I love Anthlolz!

At the moment I’m in Bavaria, staying in a small town near Garmisch, where I’m winding down and resting up after an amazing week of racing on the World Cup!

The tour first started out in Germany, where we raced World Cup #5 in Ruhpolding. Biathlon in Germany is extremely popular and the fan base is enormous. With it being the most popular sport in the country, the German athletes are huge icons. This was my first time racing at a World Cup in Germany and it was quite the experience. All of our competitions took place at night under bright lights, and racing in front of 25 000 intense fans made for a pretty cool vibe and some fun racing. You know it’s going to be an epic day with the fans when you arrive at the venue to the smell of beer and Bratwurst thick in the air. The smell of beer I can deal with, but my lungs definitely did not enjoy the cigar smoke that wafted over parts of the course, causing you to be short of breathe for the few seconds it took to pass through. If you were ever skiing near or shooting at the same time as a German athlete, good luck being able to hear anything. The roar from the fans was so intense that you could feel the sound resonate through your body! As for our performances during this World Cup, most of the team had a bit of a frustrating week finding our form, myself included. I was skiing well, but it doesn’t matter how fast you ski because when the shooting isn’t there, the good results won’t be either.

Racing the Relay in Ruhpolding.

From Germany we drove three hours to Antholz, Italy, where World Cup #6 would be taking place four days later. Situated in a mountain valley, Antholz is home to one of my favorite venues on the World Cup circuit. The stadium is awesome, the trails have nice flow, good snow is always a guarantee, the weather is amazing with sun most days, and the cuisine is stellar with four course meals!

The racing here went extremely well for me and I finally had the results I’ve been waiting for. While training during the week I put a lot of focus into my shooting and was able to sort things out on the range. The other aspects of my training felt pretty good as well and I was looking forward to racing. The competition kicked off last Thursday with a 20km Individual race. The race went awesome. I felt relaxed on my skis and skied at a fast yet comfortable pace that I was able to maintain for the duration of the 20km. In the range I felt focused and confident. The shooting conditions were tricky with inconsistent wind, but I managed to stay assertive while shooting and ended the day in 19th place, my best result ever on the World Cup! Placing in the top 20 was a huge result for me and I proved to myself that I am able to compete and put up a fight with the best athletes when things are going well for me.

Racing in Antholz - Photo courtesy of Michel van Balkum

Saturday’s 10km Sprint race also went quite well. I woke up feeling a little low on energy and tired, but as the day progressed I gradually began to feel more awake. I was skiing well, shot clean in my first prone bout and was having a great race, but two penalties in standing dropped me back to 34th at the finish. All things considered it was a very respectable race for me. I was happy with my result and looking forward to Sunday's Pursuit race.

Leading into Sunday’s race things felt normal. I had a routine Zero and my warm-up for the race felt typical – nothing special, just OK. Because it was a Pursuit race the start is based off of the previous days Sprint race results. The winner from the previous day starts first and all the other athletes’ start according to what their time behind the winner was. I was starting the race in the 34th place, 1:25 behind the lead.

Training in Italy - Photo courtesy of Michel van Balkum

As soon as I left the start gate I found myself in a pack with three or four other guys. The pace was fast but I was feeling awesome, and thanks to our wax techs, my skis were bombing. I cleaned my first two prone bouts and was steadily working my way up the field. When I came in to shoot my first standing I was in 20th place and had 1 miss. My skiing was strong though and I continued to move up in the rankings. When I came into the range for my final bout of shooting I was in 13th place. Normally in a situation like this I would begin to feel very stressed, but today this was not the case. I felt extremely relaxed. I came into the range, stepped onto lane 13 and noticed that almost everyone ahead of me was still in the range. I dropped my poles, took my rifle off my back, and then my mind shut off. I left the range with one more miss standing. I cruised around the penalty loop and then once on course I lay the hammer down. I knew it was a tight race and that there was a pack of guys in hot pursuit of me. I didn’t want to be leading these guys so I did my best to put a bit of a gap early on in the loop and began to push the pace as much as my body would allow. It hurt like hell but I didn’t care. I was too focused on my skiing to think about the pain. For the rest of the loop I was slowly gaining on a pack ahead of me, and with about 400m to go I was caught by a Russian. We sprinted to the finish and just caught up to the back of the pack that was ahead of us as we lunged at the line. I looked up at the scoreboard to see that I had made up 20 places and finished in 14th!!! By far my best race on the World Cup to date! I also posted the second fastest ski time of the day which was an awesome bonus… 3 seconds off of the lead pace!

