Jumping Journal: February 19, 2007

WOW! What a difference a session can make.  Or maybe that is what a difference a break in between two sessions can make.  Something like that.

 

Today is the start of what is looking to be six days of two jumping sessions per day.  Today was an afternoon and evening session on the 50. It was also a day of contrasting jumping.  I don't think I have ever seen such a stark contrast in my jumping in the seven years that I have been jumping.

 

The afternoon session started off with about everything being wrong.  I was late pretty much ever jump but the last one of the session and I was more than likely still a little bit late on that one.  I wasn't locking my knees either.  I'm not sure if I was cocking the ankles or not.  The one thing that I was doing, I was trying to keep the arms as straight as possible coming down the inrun.  I noticed on the video that Tom took of me yesterday that I was typically bending my arms at the elbows as I came down the inrun.  This was helping on a few occasions over the past several weeks to causes me to fall behind on the inrun.  I decided that I would work on keeping the arms straight.  The nice thing about it is that the stuff I can work on on the inrun always seems to have the biggest impact on the jump.  Granted the old jumping adage goes "If the inrun is screwed up, the jump will be screwed up."  I think it does prove the point quite well.

 

I ended up taking seven jumps during the afternoon session and the only decent jump of the seven was the last one.  I pieced quite a bit of the technique together for one final daylight session jump of the day.

 

Afterwards I changed the bindings over on my skis. I had been told that the bindings that I was using could potentially cause problems when it comes to jumping the 90.  The cable stay on the bindings that I was using was on the side of the ski versus on the top of the ski.  I am still using tele style bindings, someday I'll upgrade.

 

Initially I had been using a different pair of bindings but I was always having trouble with them wanting to come off when I would try to stop.  I would pop up over one of the toe pieces and it would be awkward to try to get back to the bottom of the landing hill to remove the skis once it happened.  The piece that prevents the foot from turning to much in the binding was too short and Cannonball told me to try one of the other tow plates that had a longer toe piece on it.  I made the change several weeks ago and haven't had any trouble since.

 

I knew that I needed to find a way to get the cable stay up off the side of the ski and back on top of the ski where it wouldn't be able to hit the track while going down the inrun and either causing me trouble or doing damage to the sidewalls on the track.  I looked and looked at different ideas and found nothing that would work other than switching back to the previous bindings and hopefully finding a way to make them more secure.

 

I stuck the old bindings back on and fortunately it does appear I found the trick for making the boot so it doesn't have as much play capability.  I knew I would get plenty of a chance to try them out during the evening session so I wasn't worried about anything.

 

The evening session rolled around and talk about stark contrast in comparsion.  Their were no similiarities between the afternoon and the evening session.

 

The first jump was essentially on time in the right direction with the ankles cocked early on and the knees locked.  What more could you ask for.  Oh yeah...do it again.

 

Granted their has been several cases this winter where I have been able to put two or three jumps together back to back that have been real nice jumps but until this year I usually would have a nice jump and then not have another good jump again until maybe the following winter. Tonight was going to be radically different.

 

I walked back up the stairs on the landing hill and as I got to the coaches stand Nick Burke said "I'm not going to say anything, just go back up there and that again."...and I did.  The second jump was just like the first one.  So was the third and the fourth, and the fifth.  It was an incredible evening of jumping.

 

After the fifth jump Nick mentioned that I wasn't quite as far out over the skis on that jump.  I headed back up and decided to jump for the tips a little more aggressively.  I hit the takeoff on the sixth jump of the evening and I make the move out over the skis and notice that the tips are just hanging there in a very strange fashion, nothing like I had ever noticed before.  I realize that I had jumped too direct.  I pull up on the toes and the tips come up slowly.  I manage to land the jump safely and upon reaching the coaches stand Nick agrees that I has jumped to direct.  I didn't figure I would ever be able to jump to direct until after I had jumped the 90.  I guess I was wrong.  It did provide for one of the stranger feelings I have had since I started jumping.  I did ride with the jump and it wasn't until after the tips started to come up that I started to swing the arms.  It was the first and only jump of the evening where the arms saw any action.

 

I took the seventh and final jump of the evening a little more cautious in terms of making the move out over the skis.  It ended up being the most solid and stable jump of the day if not of my jumping career.

 

14 jumps today and now 25 in the past two days.  Tomorrow off to Lake Placid once again.  I'll be seeing plenty of that jump over the next several days.  This weekend is Empire State Games.  I just plan on forejumping versus competing but I'll be up there jumping anyways.  It looks like five out of the next six days I may be jumping in Lake Placid.  That will definitely be a record for me.  If Mother Nature cooperates, maybe, just maybe I'll finally get my first rides in on the 90.

 

Crash