Jumping Journal: January 24, 2007

Another strange evening.  How much weirder can this winter get.  The first high school meet of the season found me taking several jumps off the 50 before heading out to watch the meet.  Normally I always jump during practice with the kids.  The second meet went pretty much as usual except I didn't jump with the kids before the meet.  The third meet, last Friday evening I skipped and didn't take the drive up to the White Mountains to jump the K25 at Kennet, instead I stayed back at Lebanon and helped with getting the 25 ready for the meet on Saturday.  Last Friday was the first time I have missed a week of high school ski jumping since I have lived here in New Hampshire(October 2000).  Now tonight was going to make things ever crazier.

 

My original plans for tonight was to jump with the kids on the 25 while they practiced, heck I might even let myself get railroaded into forejumping.  Last night while jumping I heard that one of the parents was planning on coming over with his two kids and they were planning on jumping the 50.  My new plans became jump the 50 and then go over and watch the meet on the 25.

 

I got to the hill around 3:45PM and walked to the jump inn and changed the binding on my skis.  The previous, telemark style, bindings had the simple problem that the piece that came around the side of the toes was too short and earlier in the year I was having trouble keeping the skis on my feet when I went to stop at the end of the outrun.  The new bindings, still telemark, have longer sides that should help prevent the problem that I use to have.

 

Shortly before 5PM I headed on out with a couple of the kids and started jumping the 50.  The three main stories for the evening, what else is new, were 1) jumping late, 2) backing out before the landing, 3) nice improvement throughout the session.

 

Until the end of the session I was jumping late pretty much all the time.  I also noticed starting with the very first jump of the evening that I was backing/pulling out of the flight position WAY early.  It was very noticable to me and I'm still puzzled as to why I was pulling out of the jump like I was.

 

I spent most of the evening just trying to get lower on inrun.  I haven't been sitting quite as far down as I should which has prevented me from being able to get the shin angle I need to get the maximum potential power at the takeoff.  Earlier in the season it always seemed like whenever I started to get lower into my inrun position that I would always end up dropping my butt and then my hands would drop as well and the combination would throw the jump off.

 

By the end of the evening I was maintaining my balance on the inrun while way down into my tuck.  It seemed like I was getting down like I should be while not dropping the butt or the hands.  I noticed that the extra shin angle was helping to get get more power at the takeoff.  I just had to readjust my timing ever so slightly so I could get close to jumping on time instead quite late.

 

In the beginning of the evening, the first five or six jumps, I was jumping about as far as I had last night, down around 30 meters, maybe slightly further.  Granted backing out of the jump early helped to shorten any jump I took.  Toward the tail end of the 14 jump session I was getting down more around 35+ meters.

 

The jump of the evening was one of the smoothest jumps I have had since we made snow again, maybe even the smoothest jump I have ever had at all.  I held the position nicely and didn't back out before I landed.  I believe I even managed to have my arms relaxed by my sides while in the air(rather unusual).

 

After taking the 14 jumps I changed clothes and headed on over to watch the last two rounds of the high school meet.

 

Crash