The Grande stand in Antholz.

It was an amazing race. I felt like a machine while skiing, but felt very focused and relaxed on the range. I’ve trained hard this year while working a lot on all aspects of my training, so to have it pay off with a result like this is an incredible feeling and an experience I will never forget. Antholz was also the last World Cup stop before the Olympics; so to have my three best results at this World Cup is definitely a confidence booster heading into the Games!


Cheers!

Brendan

I'm back! - Life from September to December...

I’m back! One of my New Year’s resolutions is to blog more regularly, so here’s my attempt at keeping that resolution. I suppose I’m a bit late but I haven’t had much down time lately!

Since the end of September I’ve been on the road with only a few short breaks back in Canmore to re-energize in-between training camps or racing tours. Three weeks in the Fall were spent training on the Dachstein glacier in Austria. Here we were able to put in a solid amount of high volume days skiing at altitude while being able to roller ski and do intensity at a lower elevation in the town of Ramsau, where we also stayed.

Skiing on the Dachstein glacier... it was a bad summer for snow but the track held up alright most days.

Ramsau seemed to be the land of miniature animals. A pony chillin' halfway up a mountain that I came across during a run.

The view from a Tea House during a run.

After a big few weeks of laying down some solid training hours it was back to Canmore for a high intensity block. Almost all of these hard sessions took place on the roller ski treadmill at the University of Calgary. We’ve done a similar format of max intervals over the last two years, which seem to produce a positive response from my body, although these workouts are always guaranteed to be some of the most grueling training sessions of the year. Mentally being able to deal with the pain that you know you’re about to endure on the treadmill is half the battle.
Upon our return from Austria we were also able to continue our skiing on snow at the Canmore Nordic Centre. During some abnormally cold weather in October, enough man-made snow was blown to form a small training loop (about 700m if you skied it in a figure 8) in the cross-country stadium.

Grindin' away on the treadmill.

I spent my birthday at the beginning of November packing to leave the following day for what turned out to be an epic training camp in Silver Star, BC. They received some early snow that made for absolutely wicked skiing. While most athletes were training on the mind numbing hamster loop back in Canmore, our team was able to take advantage of over 50km of perfectly groomed trails that we could ski at our leisure just a few steps from our hotel. During our time here our schedule literally consisted of training, eating, and sleeping. The camp quickly became nick named the high-high-high camp, because of the volume of hours, the amount of intensity, and the altitude at which we were training. I was feeling pretty wicked all week with the exception of the last two days where all of a sudden I hit a wall and felt pretty cooked. I backed off on the intensity for the last two days and was able to recover a bit before heading back to Canmore. In the last 7 days we trained 25 hrs and averaged one hard intensity session a day ranging from ski strength, to time trials, to 20km of sub race pace. I left Silver Star feeling pretty bagged but happy with the training I was able to complete and the level of quality and focus in which I was able to accomplish it.

Scott's body starting to let him down after a tough week of training! (The photo was actually staged... as usual Scott trained like an animal during our stay in Silver Star.)

After a short break back in Canmore to unpack, do laundry, and repack, I was on the road again, this time to Sweden were we would kick off our World Cup season. The travel as usual was long, but when we arrived at our final destination in Brusksvallarna, we were greeted with lots of snow and pretty sweet conditions. We trained here for about a week before driving to Ostersund a couple of days before our first race. After three races in Sweden we flew to Munich and then drove to Hochfillzen, Austria for World Cup #2. I got sick with a cold the day after our arrival in Austria which I was pretty bummed out about. I had a couple days to take it easy before our next races and I did my best to recover as much as possible in that given time. We had to race three days in a row, which is punishing on the body, but I managed to do all right despite feeling pretty terrible and low on energy the whole week. On top of racing sick which is never any fun, it didn’t help that conditions were tough and slow with either fresh snow or rain during our races and training. Our last World Cup stop on tour before Christmas was in Pokljuka, Slovenia. It was my first time in Slovenia which was fun and despite feeling tired from all the racing I was finally more or less over my cold which I was stoked about. I was feeling good about the week and had some decent performances in the cold temperatures and strong wind, which made the racing tricky.

The veiv from our hotel room window in Bled, Slovenia.

Boats along the lake.

