Statistics

In my Rogers Park Elementary School class the students were working on statistics this winter. I was away racing, but I keep in touch with Ms. Price & suggested that they do a project looking at the statistics section of the FIS website. FIS does a great job of providing not only individual bios and career histories but also cumulative information. When I returned from Canadian Nationals and got back into going to math class they showed me their projects and we did a group discussion/critique.

Here's a sampling of their work...

(and yes, I can tell that I'm becoming more teacher-esque because I brag to my friends about how brilliant "my" kids are.!


"What I'm graphing: I'm going to graph how many girls from USA ranked in the World Cup for cross country skiing over the years."
I think that this is specifically number of American females who made it into the top 100 of the FIS points list, covering 1982-2009. I think that this trend looks encouraging... moving upwards!


"Average Age of Cross Country 5k Winners"
This, in addition to being a visually appealing graph, shows that the average age doesn't vary too much, mostly being about 25 years old. 1983 is at the far left and the data continues through 2009.


"Places Where Ski Jumping Competitions Were Held"
Germany & Austria held way more World Cup ski jumping comps this season with 11 & 10, respectively. It was pretty clear when we were in Austria that they had a strong culture of skiing with ski areas and trails all over the mountains. It would be interesting to look at how the number of World Cup competitions held in an area affects the development and success of that sport in the area.


"Amount of Female Skiing Wins for Norway in the World Cup"
Be careful, the years run from 2009 at the left of the graph to 1982 (I think) at the right side of the graph. So it looks like Norwegian women are increasing their dominance, albeit with a sharp drop off from last year to this season... looks like the Norwegian team missed having Astrid on the world cup this year. It is worth considering that the number of races and hence overall number of wins available in a season might have changed over the years. A more consistent stat would have been percentage of races won by Norwegian women.


"Youngest Average Age For Female Skiers: World Cup 1982-2009"
From which I would surmise that there's no noticeable trend in the age at which the youngest females are winning world cups. I think this is the average of youngest 5k winner, youngest 30k winner, and so on over the season.

I always do feel grateful that I get to work with such wonderful students and that I can help spark their interest in math & skiing!

Canadian Nationals

It happens so rarely that you perform better than you had expected or hoped. Usually I demand more from my body than it can give me. There aren't too many days when you laugh when a teammate tells you your place because you're both happy and unsure that she's telling the truth, or when your first glance at a results list your own name jumps out at you from the very top. It's been awhile since I've been able to finish a sprint race, stop, turn around and watch the sprint for second. I am currently in Collingwood, Ontario at the Canadian National Championships and the racing has been going exceptionally well-- I had a clear margin of victory in the 10k classic & classic sprint, third in the 5k skate, and Ronsse & I won the team sprint prior to the start of the official Nationals.

I know that if I was on the World Cup I could have had the same races with much less celebrated results. Racing domestically makes a good race look phenomenal. It would be easy to point out that if so-and-so had been here I wouldn't have won. This week, though, I'm going to give myself a gold star for a job well done and simply be happy about it. I always look back at my races and analyze what I could have done better, what I would have changed, how I need to adjust for the next race where I encounter similar conditions/terrain/situations. This is certainly important self-reflection for the growing process (and still a process I went through after the races this week, some habits are hard to break), but it's important to give credit for what you've done well. So about this week I will say, these are races where I skied well. Right now I'm letting success motivate me. Starting in May it's going to be another long summer and fall of focused training... it's good to have remembrances of both success and failure from the season before to drive your will to train. Failures, for most of us, are easy to find so grab what successes you can.

Success & Failure

The 2009 World Championship courses in Liberec, CZE.

There are two things which drive an obsession for competition-- success and failure. It seems a paradox that the two extremes of the performance spectrum lead to the same outcome. Really, the worst race is one in which you are happy with your performance but not inspired to strive for greater heights. Enough of those races will stall a career as surely as an LJ03 grind at -17°c brings your skis to a halt.

As I'm growing as a skier I see the importance of choosing the field in which I compete, providing myself with a balance of failure and success. Exposure to the best field is good but last year I stayed on the World Cup circuit too long and got disheartened. This year I'm staying not quite long enough. It's still long enough to get an infusion of dreams and aspirations.

I ski here, at the World Champs, look around me and tell myself, "that's how I want to ski. That's the skier I want to be." It's an ongoing lesson in potential and concrete examples of the goals I have being realized. I want to ski well. I want to ski better than I have skied before and better than I ski now. How I ski now is not good enough. My fitness now is not high enough. Watching my competitors makes this clear. Skiing requires a combination of brute capacity and beautiful efficiency.

It's easy to fail. It's equally easy to convince yourself that you haven't failed. If I went home I would be perceived as a better skier. It's that simple to turn failure into success. I don't want that facade of success. I would rather receive condolences despite a good race than congratulations despite a poorly skied race.