It's gotta be FUN!!!!

I spend every day working with kids of all ages. From the 2yr olds in the infant program all the way up through my college age staff some of who are 21yrs old. It does not matter what sport, activity or job they are doing they do the best when they are having fun!

As coaches as well as athletes it is imperative to incorporate fun in to instruction, workouts, and racing. It’s not hard or complicated to do but it’s something that has to be well thought out and implemented. It does take some time or at least some creativity to make a level 4 interval session fun but it can be done.

For Coaches: Think of ways to incorporate fun in to each and every workout. Think outside of the box and use creative ideas to incorporate fundamental skills. You can play just about any sport with your skis on. Just because its ski practice does not mean you can’t play a game of ultimate Frisbee, or Soccer, and in my opinion ads a whole new dimension to the sport when you have the boards strapped on! Don’t forget to mix it up as well, if you want to work on speed and agility why not set up an obstacle course. I also feel strongly about coaches jumping in and giving it a go once and a while with your athletes. It makes it fun for you as a coach and it also gets the kids going!

Here is a couple of great example from GMVS. Consequently they have some of the best young skiers and coaches in the country!

For Athletes: Don’t be scared to mix it up once and awhile. If you’re going for a 2 hr OD take a new route or run off the trail and create your own adventure. Also try to find someone to go with you. Time seems to go much faster when you are able to carry on a conversation. You also have to be in to it. If you’re not stoked to get out the door and go train then don’t do it! It’s not going to be that productive and it’s only going to make it that much harder to get out the door and do it tomorrow. One last thing that works even on the hardest days is to reward your self. If you have been looking at those Girl Scout cookies all week have a couple after you get in your OD session!

Racing is also a great reward you get to see all of your hard work come to fruition!

It’s not all about winning but it’s a lot of fun when you do!

Bill Koch Biathlon Clinic

On Sunday I had the wonderful opportunity to work with the local Bill Koch Ski Club. The local club is run by the Rochester XC Ski Foundation and under the guidance of Bob Witkowski. The ski foundation as well as the BK club is one of the major driving forces in the area to develop not only youth skiers but the sport of Nordic Skiing!!

Working in conjunction with the BK Club was Western New York Biathlon. Together the two clubs were able to introduce parents and athletes to the wonderful sport of biathlon. The WNY Biathlon club has a bunch of air rifles and pellet traps that are perfect for the little ones to use. Marty Maynard the WNY club president went over general rifle safety and range procedure. Together with Steve French, Marty and I were able to let each one of the kids shoot 5 shots in the prone position. It was amazing to see some of the kids lay down as many as 4 targets on there very first try!!!

After everyone was able to get some practice in we split the kids in to two 8 person relay teams for a little racing action! The protocol for the race was that each kid had to run a short loop, come in and shoot 2 shots (5 jumping jacks for each miss) and then tag off to the next person in line until the winner was decided. As many of us know it is one thing to hit the targets during zero but another story after skiing/running a loop and having the pressure of friends, family, and self!!!

The kids were doings so well and having so much fun that about ¾ of the way through the line they decided that they wanted to extend the race so that each person shot twice! The race was down to the wire and added to the excitement of the day.

After the race we presented WNY Biathlon patches to all of the kids and our gracious host Kim Douglas (Wife of local Olympian Duncan Douglas) provided everyone with a great snack. Duncan was not able to make it to the event because had left on his own mission to find snow on Saturday. Even without Duncan around we had an eventful day and hopefully did our part to continue New York Sates presence on the Biathlon scene!

I want to thank Rochester XC ski foundation BK ski League, Western New York Biathlon, Kim Douglas and all of the parents and athletes that made this a successful event!!!

Be sure to check out each one of these wonderful organizations website to see what they are up to this winter!

