Jumping Journal: March 15, 2008

The ides of March are upon us.  Maybe that should be called the surprises of March are upon us.

 

Can you say Thursday repeated itself BIG time, only a little sooner this time around.

 

The old tradition around these parts, at least as long as I have lived up here in New England and have been ski jumping is that Mud Meet always gets saved by a nice snow storm that hits Wednesday or Thursday right before the meet.  The storm comes whether or we need snow or not.  It never fails.  I remember the first year shoveling snow off the jump in mid March to get the hill ready for the meet.  Only once have we had to shovel snow onto the inrun.  Mother Nature just always treats us real well when it comes time to have Mud Meet.

 

The snow has always been on the icy side of things.  The temperature always seem to be in the lower 30, never much above freezing.  It always leads to a scenario where you just can't ask for anything more...

 

Then...

 

This year came.

 

Yesterday started out mild.  The low Thursday night into Friday morning was 30 degrees, just two degrees below the freezing point.  Things could only get worse from there.  The high managed to make it up to 51 under cloudy skies for the better part of the day.  No precipitation or anything like that but the warm temperatures would naturally start to melt the snow.  Yeah, the term Mud Meet is for a reason.

 

About 3:30PM yesterday I notice the temperature readout flashing down on the lower right corner of my computer screen.  That always means that some kind of weather advisory has been issued.  I was surprised since I didn't know we were suppose to get anything other than maybe some rain Friday night into Saturday morning.

 

It turns out that was right on the money, but their was more in store for use lonely boys.  The rain was suppose to change over to snow around daybreak and we was suppose to get 3-6 inches by the time it was over this afternoon.

 

Can you say SSSSSLLLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWW inrun!

 

I went up to the hill to help with some of the final preparations for the season finale today.  By the time I got home nothing had started yet and the temperature was already barely above freezing.

 

Now admittedly, the temperature pretty much held steady all night long as the low last night only got down to 33.  Can you say the melting snow from Friday afternoon never really got a chance to setup before today.

 

I woke up this morning to see I had received around an inch of snow and it was still snowing as I left for the Storrs Hill.  As I pulled in the parking lot it, the parking lot, was looking like mud season was fully in swing.  I was quite surprised how quickly things had changed.

 

After helping to get the score system up and sorta running I finally headed out to grab my times for both the giant slalom and cross country course.  I never do good in the cross country since I compete in cross country on alpine skis.  After I put on my skis I headed the short distance, 20-30 feet to the start line for the cross country.  Boy did I ever quickly realize this wasn't going to be fun.

 

The normal icy conditions were anything but icy.  They was slush BIG TIME.  It was not fun on the cross country course.  Granted it usually isn't but this year it was far worse than I have ever seen it.

 

I went on up and decided to take a run down the ski hill before running the alpine course.  Since I haven't did any alpine skiing since the end of the last winter I figured I might as well get at least one run in first.

 

I started down the hill and quickly saw just how slow and sticky the conditions were.  I was lucky I didn't end u falling on my face.  I decided to skip any potential for another run and headed for the course before it could get rutted up by the other competitors.  Turns out it wasn't as bad as the rest of the hill was...it didn't have the benefit of other skiers helping to move snow around so the stickiness was missing but the soft snow made setting your line a little tricky, especially when you essentially never do any skiing.

 

The best racers were keeping pretty normal times but anyone that wasn't a top notch alpine racer pretty much added eight to ten seconds to their time compared to what they would normally run.  Typically I've always had times around 34 seconds, today was just under 42 seconds.

 

After the comps were over everyone heading on to the K25 for practice.  I suited up and took three practice jumps.  I was a little surprised to see all of them down in the 17-18 meter range.  I was expecting much shorter jumps.

 

Once the competition finally got underway everything went crazy.  The first round went pretty much normal and then the second round got started and everybody cut lose.  All the better ski jumpers were slingshotting each other down the inrun.  Yeah, I even let Cannonball and Matt Cook slingshot me for my second jump.  It was the first time I've been shot down the inrun. I did pick up one meter between the first and second round and added another half a meter, down to 19.5 meters for the third round jump.

 

On the third round the good jumpers were attempting to break the hill record.  Parker Haynes did manage to hit 25 meters, a half meter shy of the hill record.  I believe that is the farthest I've seen anyone go on the K25.

 

After the competition was over it was time for the usual fun to set in.  70 year old Don West, and 50 year Jon 'Cannonball' Farnham headed up the jump to repeat the jump they took ten years ago.  Instead of it being the 100 year jump that it was ten years ago today it would be the 120 year jump.  They came down the inrun holding hands side by side.  Both Jon and Don had a real nice jump.  I believe it is only the second time I've seen a double jump in the past eight years.

 

I helped get the hoop set up on the inrun.  I think it was set a little closer to the takeoff than normal.  At least it seemed that way while jumping through.  After we got it set up I grabbed the skis and headed up the inrun to join everyone else up to as the chant started.  "The hoop, the hoop, the hoop is on fire".  Esky lit the hoop and everyone took their turns at jumping through the hoop of fire.  My first and third jumps weren't too bad.  I felt really strange in the air on my second jump, kinda like I had jumped one footed.  I almost didn't take the third jump, but I couldn't resist.

 

All in all it was a very different Mud Meet this year compared to normal.  The snow conditions were slushy for the first time in the eight years I've been around for Mud Meet.  Seeing as many adults competing was a bit of a surprise as well.  The only expected regular that wasn't there was Dan.  Everyone's wondering where he was at today, he never misses Mud Meet.

 

The weirdest and sweetest surprise came first thing in the morning.  As I turned into the parking lot I noticed the Lake Placid van setting in the parking lot.  I haven't ever seen much of the Lake Placid contingent come for Mud Meet.  This year was going to be different.  To make matters even crazier the Lake Placid coach, Matt Cook, decided to let himself get talked into competing today.  I haven't seen Matt jump in four or five years.  Well, how do say he came, he saw, and he kicked butt.  He won the cross country event, he came in third in the alpine, and he took fourth in the jumping.  He ended up winning the overall competition by having the lowest total score in each of the three events.

 

With the nine jumps today I'm only four jumps shy of my third year in a row of taken 400 jumps on snow.  Plans are to jump at least on Tuesday and Thursday this week and who knows about anything besides that.  I stil need another three or four days to get fifty days in for the winter.  I don't know if that will happen or not.

 

Time shall tell,

Crash