Adapting to long seasons, altitude, and Alaska

While reflecting on the 2017-2018 season I took a glance at a few training logs from my last six years of cross-country ski training. Once again I realized that TRAINING WORKS! My skiing ability has made steady progress, and

what I found more interesting was that, for every year over the last six years, my body has been able to maintain its race-ready shape for a longer stretch of season. I've gotten better at "season endurance." In my junior year at St. Olaf college in 2014, for example, my body was depleted and drained by CCSA Conference Championships in the start of February. The next year I made it through the first weekend of March at NCAA Regionals feeling strong. My super-senior year at Northern Michigan in 2016 I kept my racing form through NCAA Championships, last year (2017) I was off-and-on through the month of March but couldn't hold onto my form for Spring Series, and this year I held on until just prior to US National Championships during the final days of March. That progress in encouraging; although it doesn't guarantee that I will race at a faster speed, staying race-ready week-in and week-out through a full season will give me more opportunities to race at my best before I lose my training base and I'm running on fumes. As I continue to adapt to increases in training and racing volumes and to improve how I optimize race and recovery, my "season endurance" will hopefully continue this upward trend.

Somehow standing after a rough performance in the season-ending Canadian Nats 50km at Thunder Bay in March 2015.

It takes the body time to adapt to any demand or stimulus. How long does the body need? Every stimulus is different. For example, gains in neuromuscular recruitment can be made fairly quickly compared to gains in endurance. The speed and nature of the adaptation also depends on the person's individual physiology. What about altitude - how do athletes best adapt to and prepare for racing at altitude? It is almost impossible to know without testing it out. Each race at altitude for me is like its own case study in altitude preparation.

Racing at sea-level and at altitude present different challenges. During a race, a skier must produce powerful movements over and over to move fast across the snow. At sea level, those movements must be a little more powerful (produce more force more quickly over the same distance) than they must be at altitude for an athlete to have a chance to reach the podium. At altitude there is less oxygen in the air and so the heart must work harder to pump the same total amount of oxygen to the muscles. This means that at a given aerobic intensity (which we usually measure by heart rate) the muscles contractions during training at altitude will be less powerful, i.e. they'll have less force and/or less *snap*, than they would at sea level. So how do you best prepare for a race at altitude? As with anything, the body needs time to adapt to a stimulus; in the case of altitude, that stimulus is less oxygen for the muscles to readily use. One school of thought says an athlete racing at altitude should acclimate to the race elevation by beginning training at the race elevation as early as possible. Another school of thought says an athlete should train at sea-level leading up to high-altitude competition to allow the muscles to work at their most powerful aerobic outputs as they prepare for the race, and then arrive at the race altitude just a day or two prior to competition. A second advantage of this approach is that the athlete may rest better at sea level. A third school of thought says to "live high and train low": live at a high altitude to let your body adapt to race-elevation by producing more oxygen-carrying red blood cells, but train at sea-level to let your muscles operate at their maximal aerobic power outputs.

A different approach to altitude preparation may work for a different athlete. I'm still working on finding the best formula for me. I've discovered it can be hard to control all the factors involved: where you stay, where you train, how you train, how you recover, etc. Each time I've raced at altitude it has been its own case study, and with US Nationals in Soldier Hollow, Utah (base elevation: 5463 ft), I was in for another trial of self-experimentation.

In preparation for the US Nationals on March 29-31, I traveled from Norway to Denver (approximate elevation: 5280 ft) on March 13. I hoped that 16 days would be enough time for my body to adapt to the conditions and demands of less oxygen at Soldier Hollow. After spending one day with my St. Olaf roommate who is a music teacher in Denver and the following two days with the Schommer family in Fort Collins, CO (approximate elevation: 5003 ft), I made my way to Casper, WY (approximate elevation: 5150 ft) to train for nine days at Casper Mountain (approximate elevation: 7800 ft). Casper Mountain Biathlon Club (CMBC) has an incredibly generous and welcoming staff and community and I was amazed at their venue: 30-point lit range with electronic targets, challenging courses that can be adjusted to fit IBU, FIS, and IPC homologation, additional XC-ski touring trails, and reliable natural snow in the late season. Rob Rosser, a 1998 Olympian and former National Guard Biathlon Team member, heads up CMBC and helped find my teammate Paul Schommer and I a place to stay in town with a local CMBC family. We spent the week training and distracting ourselves from the upcoming races by hanging out with the CMBC kids, either jumping on the trampoline or playing bubble hockey, foosball, and ping pong.