Rochester XC ski foundation BK ski League

http://www.xcrochester.com/new/GVBKYS/GVBKYS.htm

Western New York Biathlon

http://www.westernnybiathlon.com/

Duncan Douglas

http://www.jackedupoldman.com/

Oberhof Ski Tunnel

Today was a great day I was able to get on to snow for the first time this year and I was able to do it in an amazing ski tunnel located here in Oberhof.

Oberhof is an athletes dream; you realize immediately why some of the best Nordic athletes in the world call this place home. There are miles and miles of trails to run on. There is one trail that is nearly 100k long, with numerous trails splitting off in to the near by towns. I wish I had my mnt bike here as well!

Besides the trails Oberhof features one of if not the nicest biathlon stadiums in the world equipped with a 30 point range and a pathed rollerski loop. In addition to the roller loop and range there is also an additional manual target range also on a roller loop as well as an indoor range that has the capability to be open to the roller loop so that you can ski in and ski out! I stopped at the indoor range yesterday and there were a group of juniors doing intervals and shooting air rifles at the biathlon targets. (Here in Germany the juniors have to use air rifles)

Besides all of that there is also a bobsled run, ski jump, and other amenities that make this a winter sports wonderland!!!!

Tomorrow is the biathlon rollerski sprint race. It should be an awesome atmosphere and the top US guys will be on the start line, should be awesome.

Here is a little video and a few pictures I took today in the ski tunnel. I was able to get in 2 hrs of easy over distance mixed with some no pole, double pole. It took a little bit of time to get use to being on skis again but it was defiantly worth the effort!

(Video Link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxzr6bp1_dA

Races

Well the running races are over. For me the races went alright, and I learned a lot so they were successful in that respect. I did not do as well as I would of liked but keeping everything in perspective they were good. My teammate Sam Morse had a couple of great results. I have known Sam for a long time so it was good to see him do well, and it's always great to have a fellow New Yorker out there getting after it. Sam is originally from Camden NY and now splits his time in Camden and Jericho VT as he is in the Vermont National Guard. Doug, and Danny also did very well and were great leaders on this trip, they are veterans of the sport and made things a lot easier for Sam and I as they knew the routine. Steph was running well but here shooting fell apart and she was not able to get the results that everyone knows she is capable of achieving. She will be back though!!!!

Results can be found here:http://www.biathlonworld2.de/en/

After the final race we traveled to a near by town for the pursuit awards presentation. It is amazing at how much Biathlon means to the people of Germany. They know how to make it a truly special occasion. I took a couple of pictures of the stadium here in Oberhof and a little video of the awards presentation.

Tomorrow is the mixed relay roller ski race in which the US has no one entered. It should be fun races to watch though as most of the major contenders are here in Oberhof.

Pea Soup

Can you see the targets? Because I know I was having a hard time!

Today was the first day of official practice or at least it was suppose to be. One look outside the hotels window and I knew it was going to be pretty sketchy at the venue. I have heard the term “Pea Soup” and today I got my first taste. The fog rolled in over night and it was THICK!!

The team made the short trip over to the venue to see what was going on. They pushed the initial range opening time back from 10 to 10:30 but I think everyone knew that would not change anything. Sam and I decided to walk the course to make up for the change in time. After a preview of the course we returned to the range only to see the same thing. NOTHING!

You could barely make out the targets through the fog with the naked eye. They decided to open the range anyway and then after a couple people fired off some shots the closed the range and the decision was made to combine the men’s and women’s training later in the afternoon in hopes that the fog would burn off.

Needless to say when we returned to the range 4 hours later nothing changed. I ended up running the course a few times and then doing some drills. We ended up having the paper targets taken down and Sam and I took 10 shoots at the metal targets. A lot of the nations where also shooting on metal without to much luck, but it was not surprising because I don’t think anyone could see to zero and most athletes have traveled her from far way places and most likely had there rifles out of the stock as well so it was kind of a crap shoot.

Opening ceremonies tonight and the first race tomorrow morning.

Ski Flex Tester!!!!!!!

