Ok I’m no scientist… but I have a feeling gale force winds is exactly what we saw today on the range.

After not making it out of Lake Placid yesterday due to some… wintery conditions.  I hit the road bright and early this morning with the ambition of making it to the first race of North American Championships on time.  It rained until I hit the ferry to Vermont.  The sun came up, the rain stopped.  I sighed a breath of relief that we would have ideal conditions for this mornings sprint race.

Boy was I wrong.

As I pulled into the race parking lot the wind picked up.  And never relented.

The positive?  Everyone was going to struggle on the shooting range today.  You can’t fight the wind.  No matter how hard it pushes you around.  You just sort of have to give into it.  And in many of my fellow competitors cases today… hope something goes down.  Even if it wasn’t the target you were aiming at.

I found myself laughing when I left the shooting mat during zero.  “Honestly!?” I thought.  “This is insane!”  With wind gusts similar to what my team mates saw in Germany last week all I could do is shake my head and hope like any true biathlete…. “Maybe the wind will die down?”  Wishful thinking.

Prone went smoothly.  I was patient and waited out too little gusts, but left the range with only one penalty and feeling pretty good about how things were going.  Standing…man alive, now that is a different story.  The wind was gusting so hard.  I had been told to wait.  To hold out.  To not rush… and so I did just that.  In vain.  Only to leave my mat and slog around the penalty loop over and over again.  Ouch.

Turns out my shooting was pretty much parr for the course today.  Crazy.  But the precious time I wasted hoping I could apparently somehow will the wind to die down… dropped me down the results list.

Skiing went ok.  But going on day 6 of 10 on antibiotics showed a little bit over the course of the race.  Struggling to maintain any semblance of energy and spunk over the last couple kilometers…

But I learned something today.  Sometimes its better to cut your losses and run than try and weather the storm.