It is time that all of the Nordic race athletes 15 - 19 biathlon and cross country have their blood tested for iron, b12 and CBC. In the last 8 months there have been four (three cross country skiers and 1 biathlete that I know that have been diagnosed with low iron levels and fatigue which has stopped them or forced them to reduce the amount of training and racing that they are doing. This is very important for our female athletes but it is also important for our male athletes as well. If we get blood tested now we will know if someone has low iron levels and we can begin to change things before the body shuts down to fatigue. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. For many athletes with low blood iron and fatigue it can take months if not a full year to recover, this sucks. So you will need to go to a doctor and tell them that you are an endurance athlete and you want your blood tested for iron level, b12 and CBC. follow this link to a blog that talks more about this. http://coach-pav.com/?blogsub=confirming#blog_subscription-2 

I want to express how proud I am of all of you.

Attached is a spread sheet of the results on Sunday. I have added a column called percentages, you will see a percent after you name. If the race were a test and the winner got 100% and your score is compared to theirs then you see your percent beside. I like this way of comparing times because it means that even though someone was 25^th they still were within 80% of the winner. If you were to take an exam and received a 80% that is a pretty good grade. If you want to get better you would study (train) more to become better.  What you will notice is that nobody fails in this even the people who are last in the race have 60-70%. No matter where you finish or don’t finish in a race there is lots to be learned and when you learn these lessons you become better. That is my goal for you all to become better.

Some of you have some really challenging and high provincial and national level goals for your self. Remember the only way that you can get there is if you are having fun, passionate about the sport and encouraging your self to keep improving. If you are negative with yourself or over critical you are going to improve slower and be stressed out about your results and your performance. If you see developing over the long term then you will have patience with yourself. It takes a life ten years of dedicated training to produce a champion. You need to be able to live and breath your sport in a way that is positive and motivating and keep doing this year after year to truly find your athletic potential. 

When you think of becoming better, do not think about catching the top folks all at once. I want you to think about being  1 second faster over each 100m of the race. This means that you keep your head in the game a little bit more, you push a little bit harder over the hill, you double pole a little bit harder, you take the hill a little bit faster, you corner a little bit faster. If you are able to do this you gain 50 seconds over a 5km race, 75 seconds over a 7.5km race and 150 secs over a 15km race. Most people try to catch up in the first half of the race and they are not able to hold it and burn themselves out. A little bit of improvement over the full course of the race means a lot to your race time. See what happens when you make this kind of improvement, what kind of result to you get.

You can learn a lot from looking at results. Especially results that show split times. Have a look at the open men  category and Graeme Killick, look at his splits, you will notice that each 5km lap is within 13 seconds, he is very consistent, he knows his pace and his able to maintain his speed. What do your splits look like? For most people the first lap is going to be the fastest and then they get slower from there. Very few can negative split, the last half of the race is faster than the first, the top juvenile boys did. I believe that for every sec that you are too fast in the first half it will cost you 2 sec in the second half. This means that if you calm down and relax a little bit more in the beginning you will likely be faster over all. How can this be? Most people go too fast off the start and get tired, it is really hard to have mental toughness when you are tired especially if there is still a lot of race left. But if you think about being strong and relaxed in the beginning and get stronger and stronger you will actually become more motivated even though you are tired because you will be catching up to people as they are getting tired. As you start to get really tired you will be close to the end of your race and you will be more motivated to push though the fatigue because the end is near.

Keep motivated and keep training you are all fantastic athletes who are improving with every moment.