Jet lag hike in Evergreen, CO outside of Denver with Phil

Moose it! With the Casper Mountain Biathlon Club team.

Short video of racing in Western US Champs, Casper Mountain. Paul Schommer with the call.

In an effort to get my mind ready for the rigors of racing at altitude, I entered the 10km sprint event at the Western US Biathlon Championships, which Casper hosted on Saturday, March 24. Boy it was tough skiing. My lungs were burning while they huffed and puffed and my mind fought against my body. My rifle felt like it weighed twenty-five pounds. Luckily the snow was fast, almost icy, which helped me conserve momentum and energy through the transitions of the CMBC course. A mellow range approach and still conditions helped me to shoot (2,1), a respectable performance considering how I shot in Norway (usually a member of the 4-miss club). But the race wasn't biggest battle of the day. That came afterward, in the form of a giant snowball fight with the CMBC junior team. I left the race with confidence that I could perform well at US Nationals. With one race to remind me how it feels and how to pace at altitude, I thought that I'd be prepared for the first race of Nationals five days later in Soldier Hollow.

On Sunday March 25 Paul and I said goodbye to our generous hosts in Casper and drove to Park City. We didn't know it at the time, but our next "home" would be up on the mountain at an elevation of 8200 ft! We were amazed at the beauty of our home for the week, but found ourselves unfamiliar with the higher altitude. As I rested after a good week of training and the race in Casper, it became evident that my legs wouldn't recover fast enough. Come Wednesday my legs remained heavy, tingly and fatigued. It would take a strong mental effort to push those legs around Soldier Hollow's challenging track over the following three days.

I was prepared for pavement...

... but the race organizers were somehow able to save a 3.3 km ribbon of snow from Junior Nationals in early March all the way until our last race on March 31 despite rain and highs in the 50s leading up to the race. Well done Soldier Hollow.

After a day of rollerskiing in 50-degree and sunny Heber Valley and a day to preview the course and reunite with our US Biathlon teammates, the US National Championships were finally upon us. The tracks in Soldier Hollow were firm and fast from sunny afternoons in the 50s and sub-freezing temps each night. I had set my eyes on Thursday's 10km sprint race - I had tried to prepare my body and mind to execute my best on that day. But 5 minutes before my start, after I took off my warmups and put on my rifle, I couldn't find my poles. I jogged around the fencing, searching, but couldn't find them. With less than 2 minutes to my start I thought I must have left them back at the wax trailer. With race skis on I no-pole sprinted back to the trailers, but no poles were to be found. I skied back to the start, racking my brain for where my poles could be as the starter repeatedly yelled my number: "Number 6, where is number 6?!" I was ashamed, and as my start time came and went it dawned on me that all along I had set my poles near the start area on the side of the course. I grabbed them and started 24 seconds after my official time. Nerves racing, I channeled my self-frustration into my race and skied a strong first lap. I came into shoot and felt confident, like I owed it to myself to make up for my pre-race mishap with my best performance. I took what I felt were great shots, but missed three. I was surprised at the misses since I felt totally calm and not at all shaky. I stared down the targets in frustration as I skied into the penalty loop. I later learned that my group was just on the right edge of the target, and all my misses were at 2 o'clock. My consistency in positioning will need a lot of focused work this summer. I came back to miss 2 more in standing, and exited the penalty loop just behind Tim Burke, who had started well behind me. Tim stomped me on the last lap probably by nearly 30 seconds and it was then that I discovered that my legs had nothing to give. My season seemed as if it was done.

