Jumping Journal: March 03, 2008

Gee, pretty much the last Monday sunset jumping session on the K50 for the winter.  Starting next week the sun will be setting an hour later each evening and our usual 6PM jump sessions will pretty much be in daylight versus on the verge of darkness.

 

After a cloudy start to the morning the day turned off mostly sunny and mild.  The highs got into the low to mid 40s.  Even at jump time it was still above 40 degrees.  It did help to speed up the inrun somewhat and made the snow more compact.  The rain that was forecast never happened at all.  Now the forecast is actually for the snow/mixe precipatition to start Tuesday evening and we are to see 2-4 inches of snow and up to 1/2 inch of ice...GREAT!!!

 

I arrived at the hill rather late compared to normal this winter, about 5:30PM.  Since the weather had been good all day long nothing needed done to the jump other than for the jumpers to get out and start jumping it.

 

Dan, Bill, Cannonball and I all suited up and headed up for a nice evening of jumping.  Cannonball decided to try something he had been thinking about all winter long.  His mother had bought him a GPS unit for Christmas and he decided to use it to see how fast the inrun was.  Everybody was giving him the dickens about this idea. They had new names for him other than Cannonball, names I shall not repeat.  I actually thought it was an intriguing idea and since I have the same GPS unit that he has I ought to give it a try sometime as well on an icer day to see how speeds compare.  Actually we both should wear ours at the same time to see how much of a difference we see in maximum speed between the two of us.  We both weight pretty much about the same weight.  It should show who is jumping harder though as the speed with which you jump will increase your overall speed, at least momentarily.

 

I was going to be the first one down the jump.  I wasn't expecting anything more than yesterday.  I was quite surprised.  Not only did I throw in a V, unplanned on, but I ended up landing around 34-35 meters.  I was shocked by how good the jump was given it didn't seem like it should have been.

 

After Cannonball takes his first jump I look and see he has went 43.1 mph.  He decided to wear it around his neck with the unit sitting underneath a bib on his back so he wouldn't have his body blocking the signal coming from the satellites.

 

My second, third and fourth jumps were all late, what else is new.  I was getting everything else pretty decent but I was always late and lost the power out from underneath me.

 

Cannonball realized he had jumped harder on his second jump and the GPS unit was showing an increase in speed as a results.  His second jump ended up being his fastest of the evening at 46.7 mph.

 

By my fifth jump I was starting to get better with the timing.  I was still a little late but not nearly as bad as earlier.  I wasn't getting the quick move I needed.  I was managing to get down around 32-33 meters on most of the past four jumps.

 

It seemed like I nailed jump six right at the takeoff.  Turns out I was still a bit late in finishing the move according to Nick.  I also extended the upper body instead of just jumping with the legs.  I did notice that it seemed like I was more chesty in the air than usual.  At the end of the outrun I was going, ugh, jump six as usual.  Why shouldn't this surprise me any.  It will probably be the best jump of the evening.

 

Jump seven, the last one for the day. I decided to work on moving forward at the takeoff.  It worked real well and ended up being the best jump I've had in several weeks.  It didn't seem like it went any beyond 35 meters but Nick said it was the farthest of the evening.

 

All in all another great night of jumping and now I'm into a whole new angle of  ski jumping.  Last year I ended the winter with 306 jumps off the K50, the most ever in one winter.  Right now I'm sitting at 311, with another two or three weeks left of jumping on the K50.

 

Ryan