Hello from Yong Pyong!

Well, after a 10hr plane trip and a 3hr bus ride from the Inchon Airport near Seoul, we arrived in the Yong Pyong Winter Resort. The Greenpia Hotel will be home for the next 3 weeks while we prepare and race during the World Championships. The resort we are at is like a miniature Whistler and made entirely with tourists in mind. Apart from the ski hills, other winter attractions include a 400m snowmobile course and ice fishing in a nearby pond. These activities are definitely not authentic over here, but pretty hilarious to watch, especially if you come from the North!

The Greenpia Hotel will be our home for the next three weeks.

The venue is located about a 5min bus ride from our hotel and has been a hot topic of discussion amongst the teams since our arrival. Simply put, the trails are very challenging. The up hills are frequent and each one is long and very steep. Following the giant climbs are technical and super sketchy down hills. They wouldn’t be so bad under normal conditions, but the snow conditions here are a little adverse. All the snow is manmade and the temperature climbs to well above zero every day. With the exception of the Individual competition all our races will take place at night under flood lights and the last few days we’ve been training at night during the same time we’d be racing. By the time the men start training the temperature begins to drop, and the slush during the women’s training just a few hours before is turned to solid ice. Huge ruts on the down hills form and things start to get intense. Every night during dinner you hear of one or two epic crashes from the day and can see the fresh carnage walk through the door which is usually in the form of a scraped up face. The other day my team mate Scott had an impressive crash that definitely took the cake for wipeouts during that nights training! As a team we were skiing the down hills together trying to come to a conclusion about the best lines to take during the competitions. On the last downhill into the range we were skiing down single file with decent speed, and Scott who was third in line started to gain a bit on JP who was just ahead of him. He took an inside line that was a bit tighter to avoid having to slow down, shifted his weight slightly before entering the turn, caught an edge, and then went over the tips of his skis where he literally became airborne. He had nice Superman like form while flying through the air a few feet off the ground, until he came down for an extremely hard landing. Robin and I were skiing behind him and witnessed the whole event. When we skied back over to him I was positive bones were broken as Scott was lying on the ground in a slightly contorted position and in a lot of pain. After the whole ordeal was said and done, and after he came out of what appeared to be some state of shock, he luckily only walked away with a sprained hand and some scrapes and bruises. Initially it looked like it was going to be much worse.

As you can see, there is not a lot of snow...Part of why the course is so sketchy!

While out for a run one day I came across this exercise equipment in the middle of the forest.

Couple conditions like this with the so far typical 8 click wind on the range and we have our work cut out! I can say though that things have improved over the last couple days and the conditions on the course have gotten a lot better and more reasonable. This was until today’s rain storm. It’s been pouring rain all day which is doing a lot of damage to the snow on the course. The winds were also gusting up to 50km/hr last night which also took its toll on the snow. I was up at the venue just a couple hours ago to do some dry firing and when I walked through the stadium all that remains is a sheet of ice with a giant puddle in the middle. I guess conditions over the rest of the course are similar. The rain continues to come down in sheets but apparently the organizing committee has been trucking in snow to the venue since four o’clock this afternoon. There will be a meeting early tomorrow morning to decide whether or not the race will go ahead or be postponed a day so that more work can be done on the course. There is a lot of pressure for it to be a go, especially with all the TV networks that will be airing the races live. I’m sure the organizing committee will be working hard over night to try and make things happen.

Let’s hope the weather turns around so that we can race!

During the rain storm the downhill ski stadium slowly turned into a massive puddle.

World Cup #6 - Antholz, Italy

My last race during Trials was on Sunday. On Monday I spent the day scrambling to get packed and organized because by Tuesday morning I was on my way to the airport to catch a flight from Calgary to Munich via Frankfurt. It was a stressful couple of days as it took a while to sort out logistics of where I was going and exactly what I was doing. All I knew was that I would be leaving to Italy and would be racing a World Cup Sprint on Friday. I didn’t find out my flight time until late Monday night, wasn’t able to pick up my ticket until Tuesday morning just before I left, and I wasn’t exactly sure how was I going to get from Munich to Italy.

Everything sorted itself out in the end. Our massage therapist picked me up at the airport in Munich and we drove through Germany and Austria to Italy where I met up with the rest of the team. The next day during official training I did some easy training to familiarize myself with the venue and to try and jump start my body which was tired after two long days of travel. 48 hours after arriving to Europe, I was on the start line to race the 10km Sprint. Ideally it would have been nice to have a bit more time to recover before jumping into race, but I skied surprisingly well and shot respectable (8/10) to finish in 56^th out of 114 competitors. This was my best race so far out of my short stint on the World Cup circuit and finishing in the top 60 and being able to qualify to start in the Pursuit is a big step forward in the right direction.

