Alt for Norge Daily Journal: Day 12 - May 4, 2012 (Episode 2)

Today was team competition day and would determine which team would be heading to the elimination challenge! This was our most important day yet! We’ve been building up to this point, but it’s weird to have it right in front of you now. It’s getting real! With that, pretty much every thought throughout the day had to do with focusing on this competition.

We started early, with a 7:30 breakfast and loading up some cars at 8:00. I got about six hours of sleep, but was ready to go! We had been informed that we would be outside all day, so all of us were assuming we would be skiing. We just didn’t know if there would be more to it.

Henriette, the film crew, and our celebrity guest, Halvard Hanevold,
getting geared up to introduce us to our first competition.

We arrived at the crew’s hotel, which also doubled as our filming site for the day. After a short wait in the hotel, we were brought out to meet Henrietta for our announcement of the competition. At that point, we were introduced to Halvard Hanevold, who is a multiple Olympic medal winning (6 times!) biathlete! At this point, we knew we were going to do a biathlon (cross country skiing and rifle shooting)! Not to lie, this made me pretty nervous. Mary Caryl, who was on our team, is most likely going to have the hardest time with this competition. Immediately, I was apprehensive as to how we’d do as a team.

Mary Caryl getting a few shots in before the big competition.

After the announcements, they filmed us doing some practicing both on the skis and with the guns. This further confirmed that this would be a very hard competition for Mary Caryl. She was giving it her best, but she was having a hard time picking up the skiing and was missing the shooting targets by several feet with every shot. Not good. Johnathan and Amy looked like they may struggle as well, but were working hard at it. As I assumed, Austin and Tara looked to be picking it up pretty quick. Plus, Tara’s been on the shooting range several times before, so hopefully she’ll do pretty well. Outside of that, the practice was a lot of fun. We were able to do a lot of skiing and practiced shooting while lying down and from the standing position. It was definitely easier to shoot while lying down, but standing up was fun too!

After practice, we gathered for lunch. Austin, Tara and I sat together and discussed our thoughts on how the competition would go. Sadly, we pretty much all thought it was a lost cause. Not that we would give up, but looking at how the two teams stacked up, even with the timing advantage that they’ll be giving us for winning yesterday's packing competition, we didn’t see any chance that we could pull this one out. Still, we did our best to strategize on how to lessen the chance of losing.

After lunch, we were told the rules for the competition. It was going to be a relay race. Each team member was to ski around a short course (200 meters or so) then up to the shooting range. Each member would shoot five times at five targets, with the first three team members shooting while lying down and the second three standing up. For every miss, they would add on 30 seconds to your total team time! Then, you would ski down to your next team member, tag them and they would go. They gave us a few moments to discuss the order and then asked us to tell them who would be going when. They also told us that each team would go separately, so you didn’t know how each other did. The Red Team would be going first.

While the Red Team was out for their turn, we were confined to a closed room, but used that time to continue discussing strategy. We decided and asked Mary Caryl if she would be comfortable just shooting her rounds as fast as possible, knowing that she most likely wouldn’t hit anything anyways and this would help minimize her total time. She agreed. We also spent a lot of time visualizing the whole race, even going as far as to act out each part. We were really focused! Then, our mood changed when the Red Team came in. They weren’t allowed to tell us how they did, but they all looked really happy and had a really positive attitude. Things were not looking good.

The Blue Team! (Minus myself. Someone had to take the photo.)