After 30 days on tour and 9 races in 18 days, I was in big need of some rest and recovery and was soon on a plane back to Canada for Christmas! I was tired, of course from all of the racing, but also in large part I think due to jetlag. In all my years of travel I have never experienced it this bad. In the first ten days of tour I averaged maybe four hours of sleep a night. I felt like a Zombie. I started sleeping a little better after about two weeks but my body never seemed to really adjust throughout the whole duration of the tour. I didn’t have one solid sleep during the entire 30 days and nothing I did seemed to make a difference. I pulled out all the stops… Melatonin, Litebook, sleeping pills, and deep relaxation breathing but nothing really helped. Not seeing the sun most days in Sweden definitely didn’t help the situation, but I was sure that things would improve once we arrived in central Europe where we would see more sun. Guess I was wrong!

Travel home was hectic and stressful as it always is during Christmas but it was nice to get back to Canada and relax, even if I didn’t get my bags until 5 days after I arrived. For the first time I decided to spend Christmas in Canmore away from family. It was a tough decision to make but I think it was the right one with the Olympics not far away. This way I was able to minimize travel and get in some solid training during the short break I had. Christmas turned out to actually be pretty busy and I was not lonely at all thanks to the amazing generosity of friends in Canmore!

In reflecting upon my pre-Christmas tour, I am satisfied with how things went. These were the last three World Cups that would fall within our Olympic qualification time period, so it was obviously a very stressful tour to say the least. The men were fighting hard for one of the four Olympic spots by either trying to maintain and add to previously met criteria, or by trying to finish off partially met criteria. There were some extremely stressful moments but there were also some great results produced from the team. For myself, I didn’t have any really amazing performances, but I was consistent which is a good thing. I started in all nine races, was consistently placing within the top 60 with my top result being 46th, and I qualified for both pursuit races. With Olympic qualification on everyone’s mind, I think I was able to stay focused and raced respectable given the circumstances.

Adjusting my visor during the Sprint in Hochfillzen... It iced up and got pretty hard to see during the race. Photo credit - Christian Manzoni.

Racing World Cup #2 in Hochfillzen. Photo credit - Christian Manzoni.

I am now in Europe again and just finished yesterday racing at the ‘Super Bowl’ of biathlon, World Cup #5 in Ruhpolding, Germany. More to come on that later though because I’m starting to feel carsick… At the moment I am sitting in the back of our van driving over the Brenner Pass on our way to Antholz, Italy, for World Cup #6, which will start on Thursday with a 20km Individual race for the men.

Cheers!

Brendan

Trials Recap (from early September)

After a very tense four days of racing and a stressful few weeks leading up to trials, I am happy to report that I’ve qualified as one of four men who will represent Canada on the first World Cup tour! As I mentioned in my previous post, I knew I had done all the hard work necessary to perform well, it was now just a matter of executing under pressure. I’m not the biggest fan of having trial races on roller skis in September (for a number of reasons I won’t get into) but it’s been the norm for the last few years now and I’m learning to accept and deal with it.

Three races were held over four days and a percent ranking of the best two races were counted towards team selection. Thursday’s 10km Sprint race was the start to the week I had been hoping for and I finished up the day in third. I had a solid performance on the shooting range hitting 9/10 targets and I felt decent on my skis. I didn’t have a stellar day on the skis but I felt fairly strong and conservative, and figured that I had enough energy left in the tank to be able to increase my ski speed as the week went on.

Shortly after starting the Pursuit race

Friday’s 12.5 km pursuit race was a little tougher on the range for most of the athletes in the lead pack. I had a mediocre shooting day with 6 misses, but I skied well posting one of the faster ski times to tie for a fourth place finish. Percents were tight with three spots on the team still up for grabs, and it was now obvious that the final race on Sunday would be the deciding factor.

Cresting the last climb before entering the range

I took Saturday chill and did some easy training while trying to relax as much as possible. I knew that I needed a strong result on Sunday but I tried not to stress or think about it too much. Sunday’s 15km mass start format turned out to be a fun and very tight race. Three of us skied almost the entire race together, which was exciting, but in turn added quite a bit of pressure on the range. I took my time shooting standing, as I knew I had to focus on hitting the last ten targets if I wanted stay in the race and have a chance at the win. I definitely sacrificed some time in the range in the final two shooting bouts, but I think it was necessary and I crossed the line finishing second behind Robin Clegg, who had an extremely fast and clean last shooting bout, allowing him to cruise to victory.

Final shooting bout in the Pursuit - All photos courtesy of Tom Zidek

It was a feeling of relief when I crossed the finish line in that final race, as I knew I had qualified for the World Cup, and could now decompress and relax a bit before switching my focus to preparing for this Winter.

