Ever been to the pain cave? Susan Dunklee has visited it too many times to count.
To be an Olympic-level endurance athlete, "you have to be able to visit the pain cave," Dunklee said of her and her fellow biathletes' high tolerance for discomfort.
The Craftsbury resident competed for Team USA in three Winter Olympics — Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing. This year she'll be cheering on Team USA from home.
Like many individual Olympic sports, biathlon is both mentally and physically demanding. Athletes cross-country ski with rifles on their backs. During the race, they stop and shoot at targets 50 meters away. If they miss a shot, they get time added to their race, or they have to ski an extra 150 meter penalty loop.
Much of Dunklee's advice for this year's Olympians centers on the mental game. She said the best piece of advice she ever received came from a sports psychologist ahead of the Sochi games. "He was like, 'you know what Susan? Your job isn't to go win a medal. It's not to hit all your targets. It's not to have a perfect race. Your job is to perform well, and keeping the focus on performing well.'"
Good performance is different from a perfect result, Dunklee explained. "It's so easy to have your whole identity caught up in the result sheet, and that's a bad rabbit hole to go into," she said. "You're not trying to be Superwoman or Superman. You're just trying to do what you do in practice every day."
A lot of biathlon training centers on breath work. Athletes have to learn how to quickly regulate their breathing after the exertion of cross country skiing.
"As you're approaching the range on skis, you're also using your breathing to really calm yourself down," Dunklee said. "Get a little bit more oxygen into your brain, your nervous system." Exhale, then shoot.
Another top Vermont biathlete, Chloe Levins, uses mantras and Buddhist practices to regulate her breathing. In an interview with the Vermont Public show The Sports Rapport, she spoke about the importance of "mind work and visualization."
"You can't just go mindlessly into what we call the pain cave when we ski," Levins said. "You have to be aware enough to hit a target the size of a golf ball 50 meters away while your heart is beating outside your chest."
The realities of being an Olympic athlete aren't always as glamorous as they might seem. Dunklee said she sold some of her Olympic mementos to help fund her athletic pursuits.
She also skipped the opening ceremony at all three Olympics she attended to focus on her own events. "Our coaches really, really encouraged us not to [attend the ceremonies], because we had a race the next day," she said.
These days, Dunklee finds fulfilment as a coach. She's the director of biathlon at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, and she coaches Paralympic biathletes.
She's also happy to pass on encouragement and advice to this year's crop of local biathletes, who form a tight-knit community. Team USA's 2026 biathlon team includes Deedra Irwin and Maxime Germain, both specialists in the Vermont Air National Guard, Sean Doherty of Center Conway, New Hampshire, and Margie Freed, who studied at the University of Vermont. Alternates Chloe Levins and Jake Brown are also Vermont-based.
"I'm a big fan," Dunklee said of Team USA. "I don't wish I was there [competing], most of the time. My body's really tired. The thought of going that hard into the pain cave is exhausting."
This episode also included an Olympics preview conversation with Mitch Wertlieb, host of The Sports Rapport, and an interview with Brett Stokes, attorney for a Vermont asylum seeker detained by ICE.
Broadcast live on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2026, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
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