18,000 fans cheering from the grande stands in the stadium.

On Saturday I woke up feeling fairly tired, but I managed to put together another solid race and moved up 9 spots to finish in 48^th. Antholz is at altitude which I find for me makes the shooting a lot more difficult due to taking in less oxygen with each breath compared to at a lower elevation. I had to take my time in the range which I think turned out to be smart decision as decent shooting (I hit 16/20) definitely helped to move me up in the ranks. I felt more tired on my skis during the Pursuit. In a Pursuit race the athletes start at the same time interval that they finished behind the leader in the previous days Sprint race. So, the leader from the Sprint race would start first and if second place finished 5 seconds behind first place the previous day, then that athlete would start 5 seconds behind the leader in the Pursuit. This continues until the top 60 athletes are out on course and results in sort of a ‘cat and mouse’ type race where everyone is trying to chase down the leader in front of them. Because everyone starts so close together the skiing gets quite competitive and the pace on the first lap is absolute hell! I was just able to hang on to the pace on the first lap, and skied a lot stronger with each lap as the race went on. Racing in Atholz was a lot of fun. The venue is amazing and racing in front of 18,000 roaring fans is an experience I won’t soon forget!

Early on in the Pursuit in Antholz, ITA

It was a really fun experience and although I was feeling quite tired there were a lot of positive’s from those two days of racing. The biggest highlight was qualifying for my first Pursuit race on my first available chance to do so while on the World Cup! Secondly, I was able to have decent results in the shooting range given the altitude, and thirdly, even though I wasn’t feeling in 100% physical shape, I was able to actually ski quite competitively and was skiing within the top 50 for both races which was good.

After the races were over I took a day off to recover and then it was back to training to do some high volume days at higher altitudes (2000 m) before going Ruhpolding, Germany for a mini-camp before heading off to Korea. Training in Ruhpolding started out great. We were able to put in a lot of shooting volume and did a few hard intensity sessions. On Sunday however, I woke up with a bad sore throat and pounding headache, only to spend the next few days in bed and in quarantine while I did everything I could to try and speed recovery. This was done by trying to get as much rest as possible, hydrating with tea and water to the point where I felt like a fish, and by taking regular dosages of Cold FX, oregano oil, and other vitamins.

Feeling slightly better by Wednesday, we drove to the airport in Munich where we boarded a plane and were on our way to Korea. Adios Europe!

A photo from one of our high altitude workouts in the Italian Dolomites.

I know...Long Overdue!

This post brings you up to date on the more exciting details about what exactly I've been up to this since my last entry.

Roller ski Trials

When I left off on my last post I was gearing up for our trial races which would take place while racing on roller skis.  Canmore would be host to the North American Summer Biathlon Championships and 3 races over the course of 4 days would determine the athletes that would take part in the early season pre-Christmas tours to Europe.  Having trial races on roller skis (for upcoming races that will be on snow) creates quite a bit of controversy among the athletes as roller skiing isn’t quite the same as skiing on the real white stuff. Another way to look at it is if skiing on snow is 100% efficient, than other types of training that although close, will not be as efficient.

The races were stressful and I didn’t have stellar performances over the course of this competition, but I performed well enough and qualified as the 4^th man selected for the IBU Cup tour in December.

 

A new definition of PAIN!

I mentioned in my last post that we had been visiting the Olympic Oval in Calgary from time to time to make use of the new treadmill that is being used by the national speed skating and ski teams.  The machine is basically identical to a running treadmill but is much larger and more powerful.

Warming up on the treadmill (the Olympic Oval can bee seen in the reflection from the mirror).

While waiting for the snow to fall in Canmore, we made frequent trips into Calgary to take advantage of the treadmill and do a series of extremely gruelling and punishing VO2 Max interval sessions.  The treadmill is extremely useful as you can ski and be monitored under a controlled setting which is difficult to do on snow.  The speed and grade can be changed at the push of a button and there’s no cheating or easy way out for the athletes.  Either ski the speed the belt is moving or you’ll face the consequence and find yourself dangling from a safety harness suspended from the ceiling!

