Jumping Journal: February 18, 2007

Slow, slow, slow.  The light dusting of snow made things very, very slow.  A light dusting of snow fell overnight into this morning.  It really did a good job on the inrun to slow things down, a little more than I could have even expected.

 

Another day of jumping the 50.  It was ruled by the masters class.  Dan Brown, Tom Dodds, and myself took on the 50 late this morning and early this afternoon.  I was expecting it to be a little slow but I was quite surprised to see just how slow the conditions really were.

 

Right before the takeoff on the first jump I found myself yelling, "Man is this slow."  The word 'slow' came out right as I hit the takeoff.  I think I have seen conditions faster on the 25 than they were the first couple of jumps today on the 50.

 

Even with the slow conditions I was still jumping late as usual.  I tend to think I just have to force myself to jump early if I want to jump on time.  I keep jumping when I think it is the right time and then I'm late.  If I jump when I think it is early, sometimes when it seems very early, I end up actually jumping on time.  So far this season, even when jumping what seemed extremely early, I have only managed to jump early once, once in 311 jumps.  Since I have as of yet to figure out how to put more power/speed into the jump, granted when you jump late you lose all the power, I think I need to start the move sooner.

 

Around jumps three and four I started noticing another problem that I have noticed the past couple of days.  It seems like I have been landing/putting more weight on one foot, namely the right foot.  I'm not sure what has been causing the problem, but just like yesterday it did stop being a problem after a few jumps.

 

Tom had pulled out his video camera and since we was flagging each other we also started taping each other.  I was really curious to see if I was still the 'Hunchback of the 50' or not.  I had changed the inrun position starting last Monday after I noticed on the video that I was always rounded over in the shoulders while in the air.  I would always ride the inrun with the shoulders riding right on the knees.  Instead of having the shoulders nice and square with the rest of the upper body they would be hunched over on the inrun, and this I figured did nothing but help to hunch them over in the air.

 

After jumping we watched the video of the jumps and I noticed that it did seemed to help out but it also did look like I was still a little hunched over, not as bad as before though.  Tom did mention that I, as I've known about for WAY to long, am looking down while in the air instead of looking straight out.  In over 1000 jumps I've taken over the past seven year, probably closer to 2000 jumps, I've only had my head up in the air maybe a dozen times.  This is something that I have to change.  The inrun position was a cakewalk to change it and it pretty much has always stayed changed ever since last Monday...changing the head position could be another matter altogether.  I'll start working on it tomorrow afternoon.

 

I also was trying to work on cocking the ankles right at the takeoff.  Most of the day it wasn't going to greatest but occasionally it would work pretty decent, especially toward the end of the session.  The last two jumps I jumped for the tips and it went real good on both jumps.  The first jump though caught me once again with the ankles about as uncocked as what they could get.  Fortunately, I did manage to cock the ankles on the last jump of the day and ended up with my longest ride of the day as well.

 

Interesting thing though, I wasn't even planning on taking the last jump at the beginning of the day.  I had only planned on taking 10 jumps, hopefully.  Before heading down the inrun for the 10th jump I noticed that Tom was heading back up the stairs for what looked like another jump.  As I finished the jump instead of heading over to the jump inn side of the outrun I headed straight to the middle of the transition.  I looked up and asked if Tom had went up for another jump or not.  Dan said that he had.  I knew I would have ample time to get back up top before he would head down for his final jump so I decided why not go up for another jump, might as well.

 

I went back up and ended up having the best jump of the day. The jump was still short by comparsion to the jumps taken before the snow storm hit.  With the slow conditions I was surprised to see that the jump actually ended up going as far as it.  I would guess it is was down around 35-37 meters.

 

Tomorrow begins the big week of jumping...at least that is how I have it planned right now.  This week is winter break for the many of the schools in the area.  With that the plan is to jump Monday, Tuesday and Thursday both in the afternoon and the evening at Lebanon.  Right now I'm planning Monday and Thursday both session in Lebanon and then hopefully Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday both session up in Lake Placid with, hopefully, quite a few jumps on the 90.  Then on Saturday I'm planning on forejumping on both the 48 and the 90 during the Empire State Games competition.  I'm roughly figuring 14-15 jumps a day at Lebanon and probably 10 jumps a day at Lake Placid other than Saturday that will probably only be 3 jumps on each hill.  Between today and Saturday I'm hoping to pull off around 75 jumps.  That would be pure insanity at its best.  I may still get 500 jumps in this winter, 60 days I highly doubt though.

 

Crash