podium quad stance analysis

so, alas, i have finally lost all the paper IKEA tape measures that sabine gave me last year. some of them ripped so i threw them away. some i gave away. some ripped and i taped them back together. some i lost. and i brought my final one to AVC- and now i can't find it. and i didn't even get to measure the olympians' quads. punked! but andrew from minnesota did request a measurement, and he was rockin' at 58cm. so i am glad at least it got put to use. man, i asked for one thing for christmas from my mom: a tape measure. and what did i get instead? a pair of orange panties.... well, i am not going to complain about that.

so, this all means that when i went to measure today, i had to go back to the original method of string and metal tape measure. i came out ahead, at 62.5cm. i don't want to get too excited though, because perhaps there is device fallacy. and i did measure right after i came home from sprinting uphill, so this could be an unfair case of muscle bloating... so, that is why i am putting that number in italics. i don't quite trust the accuracy.

speaking of quads, i would like to take breif analysis of the podium shot from sprints. i was going to do this for the men's podium as well, however, i couldn't find a podium picture i could poach and crop....so if someone would like to give me one, i will be happy to make fun of the boys too.

not to be self-congratulatory or anything, but my quads look pretty huge in this picture. becky lang's also look pretty huge. i think one thing that is creating this huge quad image is definitely the stance-- our legs are squeezed together, which makes the bulge in the hip seem much for drastic. contrast this to the next two. jen featheringill has the wide stance. from my memory, her quads are definitely large-- but standing wide legged is creating a slimming effect. not that there is anything wrong with that, i'm just not into slimming effects. so, too, check out jen tripplet's stance, which we will call the knee cock. this also has a slimming effect, however in a different way than the wide stance. it makes the lower quad (not the part we measure) slim down, which then appears to make the upper quad smaller as well. again, if that is what you are going for, that's fine. but just not my style.... lastly we have andrea fisk and amara boursaw. as you can tell, this is hard to see here. it is because andrea is not on a step here and is shorter than jen to begin with, so we get more of a waist shot. and it looks like mara has a slight wide stance, but nothing like featheringills..... of course, people, stand on the podium how you like. but just be weary that stance creates an optical illusion which effects how big people see your quads.

and, hey, don't sweat the stance. even pros mess up sometimes. here is a picture i got from last years AVC with jennie reed. matias, who i barely knew at the time, followed instructions perfectly getting a picture of our quads. i think jennie and matias may have been a bit creeped out, but, whatever. this one is for the memory books--my quads next to a world champions!

jennie sporting the wide stance, me with the cocked leg. poor form all around.

and just cause the diablo hill climb was this past weekend, i thought i'd remember that day last year. until i met michiko a few months before i thought i was a great climber. and until we did the diablo hillcimb, i thought michiko was a great climber. well, we definitely had fun at that one. nothing like reppin' the ghetto sharpie/t-shirt patch, baby!