A typical V02 Max session during this period of training was in a pyramid form and went as follows:

3% grade – 22km per/hr – Two skate

6% grade – 18km per/hr – One skate

14% grade – 11km per/hr – Off set

14% grade – 11km per/hr – Off set

6% grade – 18km per/hr – One skate

3% grade – 22km per/hr – One skate

The intervals were a max out effort and extremely hard to complete.  Lactates (determining what level of stress the body is under by measuring the amount of lactic acid in the blood) were taken halfway through the session and I set a new lactate record for myself of 16.0. This is very high for a guy with a relatively low lactate curve!  I don’t think I have ever been in this much physical pain while training, but it was motivating to learn that I am able to push myself to this type of limit and know that even when I think I have nothing left in the tank, I can always dig a little deeper.

What happens when the treadmill picks up speed a little too fast!

Where’s the snow?

We experienced an unusually warm October and early November here in Canmore which is a skier’s nightmare.  At this time of the year the dry land training has taken its toll and we are extremely eager to transfer our training over to snow.  There was little to be found anywhere in the country and after our early season ski camp to Silver Star got rained out, I made the journey to the only place in Canada where there was decent snow; home!

I arrived in Hay River around the 10^th of November for 10 days and made use of the excellent snow conditions to prepare myself for the race season which was quickly approaching.  I had the entire trail system to myself most days and trained on my own which gave me the opportunity to fine tune areas of my skiing and shooting that I felt needed work.  The only downside was the weather.  Soon after my arrival temperatures dropped after they had been very moderate during the three weeks prior to my arrival.  It was my fault for not jumping on plane sooner, but I still managed to achieve what I had come for; excellent early season skiing!

 

NorAm Cup #1

I arrived back in Canmore just in time for the North American Cup #1 which would serve as my first official competition of the winter season.  I had strong performances in both races with great skiing and decent shooting.  I finished Saturday’s race in 3^rd place and would have been on the podium the next race as well, but instead found myself disqualified after Sunday’s Individual race due to accidentally skiing part of the course wrong.  I wasn’t too worried as I still had a solid race, and the competition served its purpose as a tune up before heading to Europe. 

Racing in the NorAm Cup#1 - Canmore, AB

 

Off to Europe!

Six days following my first races of the winter, I was on my way to Europe on my first tour of the season to take part in a series of International Biathlon Union races.  Our first stop was in Obertilliach, Austria to race in the IBU Cup #2.  An internal selection process within the Canadian team would also take place during the early stages of this tour to select the top two men from our tour to join the team on the World Cup circuit.  Entering into the first IBU Cup race I was ranked second Canadian.  After a strong performance in Saturday’s 20km Individual race I crossed the line in 25^th out of 132 competitors shooting 16/20 while putting in a solid effort on the skis.  This result sealed the deal and I was on my way to race in my first World Cup!

 

Obertilliach, Austria - In the two days leading up to the the first race it snowed non-stop.  When the storm was over, a total of 1.5 meters of fresh powder had accumulated.  This made for extremely soft trail conditions during our first competition and resulted in one of the hardest 20km races I have ever done!

 

World Cup Debut!

After Saturday’s 20km race in Obertilliach, I had a couple hours to pack and grab some food before I jumped in a vehicle and was on my way to the World Cup to race in a Relay the following morning.  After five hours of driving through a lot of snow and rain we finally arrived in Hochfillzen, Austria.  I felt alright until I went to get out of the vehicle and it was then I realized that my body had stiffened up from sitting for so long and that I was in a bit of rough shape!

I woke up at 4:30am the next morning either due to nerves or maybe as a result of the ongoing battle with jetlag, or likely a combination of both!  After quick morning run to loosen up my body and some dry firing in my hotel room, I was as ready as I could be to race!  The whole experience was a little overwhelming.  I had no idea what to expect.  I had never even been to watch a World Cup race before and had only ever watched them on TV.  Driving into the venue we passed by a steady stream of fans making the journey to the stadium and once I saw this, I knew I was in for a new experience!  Once I arrived at the race site it was more or less the normal routine of testing skis, zeroing, and warming up before the race.  My ski testing got off to a bit of stressful start after I wrecked a pair of my team mates skis by hitting a rock, but after that everything went normal!

I was racing leg 3 out of 4 for our 4 x 7.5km relay and listened to the results while skiing around the warm up loop and got the occasional view of the race on the jumbo screen near the range.  Canada was off to a great start.  The wind conditions made the shooting difficult, but in comparison with the other teams, we were shooting well and having a good day.  Robin, our first man out tagged off to Scott in 8^th place.  Scott had an impressive leg to tag off to me in 5^th place.  Now, to put things into perspective, Canada’s best relay finish ever up to this point was 13^th.  I was a little stressed out that my debut on the World Cup would be in a Relay race, and it didn’t help the pressure to have Scott tag off to me in 5^th!   I only had a few seconds to worry about this and before I knew it I was out on course and settled in to doing what I’m trained to do; race!  Given the circumstances, I raced a solid leg, and tagged off to Jean Philippe in 7^th, who had an incredible last leg given the pressure our team was under to finish and maintain 7th place, only^{13 seconds off 4th place.  It was a great day for everyone on our team and it was a bonus to have Canada’s best finish ever in a Relay on the World Cup.  It was also an extremely exciting debut for me in my first World Cup race.}