It was our turn. We went out, still giving each other tips. After some brief intros from Henrietta and Halvard, Mary Caryl was first to go and was off…..kind of. It was an extremely slow pace mixed with a couple of falls. Thankfully, she was able to get up somewhat quickly, which she struggled with in practice. Then, she took her five shots at the target range, missing them all. She got back up and actually finished her skiing pretty quickly. Johnathan was next and did really well, hitting 4 of 5 targets and only falling a couple of times. Austin, who was next, was definitely our MVP! He fell one time, got up quickly and made his way to the shooting range hitting 5 of 5 shots! Now, came the harder part. Amy, Tara and I had to shoot standing up…..after skiing a lap! Amy went next and really struggled with the skiing. There was even a moment when she fell, got her skis tangled and looked really distraught. Thankfully, she eventually got her skis untangled and made it up to the target range, hitting 3 of her 5 shots!! I’ve had some previous experience with cross country skiing, so I was able to get around the course very quickly without any falls. Although, I was so nervous to fall, I didn't go as fast as I was going in practice. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my body to settle down and missed 3 of my targets. That was really frustrating. Because I was breathing so hard, the target was constantly moving in my scope and I eventually was just pulling the trigger, hoping it was when I was focused in on the target. That sucked! Then, Tara was our closer. She did pretty well on the skis, but also only hit 2 targets. It was after that when I realized that Tara and I had that same competitive spirit. We were both happy with the team, but extremely pissed at our own performances and it showed! Now that it was over, it was obvious to all of us that we had just lost and would have to go to an individual competition to find out who would be going home. (Quick embarrassing note: When Tara was finishing up her lap, I was screaming at her to finish as fast as possible and that I would catch her. Well, for some reason, I was worried we’d be disqualified if I touched her, so I pulled back right as she leaned across the line, falling to the ground! Oops! Then, to top it off, I felt so bad, I jumped on her to lift her spirits, kicking snow into her face! Double oops!)

Following some more interviews, we had to go back in and hang out for a while before the big reveal, which was hard to do and try to look positive in front of the other team. Eventually, we went out for the announcement of the winning team. After some lead-in by Henriette and Halvard, Henriette got to the results. One team had finished in just over 32 minutes and the other team finished in just over 30 minutes. I was confident that we were the team with 32 minutes. After the typical, prolonged, television silence, with Henriette staring at both teams, she finally said, “Congratulations…………BLUE TEAM!” What? We won? WE WON!! I was so unbelievably surprised that I threw my skis and shouted as loud as I could! INCREDIBLE! My mindset just flipped from figuring out how to persevere through the elimination challenge to knowing that I would be safe and staying in Norway for at least another 8 days!! (Two more days of Episode 2, two rest/travel days, and four days for Episode 3.) It was an amazing feeling, but quickly turned to a sad feeling, knowing someone else would be heading back to America in two days!

Our medal, given to us by Halvard, for winning.

After the results, we did our final interviews for the day and then moved inside, where we found out more about what had happened. Apparently, their team had their struggles too, the biggest and most surprising was Dana coming up empty and missing all five of his targets! (There was also an incident that involved Alf losing a pole and pushing on with just one pole. The Norwegian crew really got a kick out of that, due to a famous moment in Noregian Olympic history where a skiier broke his pole, but was able to finish and win. They even changed up their nationally famous phrase of "Where were you when Oddvar Braa broke his pole?" to "Where were you when Alf lost his pole?")

Tara getting interviewed after the big win!

Eventually, we had dinner in the hotel and then headed back to our cabins. We made it back about 9:00 P.M., hung out for a few hours, playing cards and talking, then headed off to bed. (There's a funny story here too. With all of the card playing that we've been doing, we've come to learn that Johnathan has a hard time staying focused as well as understanding the rules of the game. Alf on the other hand, is very focused and takes his cards pretty seriously. Tonight, I was sitting in between the two when Johnathan played illegally for the third straight time. I looked over only to see the anger in Alf's eyes. I was pretty sure that he was about to swing on Johnathan, but cooler heads prevailed and we all had a good laugh. We may have to set some new rules for Johnathan if he continues to play cards, especially with Alf!) I think everyone was worn out after a very long and emotional day. However, the Blue Cabin was assured to have a great night of sleep, knowing we would all be advancing to the next Episode!

DAY 12 OVER! MISSING MY GIRLS!!!