My First Biathlon Race: Similarities and Differences to Nordic Racing
Hello skiing friends, Gretta Scholz here from the Team Birkie Continental Team! This past weekend, I competed in the US Biathlon International Team Trials in Soldier Hollow, UT. They also happened to be my first biathlon races ever. For those of you who don’t know what biathlon is, or want an in-depth explanation of how it works, head over to my colleague Luci’s blog from last year - BEGINNERS GUIDE TO BIATHLON!
Now that you understand some more of the terminology and race structure, you’ll see that for someone with only three full weeks of shooting training, two big rollerski biathlon races were pretty daunting. The first race was a sprint race, which was an individual start and consisted of three laps of 2.5 kilometers, shooting prone after the first lap and standing after the second lap. The second day was a mass start 10 kilometer on a 2 kilometer loop in a prone prone stand stand format. I was the most nervous for the mass start race, as I have had very little experience skiing with the rifle, and moving with the pack down scary hills with the rifle sounded terrifying. However, it ended up being a lot of fun, and I learned some important lessons on the more drastic differences between biathlon and nordic racing!
There are some obvious differences between nordic and biathlon racing that I already knew, such as the many different racing and shooting formats for biathlon (I still don’t understand them all fully, but I’m getting there). The other obvious difference is that you have to ski with the rifle on your back the whole time. Before the races, I wasn’t sure how much this would affect me, but after three laps up Hermodes (the biggest hill at Soldier Hollow) with the rifle, I can definitely say that the 8 lb increase is significant. Another pretty obvious difference is the shooting portion of the races. I knew going into them that I would likely have both slower and worse shooting stages than everyone else, as I am very inexperienced, but I also learned how much breathing hard in racing can affect your shooting. This was increased by the altitude, already making it much more difficult to breathe. It is important when shooting to slow your breathing and hold while you aim and pull the trigger so the rifle doesn’t move at all before you take your shot. This is incredibly difficult when you are gasping for air. I also haven’t worked on shooting quickly, and thus often hold my breath a few beats too long. This is fine in training, but totally throws off your aim when you’re racing and out of breath. I learned that slowing the breathing and taking an extra breath to get on target before you pull the trigger produces far better results than trying to hold until the sights are lined up. Another difference that I encountered during the races, which I hadn’t considered before taking up the sport, is that when rollerskiing, your rifle will hit your helmet when you tuck. This is both uncomfortable and makes it impossible to lift your head to see where you are going while you’re in a tuck. To counter this, you must shift the rifle to one side so that you can sort of twist your head to the other side and up in order to see where you are going whilst still in the tuck position. This position freaked me out considerably, and going downhills with the rifle was still very uncomfortable and scary for me before the race. However, the races provided ample downhill practice, and by the second lap of the mass start, I really started to understand the position I needed to be in, making everything feel much more comfortable and fun!
Overall, this was a very educational weekend for me! I learned a lot about the process and difficulties of biathlon and even had some good shooting stages! On the skiing side of things, I had a tough first day but felt really good during the mass start. The highlight of the weekend for me was my first two laps of the mass start, where I was able to work my way up in the pack and only missed one 1 prone shot! This allowed me to stay with a lot of the more experienced biathletes and actually felt like I was in the race, and it was a good taste of how fun the sport can be when you’re really hitting targets and skiing fast!
