Category: XCFeeds

a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0rWqe4B8I/AAAAAAAAEjM/6v6jB2_zAjY/s1600/IMG_8556.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0rWqe4B8I/AAAAAAAAEjM/6v6jB2_zAjY/s400/IMG_8556.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520616386587002818″ //aWe have a nice 2 km loop on campus that rolls down for about 1 km and then has a good climb that runs into a flat rolling section. Today we ran the loop 4 times and bounded the hills. The goal was to go L2 on the downhill and L3 or L4 on the uphill and across the flat. It was a tough workout, but the group looked strong.br /A bunch of the team followed up the workout with a little contrast bathing in our gym. See if you can guess which is the hot tub and which is the cold tub from the pictures below.br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0q_wIgnxI/AAAAAAAAEjE/rr_RvSgZNGk/s1600/IMG_8558.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0q_wIgnxI/AAAAAAAAEjE/rr_RvSgZNGk/s400/IMG_8558.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520615992966815506″ //abr /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0qsFIwquI/AAAAAAAAEi8/CaJBRt-5FVk/s1600/IMG_8557.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0qsFIwquI/AAAAAAAAEi8/CaJBRt-5FVk/s400/IMG_8557.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520615655007628002″ //abr /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0qayLNqGI/AAAAAAAAEi0/ilh41R1woJI/s1600/IMG_8554.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0qayLNqGI/AAAAAAAAEi0/ilh41R1woJI/s400/IMG_8554.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520615357859866722″ //abr /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0pzILr27I/AAAAAAAAEis/BMCD28LhVxU/s1600/IMG_8550.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJ0pzILr27I/AAAAAAAAEis/BMCD28LhVxU/s400/IMG_8550.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520614676572658610″ //abr /The hot and cold tubs after the workout were nice, but the big news of the day is that Tyne Pike-Sprenger and Dave Rothman got engaged. Congratulations to them both!div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4680416899705879324-3653499427607192316?l=smsxc.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div

German biathlete Kati Wilhelm (sporting some delightful red hair, I might add) is the last (finally!) in my list of retiring athletes to cover.  That Wikipedia link tells me that she was actually dubbed “Little Red Riding Hood” by the German press due to both her hair and a red hat she wore for all races.

Wilhelm is an exceptionally accomplished biathlete: I found 69 podium finishes in major events (World Cup, Olympics or World Championships), which included 4 individual Olympic medals and 5 more from World Championships.  And of course that’s on top of numerous medal winning German relay teams.

Let’s take a look at her results:

Another classic looking skiing career here: several years of steady improvement, a peak, and then a few years of decline right before retirement.  Two things stand out to me in these data.  First, 2003-2004 stands out as kind of an off year.  Second, look at that string of lots of very fast races between 2005-2006 and 2008-2009!  Wilhelm appears to have been extremely consistently near the top at big races.

Next, the same data but broken down by race type:

I guess I’d say that the only salient feature here is that Wilhelm might not have preferred the 15km distance event.

As far as shooting is concerned, I have Wilhelm shooting 82.4% overall, 80.5% prone and 84.3% standing over her entire career.  Interestingly, she seems to have shot considerably better standing than prone.  How did this stack up against her peers?

Wilhelm’s shooting improved dramatically over time:

Recall that the dashed lines represent the shooting performance of top ten finishers for each season.  Notice that the green line (standing) is nearly always above the red line (prone), which isn’t typical.

Related posts:

1. <Career Retrospective: Rene Sommerfeldt
2. <Career Retrospective: Martina Beck
3. <Career Retrospective: Simone Hauswald

Curious what people have been talking about in the comments section on FasterSkier.com lately ?  Maybe you are, but too scared to look?  I’ve got a solution for you.

Or maybe you’re one of those people who would rather anonymously mock anonymous FasterSkier commenters, in which case this might make your mockery more time efficient, which is always a good thing.

Check below the fold for a word cloud of the most recent FasterSkier article comments (courtesy of Wordle).

Click through for the full version.  Training hours, indeed!

Related posts:

1. <Dope Slap
2. <Week In Review: June 25th
3. <Tour de France Charts

a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqN-xeu_ZI/AAAAAAAAEik/0oobjKCT0mc/s1600/IMG_8537.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 305px;” src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqN-xeu_ZI/AAAAAAAAEik/0oobjKCT0mc/s400/IMG_8537.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519880402869616018″ //aWe are into our 4th week of school. The team is doing well, training hard and staying very busy with classes and homework. Yesterday we had a tough double day and today it warmed up for our ski at BMD.br /Almost everyone felt exhausted. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was accumulated fatigue. Regardless, sometimes it’s better to listen to your body instead of working on being tough. We cut the skate ski down to 1:15 and worked on skiing relaxed. Hopefully the easy day will help everyone feel good for tomorrow.br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqNj3zRgxI/AAAAAAAAEic/vLepY3scWy4/s1600/IMG_8538.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 234px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqNj3zRgxI/AAAAAAAAEic/vLepY3scWy4/s400/IMG_8538.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519879940709909266″ //abr /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqCLWV0_UI/AAAAAAAAEiU/jafMngxLAh0/s1600/IMG_8544.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqCLWV0_UI/AAAAAAAAEiU/jafMngxLAh0/s400/IMG_8544.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519867424783269186″ //abr /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqBtiVfKYI/AAAAAAAAEiM/EKU91pszdTQ/s1600/IMG_8545.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqBtiVfKYI/AAAAAAAAEiM/EKU91pszdTQ/s400/IMG_8545.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519866912606988674″ //abr /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqAdRDaELI/AAAAAAAAEh8/vTIMNCp_-Pg/s1600/IMG_8546.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqAdRDaELI/AAAAAAAAEh8/vTIMNCp_-Pg/s400/IMG_8546.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519865533578219698″ //abr /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqAAhLCh2I/AAAAAAAAEh0/e0nAd0_VjIY/s1600/IMG_8547.JPG”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 242px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/TJqAAhLCh2I/AAAAAAAAEh0/e0nAd0_VjIY/s400/IMG_8547.JPG” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519865039688992610″ //adiv class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4680416899705879324-7121659508528551045?l=smsxc.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div

