Jumping Journal: February 22, 2006

Day 41. PR/PB unexpectedly.  Spent last night working on getting the deflection boards installed on the inrun of the 50.  It's been hectic the past several days trying to get finishing touches in place before the kids start arriving early next week for the 2006 Junior Olympics.  I ended up spend the whole evening helping out and didn't get any jumps in.

 

This afternoon I arrived at the hill much earlier than normal, around 2PM and did a little demo work on a platform that had been installed at one time to make it easier to reach air and water pipes that are no longer used for snowmaking.  Since it could pose a real problem if a jumper got out of the track it has now been removed.  After that I went on to finish up the deflection board work.  By the time Cannonball arrived I thought I pretty much had everything finished off only to find out that I was wrong.  I went up with Esky to finish it off and saw that it was going to take just about as long as what I had already put in.  A little while later a couple of the kids came out already dressed and wanting to jump.  About the time I saw this I kinda lost all interest in even jumping tonight.  It just kept getting worse the longer time passed.  I pretty much had decided that I wasn't going to jump.  At one point Esky told me to go down and put on the skis.  I didn't listen.  I didn't listen either when one of the kids went by me and told me to get on the skis.

 

As I finally headed down the inrun the same jumper again told me to get the skis on and have some fun.  I changed into the jump suit, yes jump suit.  I figured I would try out Cannonballs idea that the boots had been causing me all the problems with the crashing I have dealt with for ages.  I knew I was going to be wearing the good boots so I figured why not put on the jump suit and see what would happen.

 

I head up for the first jump and I could tell that it was pretty much guaranteed that I was going to jump late.  The motivation/energy was not anywhere to be found.  I figured that my inrun position wasn't even going to be very pretty.  The inrun position wasn't bad, the timing was late, but the move out over the skis was there.  I ended up not cocking my ankles and came down fast.

 

The second jump found me way to tucked on the inrun and I couldn't get out of the inrun position until I was completely off the inrun.  I did end up cocking the ankles on this jump though.  The third jump was better except for the fact that I dropped the ankles about halfway through the flight.  Talk about kicking yourself in the butt.

 

I headed up for the fourth jump and I was still pretty much out of it but I was coming around.  The blood was flowing once again in my body and motivation was coming back slightly.  I head down the inrun and jump at the takeoff.  I noticed the feeling of what seemed like I had moved out over the skis.  The next thing I noticed was that I was going by the judges tower and I was higher off the ground than normal.  Toward the bottom side of the judges tower, 34 meters give or take, I dropped the ankles.  I still managed to pull off pretty darn close to a 40 meter jump, if not a little more.  It was definitely the smoothest jump I have ever had and the farthest as well.  I just wish I would have kept the ankles cocked.  I'll have to work on that hopefully, tomorrow.

 

I have noticed a difference with the new boots.  I'm still not agreeing that the boots were the problem with my crashing but time shall tell.

 

Crash