows what to expect.  We will have a sprint and a mass start which is really exciting.  I’ve only done one other mass start, but its fun to duke it out on the trail head to head!

From what I glimpsed this afternoon I think I am going to like it here very much.  With an easy classic ski planned for the morning and sun in the forecast life is looking pretty good!

Corrine

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.