The final push of the season

The past few weeks I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with my life. I have not been feeling very motivated to train hard and become a better athlete. This season has had lots of ups and downs with both training and racing. I have seen success with qualifying for the IBU Cup in January and having pretty good consistent shooting throughout the year. I contribute almost all of this to the hours I have put in over the years practicing shooting and training mentally to be disciplined and focused. My training has also been successful in ways. I have come back from being in the hospital and unable to sit up in bed to training at an internationally high level. 

I have been struggling this season with my motivation to train and my ski speed. In basically every race I have done I have felt like I have been stuck in 3rd gear and just don't have the ability to go hard and fast and really push it on the skis. This has forced me to question my motivation even more and has made training tough. Training and motivation are pretty closely linked, the more motivated you are the better you train, and as you train better and more you become a faster skier. 

This makes me ask myself what can I do to motivate myself to train more, better, and harder if I want to continue racing? I have also been asking myself is lack of motivation and therefor training entirely the problem with my lack of ski speed? Last spring in my crash I punctured my lung and even though it is now healed it is hard to say if it is or will ever be back to a race performance capacity. 

There is three weeks left in the season and the good news is that I found some, at least, short term motivation by going to Canada and watching three days of World Cup ski racing. Myself and three Craftsbury teammates went to Montreal and Quebec City to cheer on two of our other teammates who were racing. Our teammates racing were Kaitlynn Miller and Ida Sargent, we also enjoyed cheering on the rest of team USA. Overall it was a great event with plenty of excitement and it was tons of fun!

I now have 10 days of training in Craftsbury before I travel back to Quebec City for the Canadian Nationals and then finish the season with the US Nationals in Fort Kent, Maine. My plan is to train and race the best I can through US Nationals.  Then I will travel home to enjoy Spring, my favorite time of the year, and try to figure out what to do with my life and biathlon racing career. 

The Sun set view from our 14th story hotel room in Quebec City

We staked out a place right next to the wall around to city to watch, cheer, and grill for the Sprint day

GRP teammate Kaitlynn Miller racing the sprint qualifier 

One of the women's heats with GRP teammate Ida Sargent

Our spot for the skate pursuit race

Therese Johaug and Hedi Weng two of the best skiers in the world at the front of the race

The home crowd cheering on Canadian Alex Harvey and the Norwegian yellow bib holder Martin Sundby.