Pokljuka: Homeward Bound on a Positive Note
For our last World Cup races before the Christmas break, we traveled to Slovenia. It is a rugged and wild land that looks like it belongs in a fairy tale. We stayed in the city of Bled and commuted each day half an hour up a steep windy mountain road to Pokljuka. The race venue was located on an army base on the edge of a national park.
View of the lake in Bled. There was a beautiful church on a small island in the middle of the lake and a castle perched on a cliff across the way. Winter felt pretty mild down in town and several yards still had vegetables growing in their gardens.
Close up of the castle. I didn’t make it over to either the castle or the church to check them out, but I look forward to doing so next time the biathlon circus comes to town.
Bled has hosted high caliber rowing events, such as World Championships. The rowing center was a short walk down the hill from our hotel.
View of the biathlon stadium high in the mountains.
After a few training days with perfect hard packed tracks and sunshine, the sky let loose for the races. The sprint race dumped heavy slow, making for slow tracks. Our wax techs did an amazing job and our skis were faster than many other teams’. With 90% shooting, I placed 14th- my best result so far this season. I was psyched! (photo: Nordic Focus/USBA)
Sara and Annelies also had breakthrough days and we had 3 American women scoring World Cup points! We have put in a lot of work training together these past several years and it was great to see it pay off. (Team USA ladies L to R: me, Annelies Cook, Sara Studebaker, and Lanny Barnes).
The next day we saw another extreme- a cold downpour. As soon as we lay down on the mats to zero at the beginning of our warm up, we were soaked through. One of the French girls exclaimed that she had “swimming pools in [her] boots!” During the race I skied around lots of fast people but struggled on the range and dropped back to 38th place, still scoring World Cup points but barely. I ended up a couple places shy of a berth in today’s mass start. However, Tim Burke did compete in the mass start and placed third, the US’s best finish in the past couple years. It was a great week for the team and a good feeling to go home with during the break.