We learn in biathlon more than any other sport, however, that each day is a new day. I started the pursuit race in ninth, over three minutes behind Lowell Bailey, the winner from Thursday's sprint, and over 1:15 min behind eighth place, Leif Nordgren. I knew I wasn't really in the race. I cleaned my first two prone stages and finished with 7/10 hits in standing for my best shooting race of my short biathlon career to date and easily moved up to eighth. That shooting performance was what I was looking for all year and will give me encouragement for next year. In Saturday's mass start, my clean prone shooting days proved to be short-lived and I missed 5 of my first 10. I finished with only two misses in standing and was able to bounce back to another eighth-place finish.

What kept me fighting in Soldier Hollow was the positive energy from the US Biathlon community. Nothing invigorates me more as an athlete than seeing younger athletes working hard for their dreams and helping to grow the sport without even knowing it. I hope one day I can inspire them. For now they're the ones inspiring me. On top of that, these races were Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey's final biathlon races - they finished their final race coming across the line together in a tie for 1st place. What Tim and Lowell have done as American biathletes is exceptional (4 Olympics each; Tim has skied in the yellow leader's bib and earned a World Champs silver medal; Lowell was last year's World Champion in the 20km Ind). They've shown us that we can dream big. Tim told me after the last race that "It's your guys' time now," which reminded me of Herb Brooks addressing the 1980 US hockey team: "It's your time. Now go out there and take it." That got me pretty jazzed. While traveling to the Salt Lake City airport that afternoon my mind raced with excitement for the work to be done this summer and my goals for next season. While my mind raced, my body was done racing. It was tired and weary. I felt like I could sleep for a full day.

I didn't get much sleep that night. I was bound for a week of coaching in rural northwest Alaska with NANA Nordic. That night I flew from Salt Lake City to Anchorage and got to bed at 11:30pm Alaska time. My alarm went off at 3:30am for the 6:10am flight I had to make to get to Kotzebue, the regional hub for Bering Air. Happy Easter! With a group of other sleepy athletes and coaches, we flew to Kotzebue and explored the town. I had fond memories of the Arctic from coaching in Point Hope with Team Gregg and in Buckland last year - both villages had been unique in their own ways (Buckland an inland hunting village obsessed with basketball and Point Hope a coastal whaling village) and I wondered what Deering, my assignment for this year, would be like. Soon I was in a small Cessna to Deering. The Deering principle picked me up from the airport and we drove into town, which was when I learned that Deering only has one street! It turns out that the population of Deering is about one-hundred people. We had about 45 kids in the school to teach how to ski- we being me and my co-coaches Frankie and Odin. Frankie and Odin are a couple from Juneau (they helped start the Nordic ski program there) who proved to be quite the musicians as well as enthusiastic and experienced coaches who I was fortunate to have the chance to learn from.

Flying into Deering... One street!

Photo by Odin

Deering coaching team

Photo by Odin

The kids in Deering were a blast to coach, play Run Caribou Run with (its a better version of ships across the ocean) on skis and basketball with in the gym, and eat school breakfast and school lunch with. Over the course of the week we got to know all the kids quite well, from their boot size to their favorite school breakfast (most prefer the breakfast burrito). The kids are super inquisitive, especially about family and relationships. They want to know who your mom and dad are, who your brothers and sisters are, and what your birthday is. A few kids told me their birthdays every day and would ask me over and over to see if I remembered, disappointed when I failed. Last year in Buckland they always asked how many "honeys" I had, but in Deering they never asked, so to them the only honey must be the one that comes in a bear-shaped plastic squeeze bottle. It was amazing to think of this Arctic town as the only world these kids know. It was a gift to be able to share skiing with them, a tool that they can use to explore and a skill that could take them amazing places, but most importantly a sport that teaches lessons in perseverance, hard work, life balance, and health. It was a little sad to say goodbye to the kids and to rural Alaska, but while my head and heart wanted to stay a bit longer my body was begging for rest, and another part of me longed for home after three months away from both Lake Placid and Minnesota.

When I landed at home in Minnesota the following Monday, I arrived to snow on the ground and excellent skiing conditions at Theodore Wirth Park thanks to the Loppet Foundation's grooming efforts. And so the body is going to have to wait a few more days before it gets its rest.

Next year #startsnow