Myth #1(Mother Nature killed the sport of ski jumping) Debunked

Myth #2(NCAA killed the sport of ski jumping) Debunked Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Myth #3(The US doesn't have the talent) Debunked Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Mind Of A Ski Jumper Part 1, 2, 3, 4

The Ultimate Coach - Ski Jump Training Device

Jumping Season Digest: (see bottom of this page)

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Jumping Journal: February 02, 2008

Winter is over...darn!!!  At least that is what that pesky groundhog wants you to believe.  Nope the groundhog didn't see his shadow today around west central New Hampshire.
 
After a week that didn't go quite as planned thanks to Mother Nature and groomer tracks things have finally started to settle down, hopefully.
 
The plan for Wednesday was to jump with the high school kids before their meet on the K34 at Andover.  I hadn't jumped the K34 since the first weekend of 2002.  I've jumped the K38 that shares the same tressel and landing hill but just have different starts and the K34 takeoff is further down the hill.  Wednesday it ended up raining early in the day so the meet was postponed until Thursday.
 
Thursday I was planning on jump the K50 as always.  I got to the hill and Jay, the hill manager, said he had groomed the landing hill/outrun and everything was looking good.  As I was up in the top lift hut Cannonball radioed up and informed me that Jay ended up sliding down the landing hill with the groomer and managed to put two big trenches in the landing hill that would have to be fixed.  He was going to work on the inrun.  After getting done helping with the lift I went on down and helped the guys get snow shoveled in where the groomer had dug it out.  We didn't jump Thursday night and decided to let it set up.
 
Friday the forecast was for a mix bag of precip.  It didn't sound at all good.  About noon time the snow and sleet started falling.  It continued the rest of the day.  It didn't amount to much accumulation but it did manage to put any plans of jumping on another delay.  It did remain as snow and sleet until sunset.  Around sunset it started to change over to freezing rain.  I was surprised when I went to shovel off the front step about 4PM and I actually ended up just using a brooming to wipe it off.  That didn't happen this morning though.
 
This morning I found it had definitely changed to freezing rain around sunset like I thought.  After doing some shoveling I made my way on up to Lebanon knowing what I was going to find.  I knew it was going to be a nice work session before we could even jump.  Josh, a college freshman, has found a renewed interest in jumping all of a sudden and he was wanting to put in two session today and another two session tomorrow.  That didn't bother me any since I have been hoping to have 200 jumps off the K50 by the time I go to bed next Thursday.  I had 200 jumps last year off the K50 before going down to the Salisbury Invitational and I'm hoping to pull off the same thing this year once again.
 
I found Josh was already there and we went to work on getting the hill ready.  We ended up having to recut part of the track on the inrun as it had built up quite deep about half way between the two and the transition, very strange location for it to build up like it did.  The rest we could pretty much take the tracolator and run down through the track.  After doing some raking on the landing hill and having Jay groom the bottom of the landing hill and the outrun, everything was pretty much in as good a shape as it was going to get.  Most of the inrun was right back down to the iced track we have been skiing on for the past couple of weeks now.
 
Dan arrived about 5PM, right after we finished the work on the jump, and we suited up and headed on up the hill for the one session we managed to jump tonight.
 
Josh and I were both cautious on the inrun on our first jump.  I was definitely sitting a little higher than normal.  Actually I was sitting a little higher on all but may the last two jumps.  I noticed on the last two that I was paying more attention to how good my inrun position was.  I was surprised to see my first jump only go down about 30 meters.  It didn't seem like that much had changed but with the change in the inrun position I guess it can have quite an effect on your jumps.
 
Jump two was better, getting down around 33 meters or so.  It seemed like I was more relaxed in the air but I still couldn't tell for sure.  Definitely had no V.
 
Jump one I went from the second bar from the top the rest of the jumps I took from the top bar.  I think everyone was a little nervous with even the thought of trying to go from house.  We didn't do any work to the house at all.  It was pretty much solid freezing rain over top of sleet and snow.  The very top of the track, between house and the top bar didn't even look all that inviting.  It looked like nothing more than a solid glaze of ice that you could easily lose control on and end up trouble.  We didn't try to fix it and it won't probably won't be messed with until Monday at the earliest.
 
Jump three was about the same.  The transition area didn't turn out the best and it was also playing tricks with my head.  On the last couple of jumps I was questioning if I was going to end up going down or not.  Even though the outrun had been groomed it had hardened up while we were finishing up the inrun.  I haven't seen outrun condition that hard in ages, you might as well have been on ice versus snow.  Essentially their was no biting in with the edges of the skis on the outrun.
 
I was getting back down around 35 meters on the fourth and fifth jumps.  I was relaxing more in the air and getting the timing down a bit better as well.  I did manage to include a small bit a of V on the fifth and final jump of the session.
 
It wasn't a bad session considering I didn't have all that much motivation today thanks to the weather.  I'm surprised I jumped as well as I did given the circumstances.
 
Right now I'm still hoping to grab another 37 jumps in the next 5 days on the K50.  Admittedly, Wednesday I won't be jumping the K50 but the rest of the week I will, weather permitting.  The weather forecast right now is for mid to upper 30's until late next week and rain on Tuesday.  It could put a real crimp in the plans.  Then again, Salisbury may have to be postponed this year.  The overnight lows are suppose to barely be cold enough around here to make snow, without chemicals, and I have a feeling northwest Connecticut will be even warmer, making it harder for them to make any snow.  I doubt their is any snow right now on the inrun down there and their might not be any snow on the landing hill or outrun as well.  I don't know for sure but with the weather forecast it could be real questionable to whether the meet happens next week or not.
 
Time shall tell,
Crash
Winter 2010
DateLeb 25Plymouth 25Leb 50And 38
Dec 121
Jan 056
Jan 063
Feb 024
Feb 032
Feb 046
Feb 073
Mar 063
Totals133102