Brendan

Skiing the Haig

Last week the team spent a few days at altitude skiing on the Haig glacier in Kananaskis. I was a little skeptical of heading to altitude a week before our first World Cup trial races, but looking back I think it was alright. We were there mainly for altitude exposure, and being able to log some hours on skis in early September was a bonus. Conditions were marginal and the snow was going fast, but we still managed to get in some good days of training.

If anything, it was just nice to get away from Canmore for a few days to have a change of pace. Tension among athletes on the range has been growing steadily the last couple weeks with Trials just around the corner, so I think a mental break was good and what my coach had in mind. We had lots of time to relax between workouts, and were able to take our mind off the stress of Trials while chillin' on the lunar landscape that is the Haig camp.

Training at altitude can have negative effects on the body if done wrong, so I was very careful and diligent to not overdo any workouts and took it pretty easy. Since returning back to Canmore I’ve been fine tuning for this week's competitions, which begin tomorrow. I’m ready to race – I’ve trained hard over the Spring and Summer and I am confident I have done all the work necessary to perform well this week. Let the Trials begin! I’ll try and post regularly over the next few days to let everyone know how things are going.

Brendan

The Haig camp.

Hiking up to the glacier for some early morning skiing with Robin, Tom, and Joel.

The 'tongue' of the glacier.


Post ski on a sunny morning.


Finished training and getting ready for the hike back to camp.


Trekking across the glacier while trying not to slip on the ice. In addition to the ice, some fairly big crevasses started opening up on day two that required some caution while crossing.


Post training hike back to camp.

Up Here

An interview from Up Here magazine that appeared in their June edition. (If you click to make the image larger it should be possible to read!)

- Brendan

Day of rest...

It's Sunday, my day of rest. I've got a fresh pot of licorice tea brewing, Bob Marley is keeping things chill on iTunes, and I've decided I'm overdue for a blog post. I just finished watching Usain Bolt crush his previous world record and run 9.58 seconds at the World Athletic Championships in Berlin. It blows me away how someone can be so confident and relaxed, at such a major championship so early in their career. The contrast between Bolt and Tyson Gay was interesting to watch on the start line. The tension and stress in Gay was obvious next to the relaxed and entertaining Bolt, who was confident in his ability to dominate while having fun in the process. If you haven’t already seen the race, be sure to check it out. It’s inspiring.

Out of curiosity I was looking through my training diaries earlier today to look at how much intensity we've been doing. Intensity has been the name of the game this Summer, so I decided to tally it up, and so far I've logged 20 hrs of Z3 intensity and 5.5 hrs of Z4, with plenty more to come! It’s been good though and training has been going as planned during the last month and a half.

Shortly after my last post we started up a testing week. These field tests are done twice every year, once early on in the Summer and once in the Fall, to give us an idea of where our fitness is at. The week consisted of two shooting tests combined with an uphill run up Sulphur Mountain, an uphill roller ski up Mt. Norquay, and an uphill double pole test. These tests and races went well and I am pretty happy were my fitness is at the moment. A more detailed description of the tests as well as results can be found on the following link to Scott Perra's blog.
http://blogs.fasterskier.com/scottperras/2009/07/13/rocky-mountain-testival/

Nothing too exciting has been going on lately... The hard intensity continues, and my body seems to have its ups and downs (along with the weather!) as to how its been handling these training loads. I’ve been feeling pretty good for the most part, although these last few weeks have been fairly tough and at the moment I’m feeling pretty tired! We’ve upped the amount of Zone 3 and 4 intensity training over the last couple weeks which has been challenging, but I’m looking forward to my upcoming week of training which will be more volume oriented. We’ve also done a couple of time trials now (15km Mass start and 10km Sprint) which have been useful in getting me dialed for our upcoming Trial races in September, which are fast approaching.

I’ll leave you all with a couple of pictures. Unfortunately, I left my camera behind on a lot of our more scenic roller skis as well as a pretty fun 5 hr mountain bike ride up Skogan and Jewel pass. I’ll have to remember to bring it along more often.

-Brendan

Nearing the end of the 8km Canada Day Race - I was lucky enough to win this race for the second year in a row! Photo - Scott Perras

During a few days off at the end of July a few of us hiked in to Fortress Lake for some camping. We got rained on pretty hard and had a close encounter with lightning, but the great fishing more than made up for any bad weather.


The team doing interval training on Mt. Norquay. Photos - Tom Zidek

May & eary June - Transition into training...

