The Think Tank

I went to Broken Arrow to shoot today because I was working on Halloween stuff all afternoon and it got too late to shoot at Archery World.  I used the Dominator Pro and GT XXX shafts again.

The range was about half full with a bunch of people shooting traditional bows at the 10 yard bales.  I wanted to shoot two rounds, and I knew the time was going to be a little tight, so I didn’t take any breaks on the first round at all.

I started out a little out of synch.  For whatever reason, my #1 target was hitting about middle of the 10 ring at 6 for the first three arrows, so I switched it out.  Likewise, the #2 target was at 3 o’clock for both practice and the first scoring end.  I was starting to get a little frustrated with that.

I was also having some trouble getting into my correct shooting form.  When I’ve been doing well lately I have noticed a certain feeling which is hard to describe: Its not exactly like I’m really pushing forward with my bow arm, but it definitely feels like I am using my bow arm to maintain the pressure on my release fingers.  It also entails getting my release hand (really more like my wrist) into the proper place, which feels kind of like relaxing it until it is stretched out straight behind my fingers.  (As opposed to how it can feel sometimes, which is like I have my wrist muscles contracted slightly so my hand is angled “down.”)

I was not getting into that form consistently for the first 5-6 ends, and the result was poor grouping and some pretty bad shots, where I sort of fall out of my form instead of hitting the proper post-shot performance.  Since I was shooting quickly, I was also getting a little shakey and sweaty, and I was getting frustrated that my first target just kept hitting low despite changing arrows four times.

I purposefully did not take any breaks at that time because I wanted to practice getting my shit together when facing adversity.  I was tired, frustrated and not in my proper form.  i figured that was the perfect time to practice turning my situation around.  I couldn’t do anything about the first 5-6 ends, but I could work on the rest.

Looking at it that way seemed to help my head get in a better place.  I really started looking for that proper push-pull thing I mentioned above, and started focusing on making sure I got my release hand back onto my shoulder as it should, and I wanted to keep my bow arm pointing at the target after I shot.

It took a few arrows, but two or three shots later I got one that felt perfect.  After that, I was pretty much off and rolling smooth again.  My shot timing came back to normal, I was holding better, and my groups settled down to normal.  I finished with six X’s.

By the second round, I was feeling pretty good and pretty confident.  I expected to shoot well.  I even remember thinking the words “This is an X, all you have to do is release it” when I was pulling on several arrows.  I just knew they were going to drop in the center as if I’d seen the future.  All I had to do was wait for it to happen.

I also ran my normal routine, where I shot two ends and rested one.

I did start getting a little tight around end 7 because I really wanted to shoot a 300 and I was on track for it.  I also wanted to stay around 25 X’s, and I figured that was either not possible or meant I had to clean it, which I hadn’t been doing much.  My back was getting cramped and sore as well (it’s been doing that for about 6 weeks lately, although no usually this bad while I’ve been shooting).  On end 8 I struggled through all three shots and the last two were poorly executed.  #2 nearly missed, although I did break the whole line into the 10 ring, and the third shot was really bad, where I totally fell out of my form and dropped my arm straight down.  #3 was a solid ten, not an X, but it was sort of lucky because it was a really poor shot. Both shots were high, which is what I kept doing in high pressure situations last year, so I tried to pay special attention to make sure that I kept my bow hand released and did not pop the bow back after the shot.

That gave me a little nudge to make sure that I got my form together.  I knew if I hit my form I’d get my 300, but I HAD to hit my form.  The 9th end was pretty solid, with two inside-out X’s and one just barely out of the X.

I felt a little nervous on the 10th end, really wanting to hit the 300, but also expecting to do so while being nervous about screwing it up at the same time.  It’s very difficult to explain.  I guess I would say that I was 85% sure I would do fine, but 15% scared that I would get tight and miss like I have so many times before.

The trick to falling in the 85% is to get my form setup right, and a lot of that is the pressure-on-the-release-hand-with-the-bow-arm thing, so I that was my focus when drawing up.  I made sure to let my wrist stretch out relaxed, pushed my bow arm forward to take up any slack after setting my anchor, felt the proper pressure on my release fingers, and waited for the good shot.

I started out aiming at 9 o’clock on the 8/9 line, and that made me nervous.   I pushed it back to the center, wobbled around, and felt like I was going to miss it.  So I let it down.  I came back up, did the same setup, settled on the hole in the X, and drained a perfect shot.  My release hand slide smoothly back to my shoulder, my bow arm stayed pointed a the target, and arrow hit an X liner at 6.

