Jumping Journal: February 06, 2007

I think this is the first time since I started this jumping journal that I'm posting two days worth of jumping at a time.  Granted it looks like it may extend to three days worth of jumping being posted at once coming this weekend.  It will be two das minimum.

 

Sunday was an off day.  I went up to Lebanon and shoveled off the stairs on the inrun and landing hill on the 50 after the snow that had fallen Friday evening.  In the afternoon I spent 2-2.5 hours ice skating.  I don't think I have ever spent that much time on ice skates in one winter, yet alone one day.

 

Monday was a bit of a brutal evening.  The temperature were not much above zero and the wind was howling nicely as well.  The landing hill of the 50 hadn't been groomed and the inrun still needed some work done to it.  It was decided that we would wait until Tuesday evening to jump.

 

Now my original plans for the week, not knowing what the kids schedule up in Lake Placid looked like for the week, was to head up and jump the 90 Thursday through Friday morning and then follow the Lake Placid kids down to Salisbury for the meet down there this weekend.  Late Monday evening, 10:30PMish, I looked on the web and saw that their was no plans of jumping at all for Thursday, just weight training and x-country practice.  I kinda figured that their wouldn't be any afternoon jumping on Thursday but I didn't know for sure.

 

I looked at the scehdule for quite a while and tried to figure out an alternative plan.  Then I checked the weather forecast for the area and finally decided to take off late Tuesday morning and jump with the kids in the afternoon and then again on Wednesday morning.  I thought I had to be back in time for the high school meet Wednesday evening at Andover.  One of Cannonballs high school has pretty much outgrown every suit except the one I have been using.

 

I left mid morning Tuesday with decent road conditions for the first trip to Lake Placid this winter.  I was starting to get use to the roads/weather not being suitable for traveling whenever I was going to Lake Placid.  I had been watching the wind as I was heading up.  In spots the wind was kicking up pretty decent and in other spots it was dead calm.  I was really hoping that the wind wouldn't be a factor like it was on Saturday.

 

Upon arriving at the jump site I noticed right away that the wind was as bad if not worse than what it was back on Saturday.  I pretty much knew that the 90 was out, all I could hope for then was Wednesday morning.

 

The kids arrived after they got out of school.  We all suited up and headed over to jump the 48.

 

My first jump on the 48 reminded me quite a bit of the first one on Saturday.  The state of shock wasn't quite as bad but it was still there.  I was still jumping down in the 35 meter range.

 

By the second jump I was back to realizing that I had no reason to be shocked, the new trend was underway and there is no turning back now.  On both the second and third jump I settled down quite a bit as I was expecting to have longer jumps.

 

On the fourth jump I decided to go for the V.  I ended up putting in one of the nicest/biggest V's I've put in thus far.  I also ended up getting some nice air come up at me since I had the bigger surface area.  The extra air caught me off guard and I ended up coming out of the jump and shortly after landing I found myself back on my hands riding through the transition and the outrun.

 

I still have a small V on the fifth jump but the hand drag made me hesitant about sticking out a big V.  Both the sixth and seventh jumps were the same as well.  On each of those final three jumps I also was backing out of the jump early.  The last one I managed to hold the longest and ended up going around 41-42 meters on the jump.  It was definitely the longest jump I've had so far on any hill.  I still did back out a little early or it would probably have been 43-44 meters.  I just need to get used to making it that far down the hill.

 

Crash