Long Jumping

My dream of being an athlete has a long history, longer than I myself even remembered, until just recently. I know this is coming out of left field, but I've always had a secret dream: to be an Olympic long jumper.

Flash back to 1988, out on my parents' Alaska homestead, watching the Seoul Summer Olympics. I was around 8 years old, and my brother was 5 or 6...we were so pumped up and excited watching all of the Olympic events that logically we decided we were going to train for the Olympics. Being so young, we just knew that if we started immediately, we would certainly make it.

But what sport?

I wanted to be a platform diver, but our wilderness home by a river that was too fast and cold to swim in didn't provide much opportunity for swimming, let alone diving.

Swimming? Well, the river may have been too dangerous but if our parents would boat us every day to the shallow little creek, 6 miles upstream, that was safe for swimming......hmm, unlikely.

Running? After a few laps of the sandy clearing around our house, we realized that it, too, was out.

High jump? We propped a pole across a couple 55-gallon gasoline drums, and piled up tarps and blankets for a landing, but it was too hard of a fall. Bumps and bruises finally convinced us...

After a week of scheming and planning and trying, we had started to lose hope for the Olympics.

Wait, suddenly the perfect sport hit us...our eyes lit up with excitement. We were brilliant!

THE LONG JUMP!!!

Our clearing extended in front of the house, along the edge of the garden, and in front of several outbuildings. It was hard packed for the most part, but ended perfectly by the last outbuilding in a bit of loose sand for landing; the approach was straight and clean. It was perfect!

We made a starting "block" with some trail marking stakes, and a short distance away dug a wide line in the dirt for the take off "board". We carefully raked the sand in the landing area into parallel lines until it looked like a zen garden; this way we could measure where our bodies hit the ground.

Then, it was time for training. We took turns hurling ourselves into the dirt, with my dad's measuring tape to see how far we'd jumped. The approach was short, the "sandy" landing area hard, but we were optimistic. The farthest I jumped was a whopping......8 feet.

I think we lasted a whole 2 weeks until we got bored of it.

So what brings this to mind now? Well, I had the opportunity to try it, for real, for the first time last Sunday.

We were sprinting, as usual, at the East High School track in Salt Lake, which happens to have a long jump built in. One of the other skeleton girls had signed up for the Utah Summer Games to aid in her training by having a summer event to push her. She was going to run in the 100 meter and do the long jump, and she decided to try a couple jumps after we finished our (grueling, vomit inducing) workout.

I watched her run up and jump, and it looked like so much fun....the thought hit me: this has been here all along, why the heck haven't I tried it before??? My inner child wanted to smack me for being so obtuse.

"I want to try!" I said, excitement building up in me.

For my first jump, I only ran 1/3 of the usual distance, and hurled myself off the end of the track. Poof! I landed and rolled in the sand, and got up giggling. I was suddenly an 8-year old kid, and it was awesome!

Funny how workout-induced-nausea can disappear when the work is something fun; off I went for another try. Then another.

Our sprint coach pointed out that I was jumping far enough to clear the track, so instead of jumping at the END of the approach (where there is a closer board for learning), I tried jumping off the main board, which is set back a ways from the actual sand. It was scary, since you have to jump about 10 feet from the board in order to make it to the sand.

The first try, I missed the board by a couple inches, but easily cleared the runway. Poof! I played around with different starting locations on the next couple tries. Finally, I positioned myself about 4/5 of the way down the track, and ran full speed towards the board.

Boom! I hit it, and flew out into the sand. It felt like flying. Our coach, grinning, told me to push down against the board instead of back, so back I went, again.

Boom! Hit the board. Got way more vert on this try, and flew into the sand. I didn't measure, but probably jumped about 13-14 feet. Not a long distance, but fairly decent for a newb.

My inner child thrilled with the joy of jumping again...I was on crack and couldn't stop. I was covered in sand, my ears, shoes, shorts, hair full of the little grains. Jean Luc was with us, and he spent his time digging and bounding and rolling, tail and ears high, [almost] as excited as I was.

Finally, I had to call it a day. My muscles weren't there anymore, and now, a few days later, I'm still feeling it.

Anyway, I went home and immediately logged on to sign up for the Summer Games, figuring I could drop by for a couple hours to play in the long-jump portion (the games are Friday).

But alas, it was not to be. The games are being held in Cedar City, which just happens to be a four-hour drive away. To drive four hours for an event I only want to drop in to do for fun? And haven't trained for? Not this year.

But it was so much fun, don't worry: my long-jumping days are not over. Maybe I'll throw a wee bit of training into it and go play in the Summer Games next year....it's certainly a fun way to end a sprint workout!