In years past Jericho has been just that.  A black hole.  As you approach the Ethan Allen training center your cell phone service dwindles down to nothing.  You can get internet if you sit just right on the steps of the public library and there aren’t more than three computers fighting over the signal.  It was always that dark place that we would journey to once a summer to meet up with fellow biathletes from all over the country.  You camp out on your bunk bed.  You battle the heat and the humidity.  Its a standard I’ve learned to accept and expect.

This year it isn’t much different… its not the annual flocking of athletes quite yet, that will be in a few weeks still.  For now its just the national team.  We aren’t staying in the traditional barracks either.  We are in a different building that is a little more dormitory styled with two or three of us to a room.  There is carpeting!  You know…the essentials.  I was surprised however when I went upstairs to our little kitchen last night and found a TV.  …that works!  Not that we spend all our free time glued to it.  It just seems so out of place compared to the picture of a “Jericho experience”.  Caught a little golf.  A little news.  Who knows, maybe we will even catch some of the USA vs. Japan game this weekend!!!

We had our first little time trial this morning.  It was hot and didn’t feel especially great, but I survived.  Cleaning my very last stage of the mass start might have been the only thing that got me through that last loop.  But I made it.  It wasn’t pretty.  It wasn’t perfect.  …it wasn’t awful either.  Another one tomorrow morning, so I’ll just keep plugging along.