Here is some video from yesterdays speed workout. It is hard to tell because all the girls are wearing pink and black. I have on white boots and 2xu pants if that makes it easier.span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”font-family: -webkit-monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre-wrap; “object width=”640″ height=”385″param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/2CJyoAfU08Q?fs=1amp;hl=en_US”/paramparam name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”/paramparam name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”/paramembed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/2CJyoAfU08Q?fs=1amp;hl=en_US” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”640″ height=”385″/embed/object/spandiv class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2018521813175454198-3689767826120789180?l=sadiebjornsen.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div

There are two somewhat different ways in which you could be considered a skating or classic specialist.  First, you can be noticeably better at one technique than the other.  Second, you could just only do races of one technique or the other.

These two situations might overlap, or they might not.  In any case, they are easier to consider separately.  Let’s look first for skiers who specialize via participating primarily in one technique or the other.  Some ground rules: I’m going to toss skiers with fewer than 30 WC, OWG or WSC races in their career, pursuits with a break will count as one classic race and one skate race, pursuits without a break will count as half of classic race and half of a skate race.

We could get picky about changes over time, particularly with changes in the number of classic/skate races available on the schedule each season, but I’m going to ignore that for now.  Also, keep in mind that there will be skiers here who’s careers extend beyond my database, so the data for them is incomplete.  Requiring at least 30 races weeds out the more extreme examples of this, but not all.

First let’s look at the distribution of the percentage of skate and classic races by athlete for their entire career:

This is a tad redundant since the skate and classic proportions will always add up to one, so the densities in each row are just mirror images of each other.

The overwhelming majority of skiers are pretty balanced, doing roughly half skating and half classic races.  Oddly, the men’s distributions have slightly fatter tails than the women’s indicating that there are more men doing races of just one technique than women.

The interesting aspect of this is not the normal people, it’s the abnormal people, and there are a few.  You can check them out for yourself in the following tables (you can sort the tables using the column headers; my apologies to RSS readers, you’ll have to visit the actual page for these features):

If you look at the men’s classic specialists, there are the familiar Norwegians we’d expect to see: Hjelmeset, Jevne and Svartedal.  Andrus Veepalu and Hjelmeset take the cake for classic specialists with significantly more races than the others (not to mention the fact that they were actually quite fast).

But Estonian Raul Olle really, really likes classic skiing.

For skating specialists, we have two standouts in Teemu Kattilakoski and Herve Balland.  Christian Hoffman and Tore Rud Hofstad are probably the fastest skating specialists here.

With the women, Lina Andersson and Inger Nybraaten stand out as particularly fast classic specialists.  Nybraaten is a great example of someone who I only have races at the tail end of their career, so there is some question as to whether the 40 races I do have is representative of the rest of her career.  And she probably raced for a time when skating perhaps wasn’t really an option.

For some reason I had no idea Wendy Wagner did so many more classic races, but apparently so.

Turning to skating, Lithuanian skier Irina Terentjeva really, really prefers skating it would appear.  Some of the Russians I’m not so familiar with, but I recognize Arianna Follis and Karine Phillipot, who both seem to prefer skating with around a 60/40 split for each of them.

Related posts:

1. <Career Retrospective: Rene Sommerfeldt
2. <Career Retrospective: Sabina Valbusa
3. <Bjoern Daehlie vs Thomas Alsgaard

divspan class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; “img src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_k1DHbqzFvCE/TJo7TpUujHI/AAAAAAAABDM/R1_CZQVJnNA/s400/Haley%27s+visit+015.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”” id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519789501992307826″ style=”display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px; ” //span/divdivIts been awhile since I’ve been to Gym Class, and this year, Monday’s visit to Mr. Young’s class at the LP Elementary School will be the first of quite a few. In the past I visited kids in their classrooms. However, this year I wanted to take a different approach. Being active with kids and working along side those who are already promoting activity and healthy choices, seemed to be a more effective way, naturally. On Monday I visited 4th and 5th grade gym classes./divdivspan class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color:#0000EE;”span class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color:#000000;”br //span/span/divdivspan class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; “img src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_k1DHbqzFvCE/TJo7TSULwaI/AAAAAAAABDE/8k4gEswYuT0/s400/Haley%27s+visit+003.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”” id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519789495816012194″ style=”display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 354px; ” //span/divdivbr //diva onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k1DHbqzFvCE/TJo7Ub5pS3I/AAAAAAAABDU/OT5EpC2xRgI/s1600/Haley%27s+visit+018.jpg”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;” src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k1DHbqzFvCE/TJo7Ub5pS3I/AAAAAAAABDU/OT5EpC2xRgI/s400/Haley%27s+visit+018.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”” id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519789515568925554″ //abr /div style=”text-align: left;”This project is a bit free form, but the intention will always be clear: I think role models are really important figures in our lives. In the environment of gym class and school, an athlete can be a meaningful, local and real life example to learn from. I know this reads a bit like NPR’s