I stayed on the following week to race World Cup #3.  My races were OK, nothing spectacular but it was great to be able to gain experience racing amongst the World’s elite.  After the last race it was in the vans and we were off to spend the night in Munich before heading home for Christmas.  This year I decided not to spend Christmas at home in Hay River due to it being difficult to get quality training in, as it is often extremely cold around Christmas!  After arriving back to Canmore in the early hours of the 23^rd, I drove to Nelson on Christmas Eve to spend 4 days with my brother Paul’s family and my parents who drove down from home.  Despite getting sick while in Nelson, it was a nice way to relax and spend my break after a busy few weeks of racing.

 

                          WC#3 - Shooting prone during the Sprint race in Hochfillzen, Austria.

Photo credit - Christian Manzoni

9 Seconds Off…

I arrived back in Canmore on the 28^th and began training with my team again the next day.  On the agenda was a tough week of training high in hours, strength, and intensity.  To finish the week off, I registered to race in a Haywood Cup 15km cross country skate race.  The competition also doubled as a team selection for the cross country skiers to pick the U23 (under 23) World Championship team as well as athletes to race in upcoming cross country World Cups.  It was a good opportunity for me to race as the top skiers in the country were there and it allowed me to gauge where I compared in ski speed to the athletes in the cross country world.  I wasn’t exactly expecting a stellar performance given the week of training I had just finished and the fact that I had been sore almost every day from starting a weight program again in the gym.  I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome and ended up skiing quite a solid race and finished up in 4^th place overall and was the 2^nd U23 man.  Had I been 9 seconds faster and won the U23 category, I would have secured myself a place on the U23 World Championship team.

 

Judgement day…And I’m off to World Champs!

On January 15^th our second and last set of trial races of the season took place.  Up for grabs was the last remaining spot on the World Championship Team, and 4 spots that were open for the European Championship Team.  I always find these selection races some of the most if not the most stressful of the season, mainly because of the ‘do or die’ scenario.  Either race well and make one of the teams, or get stuck at home in Canada and race the domestic circuit.   The number of top ranked athletes fighting for the positions this year was impressive, as the increasing depth in the men’s team is raising the level of competition. To select the teams, an average percentage of the best 2 out of 3 races are used.  The percentage is determined by the average time of the top 3 athletes divided by your race time.  Therefore, a bigger margin of victory will result in a higher percentage being awarded to the winner, and if the top 3 times are close than the percentage of the winner will be lower.

Fortunately, I can say that the 3 races over the four days could not have gone much better for me.  Every race was very tight, so there was a build up of pressure that came with each day of racing.  I had a very good performance and won the first race on Thursday by a narrow margin of only 2 seconds.  On Saturday I had another narrow victory, this time by 5 seconds.  With the races being so tight and my overall percent lead being relatively small, it meant that everything came down to Sunday’s Pursuit race.  There were 3 of us who were in contention for the World Championship spot by this point and the race could have been won by any 3 of us.  Thankfully, I was able to keep cool under the pressure and was able to put in another solid performance.  I won again, this time by a larger margin of 30 seconds!  I was on my way to race World Championships in Pyeong Chang, Korea!

Racing Trials in Canmore, AB

 

Spring and Summer

I wrote this a while ago and a few of you have already read it, but I figured it would be a good first post as it summarizes my training and what I've been up to since the beginning of the season. It finishes off at the end of the summer and I'll continue from there with my next couple of posts...

Dear Friends and Supporters,

It’s been a while and I think an update about what I’ve been up to is long overdue! It’s amazing how time flies during the summer when I become immersed in training. It only seems like yesterday when it was springtime and I was taking a well needed mental and physical break after a long season of racing.

After Canadian Championships at the newly finished Olympic venue in the Callaghan Valley, I made the journey with a few other biathletes to Grande Prairie to once again work the Weyerhauser Pulp Mill shutdown. The work isn’t fun but the pay is decent, and couldn’t come at a better time as a season of racing quickly takes its toll on the bank funds!

