Jumping Journal: January 21, 2006

Day 25.  The halfway point of the season is finally here.  I hope I'm wrong but time shall tell.  I would love to get more than 50-51 days of jumping this winter.  History says that it isn't going to happen though.

 

The day didn't go quite as I thought it would.  On the way up to Storrs Hill for the meet this morning I noticed the temperature outside at 10:30AM was already in the low 50s.  I was suspecting slow conditions on the jumps.  I don't think I have ever been SO wrong in all my life.

 

I quickly put the jump suit on and headed over to grab a few jumps on the 25 while everyone was still trying to decide when they was going to start practicing on the 50.  I noticed on the very first jump that it was actually quicker this morning than it was last night when the temperature was just slightly above freezing.

 

Now one thing to keep in mind, during the Lebanon meet anymore I typically try to grab 20 jumps on the 25 and another 20 jumps off the 50.  I knew that with the competition schedule being different this year that I was going to have a hard/impossible time being able to pull off the 40 jump day.  Each of the last two years I have managed to pull off 30-35 jumps each year on the day of the meet.

 

I ended up with four jumps on the 25 before the competition started down on the 10 meter jump.  The last of the jumps was one of the best jumps, by feel, that I have had off of the 25 all winter.

 

I skied on over to the bottom of the 50 and walked on up the stair to the top of the jump.  The warm temps yesterday didn't leave very much snow on the very top, just enough to put the skis on.  I started down the inrun for the first jump and by the time I got to the takeoff I knew that the inrun definitely wasn't slow.  In mid air I froze thanks to the lack of slow conditions.  I had a lot of speed and some rather nice height on the jump as well.  I truly couldn't believe what I was seeing.  It really caught me off guard.

 

The second jump wasn't much better, just further down the hill than the first jump.  Little did I know what was coming later on in the day.  I took two more jumps, both starting from the bars.  On the third jump I was down somewhere around 36-37 meters starting from the second bar down.  The conditions were top notch to put it modestly.  I still can't believe how good they were given how warm it was outside.

 

I walked back over to the 25 and took another jump right before the competition started on the 25.  I missed the first round of the competition as I was trying to do some short term ski repair work that I knew I would do the right way after the comp on the 25 was over.  I forejumped the second and third rounds.  The jumps didn't seem quite as nice as they did during practice.  Then again, I never do decent at all during the meets, whether I'm competing or forejumping.  I always seem to choke whenever I jump while a competition is taking place.  Fortunately, the little bit of rain that fell during the second round of competition had let up prior to the start of the third round.  I hadn't jumped in the rain ever, with snow on the ground, until a week and half ago.  Now I've did it twice, err three times, more on that in a bit.

 

After l grabbed lunch and fixed the ski problem I walked up to the 50 and grabbed two more jumps before the competition started on the 50.  The first jump was a total shock, for the second time today.

 

The morning had started off partly cloudy.  It was even partly cloudy when the comp started on the 25.  It quickly clouded over and light rain fell.  By the time the comp was over the sun was starting to come back out again.  When I took my first jump, in the afternoon, on the 50 the clouds had rolled back in to the point that I was waiting for it to pour rain.  It wasn't looking one bit good at all.

 

As a result of the clouds moving back in, I was figuring that the track was still going to be fast.  Well, I was dead wrong on that issue.  I took the first jump and I ended up landing 5+ meters shorter than I jumped on any of the jumps I had taken in the morning.  I couldn't believe how short the jump was.  I hadn't had a jump quite that short in a couple of weeks.  Granted, between jumping in the morning and the afternoon I did switch back into the ski bibs.  I didn't want to put the wet jump suit back on, plus I kinda knew not to put the jump suit back on as well.  The second jump wasn't much better.  I still didn't have any kind of distance on the jump.

 

I was at the top, on the verge of taking a third jump before the comp started when I saw everyone starting to come up the tressel.  I decided to stay up top and wait for the comp to begin.  I was planning on forejumping the comp on the 50 as well.

 

First round went pretty decent I did end up losing it and crashing well after the fall line, heck I was even across the bridge before I went down.  Second round is when the weather started getting interesting.  Yep, more rain, twice in one day.  Gee, this weather is REAL crazy this winter.  Second round goes smooth and third round goes smooth.  I still didn't get any kind of distance at all, only around 30-32 meters from what it looked like to me and that was starting out of the house.  Longest jump of the day was 49 meters if I remember correctly.

 

The fun came about midway through the third round when a gustfront moved through.  Fortunately, no one was coming down the inrun or was in the air when it hit.  The combination of the rain and the wind at the time would have been brutal on any of the kids, experienced or otherwise.

 

So I finally am back up to the 7 jumps per day average that I think I have always pretty much averaged over the past couple of years now.  I also have finally hit the big 100 jumps off the 50 so far this winter.  Now I stand at 177 jumps for the year, not bad for this early in the season, or is that late in the season given the way my backyard looks right now it seems more like it is mid March-early April rather than late January.

 

Crash