Jumping Journal: March 6, 2006

Day 52.  Alas, I have finally have a new personal best.  Granted it would be nicer if it was further down the hill rather than the number f days on snow in a season.  Oh well, beggers can't be choosy.

 

After spending around a half hour doing clean up work on the hill from Junior Olympics I noticed what appeared to be a bald spot out on the end of the outrun.  After finishing everything I was doing I walked out and sure enough sometime since Saturday morning the snow melt has begun.  There actually was a couple of spots that was showing through to the dirt and grass.  I wass very surprised to see it like that this early.  There hasn't been any warm temps to speak of as of yet.  The temps the last couple of days have had a hard time making it above freezing.  The damage has been done though.  It should be pretty easy to get the groomer out there and push some snow into the outrun to repair the "damage".

 

I put on the jump suit and headed up the jump.  After making a bit of a correction to the binding, yes still fooling around with them, I took my first jump.  It wasn't pretty to say the least but I did ride it out okay.  I was surprised by how much speed I was carrying on the inrun.  I figured it was going to be slow but it wasn't.

 

The second jump was a litte better, as well as the third and fourth.  Dan was watching and suggested I go for the V again.  I decided on the fifth jump to give it a go.  I was a little taken by the V and ended up pulling out of it early.  When I landed the skis were pretty much right side by side, no standard gap between them like you normally have in this day and age.  It was more like the early days of jumping where you have you feet as close together as possible if you want good style points.  I tried to pull the skis apart and it didn't work very well and I ended up going down.

 

I went up for jump number six and decided to add the V in again.  This time it went better but the left ski cord isn't as short as the right cord is.  The cord came lose tonight.  The left tip came up hard and caught me off guard.  I ended up crashing that jump as well.  The seventh and final jump went smooth with a halfways decent V added in for good measure.  All the jumps were short, under 35 meters.

 

It sure wasn't the night of jumping that I thought I was going to have.  Then again, what else is new.

 

Crash

Jumping Journal: March 05, 2006

Day 51.  It's a tie, or what happened to all the kids. LOL!!!!!

 

Seems strange not having a bunch of kids out jumping today.  It also seems strange to put in so many jumps in one day, this is rather late in the season for this many jumps in one day.  It also seems eerie to think that I have never had over 51 days of jumping in one winter.  It looks like that is about to change, YES!!!!!!!

 

After spending a couple of hours changing the bindings over to the longer pair of skis that I had been jumping on most of the winter I put on the jump suit and headed over to jump the 25.  I knew I was pretty much ready to rumble.  I knew that I was going to grab 10-12 quick jumps and be outta there in around one hour.  Okay, so I grabbed a couple extra jumps.

 

It normally takes being around the right people to get me motivated like I was today.  Granted I was around the right people, sort of.  I guess when you get fed up with certain people it can give you the motivation to stay away from them, aka the quicker you can move the more you can stay away.  Junior Olympics helped me realize that the one thing that I lack the most around here is motivated jumpers.  Someone that can come out and make me really want to give it everything I got instead of just wasting another evening jumping.  Each of the kids I jump around do nothing but complain all the time about one thing or another.  None of them really knows how to have any fun jumping.  The adults are slightly better but nothing compared to the kids that I saw at JO's.  Kids like Charlie Stoddard and Zak Hammill know how to both compete and have fun at the same time.  Their were a couple of others but these two really standout in my mind.  I've seen now three times in the six years that I have been jumping that when you get motivated you end up having the best time of your life.  The problem is the kids that jump here in Lebanon end up killing any chance at being motivated.  I guess I'll have to start practicing staying away from them as well until it is time to jump.

 

I walked out of the jump inn this afternoon motivated, probably the most motivated I've ever been.  I walked up the steps of the 25 and took my first jump.  It was one of the best jumps I've had off the 25.  It did surprise me and I ended up crashing it.  Admittedly, everything combined together into one, I'm not surprised that I ended up crashing 5 or 6 times today.  It was one of those days where everything was really turned on its head, all for a good reason and in a good way.  There has one ever been one other day when I have had an entire day of nice long jumps on the 25 like today.  For the most part I was down around 20-22 meters on every jump.  Bad thing is that there was only maybe one tele put in the whole day.

 

Around jump 10 or 11 Dan Brown comes walking up the stairs with a rather unusual idea.  Why not try a V.  I went up the stairs and on top of the jump I thought for a split second about trying to put in a V.  The idea didn't last long before I was more seriously thinking about putting in a telemark landing.  I head down the inrun and once I get to the takeoff I put a big fat V.  I was caught a little got off guard by it.  I only made it about halfway out of the V before I landed.  As a result I went down.  Most of the crashes I took today were from adding the V and not getting out of it on time.  That's one thing I have to do some work on.

 

I am a little surprised as just how easy it is to add a V.  I had tried it the first year I jumped for a couple of days and was able to do a bit of a V back then.  Anymore I haven't really been trying to add the V but I have managed to toss it in every now and then, nothing very wide.  Today I picked it up with the biggest V to date, without trying to toss in a V.  At first the size of the V on the first attempt really threw me.  I figured it would take quite a while before I would put a V in that was spread apart that far.  The sweet thing is it feels so natural to toss in the V.  It kinda reminds me of last year, in March, when I was suckered into trying a tele on snow.  I had did a tele on numerous occasions off the telebump during the summer but I had never tried a tele on snow.  Now if I could only get the tele snow to feel the same way again it would just be grand.  Oh well, I'll take the V and not complain about it.

 

Now on to going for personal bests, yes bestS.

 

Crash