This entry should have been posted about a month ago as it has been sitting on my desktop for a while now. I finally got around to finishing it today.

Since the beginning of May I’ve been back in training mode and have been logging quite a few hours. I spent the first few days of my training in quite a lot of pain as my body transitioned from skiing on snow to the dry land training we will be doing over the coming months. I could barely walk for two days after my first session of lifting weights, and suffered for another day or two after transitioning into other dry land activities such as long runs, and the first few hrs on the road bike saddle. Over the next week or two my body slowly adapted and my muscles are no longer in a constant state of stiffness, but are now ready to face this summer’s training full on!

In addition, we’ve also recently started up our first high intensity block and have been pounding out intervals on what seems like a daily basis! I knew I was in for tough couple weeks when I received my latest training plan and opened it up only to be greeted with an abundance of daily workouts printed in red font. To my teammates and I, this red print only means one thing - intensity! I knew what I was in for however, and have been feeling pretty good during the intensity sessions over the last two weeks.

Highlights from the last little while of training included some of the following….


Skiing in Sunshine

Late May provided some of the best skiing I’ve had all year. The snow was long gone in Canmore, but at 2000+ meters there was still a ton of it. The alpine meadows on top of Sunshine had the best crust skiing I have ever experienced and provided endless hours of it. On one of our last 3 hr workouts up at Sunshine we were able to ski all the way into Assiniboine Provincial Park, and turned around only when the trees limited us from going any further. It was fun to ease into training again by having the opportunity to ski on snow and we were also able to take in the benefits of training at altitude.

Scott Perras on our ski into Mt. Assiniboine Provincial Park

A picture of the scenery with a couple skiers in the distance - Photo from Scott Perras blog http://blogs.fasterskier.com/scottperras/

Sport North Awards Banquet

Towards the end of May I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in Yellowknife during the annual Sport North Awards Banquet. This year I had the honor of accepting the Male Athlete of the Year award along with cross country skier Mike Argue. It was fun to get a chance to chat with other athletes and acquaintances who were at the banquet, as well as visit with my parents who drove from Hay River for the occasion.

Myself and Mike Argue

Testing @ UofC

During the first week of June we spent a day with sports physiologists at the University of Calgary doing field tests. The morning started out with blood testing followed by body composition testing. These tests are done to monitor change in the body. I have records of these tests dating back to four or five years, and variances from my normal numbers provide insight into how my body is responding to my training load. They can also provide early warning signs of sickness or over training.

After getting some time to eat and digest I was back in the lab and on a running treadmill to perform a cardiac output test. This test measures the stroke volume of the heart, which is the amount of blood pumped from the heart per contraction. The more blood you can pump per contraction the better, as it will help all systems in your body be more efficient when under the stress of racing. This was my first time doing this particular test and it will be used as a baseline for comparison in testing later on.

In the afternoon I was in the Olympic Oval, which is home to the roller ski treadmill. Here the team was doing Incremental testing, which determines roughly what our individual target heart rates are for training in each particular zone. It was a long day in Calgary with a couple hard intensity sessions, but it was worthwhile as the information gained from these tests is quite useful.

Mid-way through the cardiac output test - Not the most comfortable test to do with all the equipment that your hooked up to. The tubes are used to measure gas exchange as well as input gas at different points throughout the test. Photo courtesy of Scott Perras.

On the treadmill.

Riding it up in the Kootenay’s

During the second week of June we kicked off our first training camp of the year in Revelstoke. Mt. Revelstoke once again provided an awesome opportunity for roller skiing, as the 25km climb with 1200m of elevation gain is tough to beat when a long and punishing workout is on the plan. From Revelstoke we road biked through the Kootenay’s towards Nelson and then headed back to Revelstoke for another session on the mountain before heading back to Canmore.

Our short four day camp consisted of the following –

Day 1 – AM - Drive to Revelstoke
PM - Roller ski up Mt. Revelstoke w/t 30 min of high end Zone 3

Day 2 – 152km ride from Nakusp to Nelson along the Slocan Valley – Just over 5hrs of riding.

Day 3 – 168km ride from Nelson to Nakusp via Caslo and New Denver – 5hr 40 min of riding. An awesome ride that I would highly recommend.

Day 4 – AM – Ski striding up Mt. Revelstoke w/t 40 min of continuous Zone 3
PM - Road ride from Radium along highway 40 / drive back to Canmore

Mid-way through our ride in Caslo.
Waiting for the ferry on our way back to Revelstoke.