Biathletes still go to Fort Kent in ‘offseason’ Skiers summer at winter center

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FORT KENT – It’s hot and humid here at the 10th Mountain Lodge on a recent summer afternoon, not at all like it was when thousands of spectators packed the grounds last March to watch top biathlon athletes compete in a stop on the World Cup.

There’s no snow now, of course, but there are lots of black flies. There aren’t any long cross country skis propped up on sawhorses, but there are pairs of smaller roller skis lying on the grass.

And rather than a shooting range with state-of-the-art electronics, the range here is rigged with pull-cords to reset the targets. Grass and weeds grow in front of some of the targets at the end of the range, rendering those slots useless.

But despite the fact that it’s summer, there is important winter business going on here.

Summer training is critical for athletes such as Tim Burke, a young but experienced New York native; Yarmouth up-and-comer Walt Shepard; top junior competitor Brian Olsen, who is now a senior; and twins Lanny and Tracy Barnes, natives of Durango, Colo., who are among the top senior females in the U.S.

Those biathletes, along with others who move in and out of Fort Kent during the summer, have chosen this site in northern Maine because of its facilities, coaching, programs, and the focus that comes with the solitude of the St. John Valley.

The ultimate goal? One of eight spots – four for men, four for women – on the Olympic team. The next Winter Games will be held in Turin, Italy, in 2006.

Burke grew up in Paul Smiths, N.Y., which is about 45 minutes away from the firing range and biathlon training center in Lake Placid, N.Y., site of the 1980 Olympics. But he chooses to make his summer base in Fort Kent, where he lives in an apartment with Shepard.

“It was a really easy decision when you combine all the factors,” Burke said early one evening after a two-workout day. “It’s the best venue, the best coaching, a great community. Plus you’re surrounded by 10 to 20 other elite-level athletes.

“People are always asking me, why aren’t you training at Lake Placid? And the answer is, I’d be the only one.”

Around the loop

The World Cup stop in Fort Kent brought an estimated 14,000 fans to the lodge and grounds here, which are run by the Maine Winter Sports Center. For those who were there, it’s hard to imagine this area without the cheering spectators, bustling infield, and layer of icy, crunchy snow.

What’s underneath the snow, however, is a key to summer training.

That’s the 1.6-kilometer roller ski loop. It’s a huge draw for the athletes, and Fort Kent is one of four sites in the U.S that have a roller loop and a shooting range arranged to simulate winter biathlon. Presque Isle, Jericho, Vt., and Salt Lake City are the others.

“The roller loop makes it very special,” said Burke, a 22-year-old who competed in Fort Kent’s World Cup. “That’s a crucial part of our training. We’re so committed to the venues in biathlon that you need to be at a place with a roller loop. [Fort Kent] by far is the whole package.”

The easy access to the loop paid off for four Fort Kent-based athletes who competed at a competition in Jericho last week. Tracy Barnes and Jeremy Teela of Anchorage, Alaska, swept the three senior women’s and men’s events, respectively, at the Summer Rollerski Festival.

Saranac, N.Y., native Annalies Cook, a top-ranked junior athlete, swept the youth/junior women’s events. And Russell Currier, a Caribou High student whose 21st-place finish in the 10K pursuit in the junior world championships in March was the highest among the Americans there, was the top U.S. youth/junior men’s finisher in two events at Jericho.

Athletes spend hours and hours each week on the roller loop because it’s the closest they come to simulating the ski-and-shoot rhythm of the winter biathlon.

One recent afternoon, Burke and Shepard, who is the son of MWSC president and chief executive officer Andy Shepard, already had their morning workout when they strapped on roller skis for a few turns around the loop with Haley Johnson, who competes at the women’s senior level. When they completed a few loops, they stepped into the lodge to test their lactate levels.

The biathletes work hard at so-called threshold training. It’s a technique important to biathlon because the athletes’ heart rates go up and down so quickly during a race.

“In biathlon the focus is on being able to get above and below threshold relatively quickly,” said Will Sweetser, one of the Maine Winter Sports Center coaches. “So you have to be able to ski quite hard to compete at that level, but you also need to be able to drop down and recover a little bit as you come into the range.”

When athletes go above threshold, they have a buildup of lactic acid which they feel burning in their muscles. That’s not what you want to feel when you have to lie perfectly still and fire off five perfect shots. So there’s a lot of focus on threshold training here.

After one circuit, Johnson stepped into the lodge to test the lactate level in her blood. After swabbing her finger with alcohol, she pricked herself, placed a drop of blood on a test strip, and fed the strip into a monitor. She’s had to do this quite a bit this summer, but it’s all part of the training.

