Ramsau Saturday: Loop One in Focus
With the Loop One Festival a week away, a sunny cool Saturday morning found Czechia’s men and the French women at the compact 15-point Ramsau am Dachstein shooting range, cut into the mountainside amidst a tough rollerski loop.
If it was a “normal October,” both groups would have been on the glacier skiing in the morning, but the tracks are currently closed. Instead, they were in the valley at the range, for training sessions that went in opposite directions.
“Easier” Day for Czechia
After an intensity day Friday, the men from Czechia were on a bit of a recovery day. Coach Michal Slesingr described their morning as, “Low intensity shooting, rollerskiing easy loops into the range with some double poling.” That type of day reemphasizes the repetitiveness of summer training. No matter how many targets closed or kilometers covered in the previous months, there are always five more to hit and a bit more volume to bank before the snow flies.
The ten-strong French A and B women were a polar opposite in their approach to this Saturday before big competitions next weekend. Julia Simon, Oceane Michelon, Paula Botet, Amandine Mengin and Voldiya Galmace Paulin head to Munich for Loop One. Their teammates led by World Cup Total Score winner Lou Jeanmonnot, will drive back to France for a Sprint, followed by the French Pursuit Championship next weekend at Arcon.
Hard Relay but Smiles
Since all ten are competing next week, Saturday was perfect for a high-level intensity session. The group broke into five two-person teams for a demanding relay format: ski a roughly 1500-meter loop, shoot, tag your partner that does the same; each repeats four times, two prone bouts followed by two standing bouts. This might not seem so tough, but the effort was full-gas from start to finish, with a very demanding uphill into the range, followed by a short recovery before going again. Shooting as always was at a premium, with each spare round costing time. Still, at the finish, despite some fatigue, the top team of Jeanmonnot and Mengin managed a smile.
Fatigue, Training Payoff
The second relay after a 10-minute recovery was different. The effort of the first four hard loops showed up immediately. The grinding uphill sapped energy and power, calming down to shoot and hit the targets took extra time and by the end of the eighth loop, heavy laboured breathing dominated the otherwise quiet forest. Yet after months of training, the blood lactate levels were not excessively high; four months of hard training was paying off.
Before noon, everyone headed back to their hotels for lunch and rest before a second session; another day banked before next week’s Loop One Festival and the LaVita World Cup season a day closer.
Photos: IBU/Nordic Focus/Manzoni, Jerry Kokesh
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