Some of the rounds I've shot at the club this year, and my thoughts on them

26 January 2008 - Western

Now playing: The Very Thought of You - Nat King Cole

I think I'm suffering greatly from a lack of proper outdoor practice. After truly woeful 451 Vegas last Thursday evening indoors, I wanted to get another reasonable round under my belt outdoors today, so I chose to shoot a Western. Quite why I didn't make it a Long Western I don't know, but it's really just about the practice at the moment, not about getting anywhere with handicaps or classifications. So the best I could get on this was a Second Class anyway. 

One of the bad habits I've fallen into recently is plucking the string as I release, and not following through properly with my drawing hand. So today I was really focusing on a straight follow through, and I know this is going to sound girly (as my hair has grown a lot longer over the winter), but to feel my thumb touching the back of my hair as I release the shot. If I can consistently keep doing this then I know I'm coming back properly with my drawing hand with each shot. There were a few shots today where I had to come down and start again, and one where I came down 3 times before it felt right (it did end up in the gold though!), but again, it all felt like it's been just a bit too long since my last proper round outdoors, which I think was about last September! I'm convinced now that all this indoor shooting really isn't the same as getting out onto the field and shooting a decent distance. I'll attend the ones I'm booked in for, for the remainder of the winter, but it's time to work on outdoors now, I think.

Anyway, for the record, the dozens were as follows - 60 yards: 86, 87, 94, 94 (with one miss!). 50 yards were 94 (one 3, because I got my sight mark wrong!), 100, 98, 98 making a final total of 751. Yes it's a PB, and yes it's a 37 handicap, but I was really struggling towards the end of the 8 dozen, which tells me that I think it was prudent to cancel my entry into tomorrow's Timken Triple. I feel a bit defeatist but I think 15 dozen is just too much at the moment - I'm not fit enough to see that amount of arrows through to the end yet, and I need to work on more 8+ dozen rounds at the club, I think. Besides which, it was a very long drive, and it would mean an early start and getting home late. I'm happy to do that for 12 dozen shoots in the middle of summer, but not in January!

1 January 2008 - FITA 70m

Now playing: I'll be there for you - The Rembrandts

I'm never quite sure whether this round is meant to be called a FITA 70, or a FITA 720, having heard it called both in the past. Either way, it's 6 dozen arrows, all at 70m on a 122cm target face. The nice thing about it is that it's one of the few rounds that you can shoot outdoors and never have to move the target!

As this is the first day of the outdoor season it is always a fairly relaxed atmosphere, and nobody really cares what round you shoot, as long as you can haul your butt out of bed and shoot away some cobwebs from the Christmas season! I'd invited a good friend over to shoot with us for the day, as they'd been having a tough time of things lately and rather than joining the "big boys" who were shooting a New National, we shot the FITA 70 instead.

It really shows how little outdoor practice I've had recently - I think the last outdoor round I shot of any note was back in October at Swan Archers. Today was distinctly average compared to how I was shooting at the back end of last year, and it shows to me that indoor practice is no substitute for shooting "proper" distances outdoors. Dozen scores were pretty awful at 84, 79, 83, 83, 76, 81 making a final total of 496 (First Class, 40 h'cap). It's a start toward retaining my First Class status for this year, but it proves to me that I need to a) practice this distance more, and b) learn to listen to people when they say don't really want to shoot on New Years Day!