Summer life for these biathletes is a bit like the loop on which they ski: wake up, eat, train, eat, sleep, train, eat, go to sleep.

All that eating and sleeping might seem indulgent, but considering the huge amount of cardiovascular work the athletes do, it’s necessary for effective training.

The biathletes eat a lot.

After a 7 a.m. wakeup call one recent morning, what was Olsen’s breakfast on this typical day? Cereal and milk. And a banana. And a bagel. With Nutella chocolate spread.

“Practice doesn’t stop when you leave the range,” Burke said. “Everything you do is geared toward getting you ready for the next workout. It’s eating properly at lunch, napping, stretching, doing what you think you need to do to make sure you’re ready to go 100 percent.”

Traditional training is a huge part of what the athletes do in the summer. But in the spring as well as the summer months, when there is no snow on the ground, some athletes move to nontraditional training methods.

Olsen, who grew up in Bloomington, Minn., is known as a dedicated athlete with some offbeat training techniques. He mixes traditional training – the endless roller ski loops and hours on the shooting range – with some of the adventure sports available to him in Aroostook County.

A few weeks ago Olsen competed in a race up Mars Hill, approximately 11/4 miles of uphill running from the base to the summit of the mountain, which is south of Presque Isle. In May he drove to the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec to hike. He has fished and biked, and earlier this particular evening he kayaked nearby Eagle Lake.

“There are a lot of other things we can work on to improve our physiology instead of just working on technique,” Olsen said. “But I think we’re all thinking about how each workout is contributing to us being faster. We’re always thinking about technique for skiing and core strength.”

The athletes spend about 20 hours a week in actual training. There’s time for some fun, too, even though bed time is usually by 10 p.m. Olsen said the four athletes at the lodge – the Barnes twins, Bethann Ellingson of Grand Rapids, Minn., and himself – get together with athletes who live in town such as Burke and Shepard for movies and barbecues.

This sense of community among the biathletes also helps draw them to northern Maine.

“One of the biggest reasons I come to Fort Kent is that I know Tim’s going to be here,” Shepard said. “He’s quite focused and motivated. He’s a huge asset to the program up here.”

Easy access and solitude

One night just before Christmas last year, Olsen was in Fort Kent for some training when he got the urge to shoot.

It was about 8:30 – pitch black in northern Maine – but he set up the range, turned on the grandstand lights, put some Neil Young music into the speaker system, and blasted away. Just because he felt like it.

That kind of whenever-you-want access to the training is another reason Fort Kent draws many of the top athletes.

“Tracy, Lanny, and I like to live up here because we can step outside to shoot and train; when we’re done with our workout we can eat right away, change, shower in 10 minutes,” he said. “It’s all over, we don’t have to drive anywhere.”

The athletes can come and go as they please all year because the lodge and equipment rooms are open most of the time. The doors to the dormitory section of the lodge are locked, however, and there is now a lock on the door of the lodge because Olsen said he and the Barnes sisters once had to scare away some late-night visitors who were looking for a place to have a party.

Thanks to the Maine Winter Sport Center’s grant from the Portland-based Libra Foundation, the lodge, as well as the training and coaching, are free to the athletes. Olsen drives into Fort Kent once a week for groceries, which is his only real expense.

The lodge overlooks the range and spectator stands and that in itself motivates the lodge’s residents.

“We’re seeing the same range that was used for the World Cup,” Olsen said. “Sometimes we watch the video and we look outside and think, [World Cup champion] Raphael Poiree was on point No. 1, turned around, and waved to the crowd. You want to emulate it.”

Even the athletes who live in town where there are plenty of distractions enjoy the solitude of the area. It allows the athletes, many of whom have put off college, to focus entirely on biathlon.

“It’s a little bit isolated here and I’ve really come to love that in my four years of being up here,” Shepard said. “It’s just something that allows you to focus your energy on making the Olympics, which is the goal.”

The Fort Kent community

The roller ski loop and free lodging are all pluses. But to many of the biathletes, it’s the response of the town that keeps them coming back to Fort Kent. It’s so for the Barnes sisters, for whom Salt Lake City would be much closer to their Colorado home.

“For Tracy and I it’s definitely about the community,” Lanny Barnes said. “In a lot of places there isn’t the same kind of community.”

Athletes say when they wear their MWSC hats or jackets into town locals make comments about the excitement generated by the World Cup. Shepard was in a Fort Kent hardware store recently looking for parts for his rifle when the clerk spoke to him about it.

“[The clerk] noticed I was wearing a Maine Winter Sports Center hat and picked up that I was an athlete,” Shepard said. “He wanted to let me know how excited he was about biathlon, how great it was that we were up here training. We get that a lot up here.”