Jumping Journal: January 07, 2006

To put it simply, how do you stay awake going down the inrun?  Enough said.

 

Spent Friday night helping make snow on the Newport jumps.  It was all night long.  After jumping on the 25 earlier in the afternoon I ran some errands and then it was out to the hill until around 10:30AM this morning.  I did manage to catch about 45 minutes of sleep here and there between 4AM and 6AM.  It wasn't the best sleep by any means though.

 

I got home and spent some time running a few more errands while I still could before noon time came around and I would have to wait until Monday to be able to run those errands.  I pretty much then packed up and headed on up to Storrs Hill to jump the 50 this afternoon.  What a trip.

 

I spent about 5-10 minutes up on top of the tressel hoping I could wake up enough so I could manage to actually jump at the takeoff on the first jump.  It didn't work.  I ended up just sliding off the end, in what was one of the worst jumps, distancewise, that I have ever had on the 50.

 

Each jump from that point forward got progressively better.  I ended up with 8 total jumps and as I figured, zero crashes.  I am a little surprised by the zero crashes considering how little I was really with thanks to sleep deprivation.

 

It seems strange to think that 1/3rd of the season is already over.  I normally end up with either 50 or 51 days of jumping each winter and right now I have 17 of them in the bag with 114 total jumps, 51 on the 25 and 63 on the 50.

 

Tomorrow appears to be a day off.  WIth a jump meet at one the nearby hills that I don't plan to jump in, I'll probably go if I'm awake, plus the fact I don't have my skis on me, they are still in Lebanon, plus the fact that I'm getting ready right now to head back out to the Newport jump and help finish up making the snow, you could say the odds are pretty much stacked against me for doing any jumping tomorrow.  Oh well, I guess I'll restart and try for another long duration streak on Monday.  I may still pull of 14-18 days in a row this winter if Mother Nature does't interfer with my plans any.

 

Crash

Myth #2 Debunked, Part 7

As I pointed out yesterday, much damage has been done to the sport of ski jumping through the attitude:

 

"When you quit competing, you quit jumping?

 

This attitude can only cost more jumpers instead of providing more jumpers on the hills.  I have seen this attitude pop up on several occasions now.  I'll give the details of one of the two of the episodes below.  The other one I'll save for tomorrow.

 

At the end of the 2004 winter, I jumped through a period that I like to call "48 hours of hell".  Actually it was closer to 40 hours rather than 48.  It all started Thursday evening before Mud Meet.  Mud Meet is the finally meet of the season in Lebanon, a ski meister meet.  After not having seen much jumping the previous week or so do the warm temps we finally got lucky and fresh snow fell as could be predicted, just in time for Mud Meet.  It seems it always happens like this each year.  I arrived at Storrs Hill to find quite a few cars in the parking lot.  I knew it didn't seem right, since I knew the ski hill was closed.  I hopped out and made my way up to the building.  I saw one the parents there and knew it seemed real strange seeing her at the hill.  About the only time i ever saw her was if her son was out jumping or if he was with the high school team that he was the assistant coach of.  I knew the son wouldn't be jumping the 25 meter hill, for sure.  He was a big hill boy, and big hill boys don't jump the small hills, what an evil sin to even think of doing such a thing.  Shame for shame.

 

I went inside and changed into the jumping fatigues and started my way out the door when I found out she was there with her son who was there with his former high school jumping team.  The senior class decided they wanted to get one last chance to jump before graduation.  It turns out that pretty much the whole team came, but only the seniors were jumping.  The underclassmen were marking and cheering on the seniors.

 

I headed on up the tressel and took my first five or six jumps before things started going downhill real fast.  As I head back up for either jump six or seven, I found myself in between two of the seniors.  I found myself listening to them say, "I can't believe this is going to be the last jump I'm ever going to take" or "I can't believe this going to be the last time I'm ever going to jump", "I can't believe this is going to be the last jump of my career."

 

They take the jump and it didn't go as well as they had hoped so they head back up to take another jump.  This time all the senior class is saying the same thing, except for one of them that is planning to come to Mud Meet on Saturday.  They end up taking another four or five jumps before the call it quits.  Between every jump they keep on saying the same thing "I can't believe this is going to be the last time I'm ever going to jump."

 

I about wanted to kill their coach and assistant coach.  As I knew this rotten mentality had to be coming from their coach.  How else would they ever get the notion that they had to quit ski jumping when the graduated.  Well, then again, when you don't see much in the way of adults out ski jumping it does help give the impression that this is a kids only sport.

 

I made my way home and wound back the video tape in the VCR.  Every evening since the ski jumping episodes had been on New Hampshire Chronicle, I had been taping the show and going back and watching it after I got home from jumping.  Well, on Thursday evening, they just happened to have on the episode about going skydiving that I mentioned a few days ago.  This naturally pissed me off even more.

 

Friday went pretty good, everything seem to settle down quite a bit.  Saturday came around and things were going great, the alpine and x-country races were over, the ski jumping competition was finished, jumping through the hoop of fire was over as well.  It seemed like the weekend and the ski jumping season was coming to a nice close.  Or so I thought...

 

I went inside to change my clothes and get out of the jumping gear.  I sat down beside one of the high school kids I've known since I started jumping.  He has always been a great kid.  He's not the loud, snotty type that you find quite often around the big jump venues.  He almost seems like he on the shy side to say the least.  Yes, he also was one of the top jumpers at the state meet that year, I believe he was in the top 5 if not the top 3.

 

We sat beside each other changing clothes and talking back and forth.  A pause comes in the conversation.  He comes back in a rather despondent voice and says "I can't believe that is the last time I'll ever jump."

 

I go ballastic.  Again, I've admired this jumper as long as I've known him.  I tell him off point blank to his face that the only reason he has to quit jumping is because he doesn't like to jump.  Their is no other reason why he has to quit.

 

In further talking with him I come to find out that he didn't compete in alpine or x-country in high school, only ski jumping.  I knew that I've seem him out on occasion competing in the eastern division meets.  He never tried out for junior olympics or anything like that, but he still came out for three or four eastern meets each year.  He mostly jumped for the fun of it.  I also found out in talking to him that he had just jumped the 90 in Lake Placid the weekend before for the first time.  He loved it and would love to jump it again.

 

Where did he get the idea that when you graduate, you have to stop ski jumping???  It must be coming from the coaches.  I still haven't figured out any other place where it could be coming from unless it's from the news media.

 

Well, tomorrow marks the 4th anniversary of my supposed retirement from ski jumping.  Tomorrow, I shall explore more into my supposed retirement, seen from a junior jumpers perspective.

 

Until next time

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash