The silence between shots

Just watched a kid on the range—13, maybe—take her first full-length biathlon run. She didn’t miss a single shot, but the real win was in the stillness after each one. Not the calm of confidence, but the kind that comes when you’ve stopped trying to be heard. I stood at the back, breath held like I was part of the air. That silence? It wasn’t empty. It was full of everything she hadn’t said yet. I wanted to tell her: this is what we train for—not the speed, not the score, but the moment when the world stops so you can hear yourself.