Marshall, Nicole & Colin

This is what people looked like most of the week but on Thursday we finally got a chance to race again. It was windy but the temps were legal so at 2pm we started the sprints and, to my surprise, managed to finish up all of the rounds too. While it's not quite as impressive as Brayton's streak of sevens, I did finish second behind Kikkan for the third time. Which is good. Kikkan's fast and I'm getting faster so there's no complaints there.

The most impressive part of nationals, by far, was the race organizers and volunteers. Sure it was a drag for the racers to have races canceled everyday but all we had to do was pack, show up, sit around, go home, train inside. The volunteers, on the other hand, showed up early, set up the stadium and marked the courses before it had even started to warm up yet, waited to start, put together several start lists each day, passed out bibs, tried desperately to get all the unused bibs passed back in, took down the stadium, went home, showed up the next day and did the same thing. No, wait, it gets even more impressive. There were biathlon race right before US Nats AND Friday, Saturday and Sunday there were/are college races. Which is 11 straight days of race volunteering. Not everyone volunteered every day, but I know a lot of the volunteers were there like it was a full time job. And to set up for a race and then not hold it is kind of like hosting a party and having no attendees. Sad. Hopefully next year will be more normal.

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