Not much is new here in Oberhof. Tommorrow is the first official training day so it will be good to be able to send some lead down range and get dialed in for the first race on Tuesday.

On another note of of my buddies dad has been hard at work developing a new flex tester. The things is unreal with the data it is able to give back about a ski. It's actualy kinda scary how much info you can get from this thing. I'm going to cut and paste the info in about the new flex tester and if you have any questions feel free to shoot him and e-mail he is a great guy and will be happy to answer any questions.

I'm going to apologize now for the format but for some reason the Euro Net does not like this certian functions like spell check or cut and paste.!!

DS Nordic Ski Flex Tester II
Overview:
This snow ski flex tester provides an accurate measurement of total deflection at over 100 points tip to tail. Deflection is directly proportional to the spring compression forces. Of course, the center camber will only show deflection after the ski is compressed to the point it can be measured with the LVDT. The symmetry and balance of the force distribution is influenced by whether the force is applied at the balance point, or behind the balance point where a skier’s weight is located.
Think about measuring the pressure-distribution along the length of a 2x4 [or a steel I Beam]. You certainly would not use a bunch of fixed load cells on a flat surface and press down in the middle. The entire length needs to be allowed to flex and its profile measured. This allows you to see the effect of knots and other irregularities. We are doing exactly this in order to provide an accurate and repeatable test to allow flex comparisons of skis.
We selected a spring rate that is stiff enough to give good resistance and soft enough to give us enough travel to measure. Our force-factor is 0.131 Kg per cm2 per cm of displacement. High Peaks preferred to have the y-Axis read out in cm of displacement [the software allows either].
Note that we are not trying to simulate snow conditions. We are testing skis. As this system is used to test “Favorite/Fast” skis or skis that perform like a skier wants, the Flex Tester curves will identify certain particular characteristics that make the ski perform for the skier in certain specific snow conditions. This becomes obvious with several iterations of testing and reviewing the data on the “Favorite/Fast” skis. The ski technician operating the machine will quickly be able to match a skiers favorite/fast ski curves to a new pair of skis to be sure they are going getting the same performance out of the new skis. This is assuming that we are talking about like snow conditions.
Please keep in mind we are providing a tool to advance the Sport and we leave determinations as to what is a fast ski to you ski experts and skiers as you correlate flex profile data with what works best for each skier for specific conditions.
FYI: The software provides the graphical data in Excel® so it is easy to add comments to each sheet and include Ski Brand and Model numbers in the File Name for easy sorting and retrieval.
We intend the DS Nordic Ski Flex Tester II to become the worldwide benchmark for all ski flex measurements. Please contact us to ask questions or discuss any details. We welcome your feedback.
DS Flex Testing Systems
715 Mendon Center Road Pittsford, New York 14534 585-750-8746 SkiFlexTester@gmail.com http://www.skiflextester.com/

SkiFlexTester@gmail.com
http://www.skiflextester.com/

World Championships

I'm in Oberhof Germany for Summer Biathlon World Championships. The flight over went off without any problems other than a couple tight connections. All of my luggage and most importantly my rifle was waiting for me when I arrived. It was about a 3 hr ride to Oberhof from Frankfurt. It is interesting to see all of the different models of vehichles that are avaliable over here and not in the states. Makes me wonder how much vehicle manufactures in the states really want to push more effeicant vehicles because they are obviously avaliabe in other parts of the world!!



Yesterday we ran from our hotel to the Biathlon venue (3k via a interlinking trail system). The venue is absolutly amazing! I will get some pictures tommorrow because it is one of those things that words can not do justice! The entire town of Oberhof seems to have one thing on it's mind and that is winter sports, the place is just set up to help athletes succeed. There are tons of Juniors at the hotel and each morning they roll out with there skis to take advantage of the new ski tunnel they opened here last month. Hopefully by weeks end I will be able to make my way over to the ski tunnel and get a few K's in.



Thats it for now, Hopefully I will be able to get some pictures tommorrow and let you see what i'm talking about.