Post U26 Championships

I know my favorite part of reading other peoples blogs is looking at their pictures and unfortunately I don't have very many pictures for this post, so hopefully my many readers (I think that total is up to 5 or 6 now!) are not to disappointed. In Nove Mesto there were three races an individual, sprint, and pursuit and they were a success not only for me but for the entire team, it started out with Anna Kubek placing 6th in the junior women's individual. In the mens 20k individual I placed 22nd with 2 misses which both came in the final stage. This was a solid race that I am happy about but at the same time I am a little bit frustrated because it is the third race this year that I have been unable to close the door in the final shooting stage.

Next was the sprint race which I was nervous about because it was very windy and I wanted to qualify for the pursuit race. Despite the nerves and wind I stayed focused and had good shooting with only one miss in prone I felt good skiing and finished in 30th place 2:12 back from the winner. Similar to the sprint, the pursuit came with lots of wind but my shooting was not as good. I had 5 misses and felt pretty tired skiing because of this I moved back 10 places from 30th to 40th. Despite missing targets and not skiing super fast I was able to ski with people on every lap which is unheard of in any race in North America. Being around other people for the entire race makes it much easier to push myself harder and will defiantly help me racing in the future.

Overall I had lots of fun racing in Nove Mesto!

I am now in Munich where most of the athletes from U26 championships will fly home and I will meet up with some athletes arriving from the US to compete in an Alpen cup and Austrian Nationals. The Alpen cup is in Polkjuka, Slovenia I have never been to Slovenia and am excited to visit a new country.

One more highlight is my 22nd birthday is coming up on February 5th. This will be the 4th consecutive birthday that I have celebrated while racing in Europe.

Gearing up: U26 Championships edition

Last week I met up with the my teammates who will be joining me for the U26 World Championships, they are Wynn Roberts, Jackob Ellingson, Brian Halligian, Paul Everett, Kelsey Dickinson, and Anna Kubek, other then Wynn they are all juniors.  After greeting them at the Munich airport we traveled to Ruhpolding, Germany where we trained for a 5 days and raced in the British Biathlon Championships, it was very slow conditions but made for a good training race. We then drove through a snow storm for 6 hours to get to Nove Mesto na Morave, Czech Republic. I have been here twice before, once in 2011 for the Junior World Championships and once in 2012 for a training camp between the U26 championships and Junior Worlds. Im not exactly sure what it is but I really like coming to Nove Mesto, it is one of my favorite places in Europe, so I am glad to be back.

The skiing is rather limited here with only 2.5km of skiing, for the races we are going to do double ski loops in between shooting. Skiing around the first day there were lots of little rocks in the snow followed by strips of p-tex ski base, hopefully I can get through without my skis getting to beat up.

My first race is Thursday January, 30th it is a 20km individual the sprint and pursuit follow on Saturday and Sunday. Live results and possibly even streaming video can be found on biathlonworld.com the race starts at 1:30 pm CET which is 4:30am Pacific and 7:30am Eastern. I am expecting all of my family and friends on the west coast to get up bright and early so that they can watch the race.

Lanny Barnes in a live interview with CNN after being named to the Olympic team

Hotel Romantika nice rooms good food and sporting both the CZE and US flags

More pictures coming so check back soon!!

Italy

It has been a while since my last blog post and so I am sure that all of my one or maybe even two readers are waiting anxiously. After racing in Minnesota I went back to Maine for Christmas. My mom/Methow Valley Biathlon coach came out to world junior trials a few days early so that she could spend Christmas with me, it was very nice to see her. I was able to watch the first two races of world junior trials for the first time which was quite fun, it is much less stressful when you aren't racing. It was also pretty awesome to see so many of my teammates qualify for world juniors. Paul Everett and Kelsey Dickinson from Methow Valley Biathlon and Maddie Phaneuf, Mikaela Paluszek, Brian Halligan, and Kamran Husain from Maine Winter Sports.

On the day of the last race of world junior trials I left for Italy, it was an uneventful easy trip. Adjusting to the time difference meant about three days of feeling kind of gross but by the time the first race came I was feeling good and ready to go. Overall the races went really well, despite not qualifying for the Olympics feel like I gained lots of valuable experience.

Some highlights of the two weeks were shooting clean in the final sprint race, the first time I have done that in an International competition. Also, probably more significant, I shaved my beard that I had been working very hard on growing for over two months but with fear of looking to clean I left the mustache.

For the upcoming month I have lots of racing to look forward to which I am very excited about! On the 21^st I will be meeting up with some fellow Americans to go to Ruhpolding, Germany to race the British Championships then to Nove Mesto, Czech Republic to race the Open European Championships. After that I will be meeting up with a different crew of Americans to go to Slovenia to race in and Alpen cup race and then to Austria to race the Austrian nationals. Then finally mid February I will return to Maine.  

For the mid week party/tour of the Ridnaun mine we all got torches to carry around.

If only I had my alpine ski...

Some nice fresh powder on a classic ski

IBU cup trials

IBU cup trials are over and they were a success! Four races in five days was pretty brutal but I made it through and managed to win the trials with two sprint victories a second in the mass start and a third in the last sprint. I was happy with my shooting, in the second sprint I shot 0,0 (second clean race ever) and in the mass start I shot 1,0,0,1.

Up next I am off to Italy to race on the IBU cup! These will be my first ever IBU cup races and I am very excited.

Russel and I duking it out in the mass start

On the podium of sprint race #2

MV News

A nice article in the Methow Valley News this week.....
http://methowvalleynews.com/2013/12/06/smith-competes-at-canmore-leads-noram-series/

Canmore

The first on snow skiing I have done this year was in Canmore, Alberta and it was very fun. It's so nice to get off the rollerskis and be back on snow. The first races of the season took place last weekend and again this weekend in Canmore. They went very well for me, I was happy with my skiing and most of my shooting. Last weekend was Noram #1, both Saturday and Sundays races were 10km sprints where I placed 1st and 2nd respectively. This weekend was Noram #2, Saturday was a 20km Individual where I placed 3rd and Sunday was a 10km Sprint where I placed 2nd.

Next I am off to Grand Rapids, Minnesota for the IBU cup/Olympic trials. Those races are December 14-18th.

On top of the podium after Noram #1

The team

Because of all the snow making guns my rifle became so frosty it stopped working

Thanks to Kristin Smith for all the great pictures

Teammate and training partner Raleigh Goessling and I are putting on a masters biathlon clinic this fall in the Winthrop, Washington. Check out our event flyer, Masters Camp.pdf