From Grande Prairie I drove 8 hours north back home to Hay River. I arrived pretty tired from the Mill and spent the next little while relaxing and recovering. It was nice to visit with family and lay low for a while, but before I knew it, it was time to start training again. While at home I got to make a trip across the lake to Yellowknife to take part in the annual Sport North Awards Banquet where I received the Northwest Territories senior male athlete of the year award. It was an honor to receive the award and was great to meet and chat with Sport North’s major sponsors and supporters as well as other athletes from the North.

At the end of May I arrived back in Canmore re-energized and ready to focus on training again. After joining back up with National Team, the season kicked off with a training camp at Mt. Washington on Vancouver Island. It’s the perfect place for early season training and comes with a lot of bonuses. The resort was very accommodating and provided us with a 2km loop to ski on that was groomed daily (a little short but fine for the training we were doing). When the sun came out we were provided with stellar views and for once we were able to ski on top of a mountain and breathe easily at the same time. Skiing at a lower elevation was especially nice. There was still a ton of snow with easily over a meter base on top of the mountain and we had access to a shooting range minutes from our door. After skiing in the morning, we would drop down to sea level for our afternoon workouts which would consist of sea kayaking, running along the ocean on sweet trails, or mountain biking on some technical west coast trails. After a long and hard week of training we spent two days relaxing and surfing in Tofino which was awesome. This was our second camp at Mt. Washington and I’m sure we’ll be back for more spring training there.

From Mt. Washington it was back to Canmore again to resume training in the Rockies. We’ve had many good training sessions at Highwood pass, Mt. Shark, and Mt. Norquay. The testing blocks have gone very well, with personal bests in many tests, and we’ve been doing a fair bit of testing and monitoring at the U of C. Most recently we’ve been using and doing testing on the new roller ski treadmill housed in the Olympic Oval at the University of Calgary. The sessions on the treadmill have been awesome and I think it will become a very valuable tool for the team both for technique and testing purposes. On another note, I also now have a part time job working at running store on my rest days. So far it’s been alright but I’m hoping that I will be able to get enough recovery between work and training.

Most recently I’ve returned home from a short training camp based out of Revelstoke in BC. Day one consisted of a 150km road ride from the Revelstoke Dam to the CMH Monashee backcountry lodge. We were lucky enough to spend the night here, thanks to a connection through coach Matthias. Mathias, a former back country guide, used to guide out of this lodge in his early days when he first came to Canada. The lodge was absolutely amazing and we were treated with exceptional hospitality and awesome meals that definitely did the trick in refueling our bodies after a hard day on the bike. Day two consisted of roller skiing up Mt. Revelstoke while doing some solid intensity along the way. The 25 km climb switch backs up the mountain at a steep and steady grade climbs 1200m in the process. It made for a pretty tough and long workout! After a cool down jog to the summit it was back to the campsite to ice the legs in the lake before dinner. Day three consisted of cycling back to Canmore from Lake Louise which we did at an average speed of over 34 km an hour. All in all it was a pretty solid camp, except for getting sick with a cold on day two which I am still not quite 100% recovered from. Better sick now than in the winter…

Also keeping me on my toes have been the bears around Canmore. Today I came face to face with a black bear minutes from my house. I was roller skiing to training and was cresting a hill with the sun in my eyes and heard a rustle in the bushes next to me. When I looked over, a black bear was walking out onto the road beside me which gave me quite a surprise to say the least! It’s been a bit of a crazy year for encountering bears while training. I think that was number six or seven. Thankfully, so far every bear I’ve seen has gone its own way and I won’t be disappointed if go the rest of the summer without having any more encounters!

In between these highlights, the rest of the summer has been a bit of blur with training as usual. We’ve ramped up the intensity and stepped up the volume this year making many workouts a challenge. Some weeks of training consist of five days of intensity in a row which leaves you spent at the end of the week. Training has been demanding but I think my body is coping well and I hope that this hard work will translate into some serious speed in the upcoming season. Our first World Cup and IBU cup trials are fast approaching and will be taking place the first week of September and I now switch my focus to competing well at these races. I’ll keep you all posted as to how they go.

That’s all for now but I’ve attached some pictures to hold you over until the next update.

Until then,
Cheers!

Brendan

Spring skiing on Great Slave Lake

Early morning hike up to the summit of Mt. Washington where a freshly groomed track awaits us.


One of clear days on top of the Mountain

Skiing in June!

Running in the lush forest on one of the many trails near the Ocean




Morning beach run in Tofino

Glacier crossing – Alpine hike near Lake Louise




Incremental test on the new treadmill – Olympic Oval, U of C (note the harness system in case you wipe out!) – More to come on this later!

The team at the Monashee Lodge – 150km North of Revelstoke

Taking the win in the first race of the ZRS series!