The second shot came off in better time and felt pretty good, but not perfect, and hit a solid ten at 5, but not an X.  I drew up on the last shot, felt like I settled in properly, but couldn’t get the shot to go.  I tried hard, I really wanted it, but the shot didn’t want to go.  I started to lose my shot picture, started wobbling, and let down.  I didn’t want to blow the last shot.  I practiced my form, where I wanted my release hand to end up, and then I pulled up again.  I really tried to get my push-pull setup right, aimed pretty solid, but again the shot went long.  I was holding well, right on the dot, so even though it was a little longer than normal, I went ahead and pulled a but harder with my release arm, knowing that I needed to really make sure I exaggerated my proper form.  All of a sudden BOOM!  The shot went.  I popped my bow arm straight out, let the bow float free in my hand, and snapped my release back to my shoulder, and watched the arrow flight straight into the center, just a touch low at 6 in the X.

That felt really good.  I had to let down twice and I probably would have been over time in a tournament, but I was pretty proud to finish out the way I did.  It was my second 300 of the year, and I think it was technically my highest score of the season.  (The 296 is my lowest of the year.)

 

 

 

I competed in the Pacific Northwest Archery Association Championship this weekend, up in Seattle at the WCW.

The shoot has been happening more or less annually since at least 1927.  (It has skipped a few years here and there.)  The tournament moves around the NW States: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah (perhaps a bit of a stretch), and British Columbia as well.  Last year the tournament was held in Burnaby, BC and Mom and I were asked to make arrangements for the shoot to be in Oregon next year.

I had made some changes to my bow last week which had the result of relieving some strain on my shoulder and had translated into my shoulder feeling really good all week.  That had me feeling pretty confident.  However, when I got up to Seattle on Friday to practice, right from the first shot my shoulder just felt exhausted and started hurting much worse than usual right away.  That had me nervous, and in fact I was prepared to skip the whole thing and go home.  Mom convinced me that I should stay and I (very) reluctantly decided to stick it out and see how things went.

As you may remember, this field has not been kind to me in the past.  I have turned in all of my worst scores on that range, and with my shoulder and sore as it was, I didn’t have high hopes.  However, I managed to put together a pretty decent first day – including my first ever perfect 40 meter score – and built a 15-16 point  lead.

The second day was only 90 arrows, which was good cause my shoulder was really tired at that point and I was struggling to aim all day.  I shot acceptably at 70 meters on Sunday, pretty good at 60 (adding a couple more points to the lead), and then pretty much fell apart at the last – and closest – distance of the day, dropping nearly half my points in those last 30 arrows.  By that time my shoulder was just about wiped, I was having a lot of trouble aiming, and my form was definitely suffering.  Fortunately, I had that cushion which allowed me to lose some ground at the last distance, but still hold on for an 11 point win.

I also discovered that this shoot as a very neat tradition: The winners of each division put an arrow into a wooden box, and then they get to keep that box until the next year’s tournament.  So, by winning this years event, I get to keep the box for the next year.

Shannon and I took the Z out to the range last night for a little shooting.  I knew that I would probably need to make some adjustments to my new cable guard after the original one broke over the weekend up in Seattle.

I shot primarily at 80 yards.  The first thing I did was move the V-bar back down under the String Stop and angle the bars upward two notches.  I had been shooting it down there for a couple weeks prior to the weekend, but decided to move it back to get some perspective on how the two positions felt.  I really think I like it down lower.  It seems to hold better, level faster, and feels more like I’m accustomed to.  I’ve always liked weight low on the bow.

I shot maybe 6-7 ends (6 arrows apiece normally, sometimes 7-8, 11 later in the day as it got dark) and once I’d established some decent groups and the same wider-than-tall group pattern, I moved up to 10 yards to see if I was getting any kind of drifting.  I was grouping on the right edge of the 5 at distance, and at 10 yards I was right in the center.

I started messing with my cable guard at that point.  At first, I moved it in about half an inch so that the cables were about 1/3 of an inch away from the vanes when the bow was at rest.  I figured this would reduce cam tilt and eliminate drift.  Turned out I was wrong.

I sighted back in (strangely, moving the cables IN – to the left from behind the string – the arrows move right), and then went out to 80 yards again.  Instead of eliminating the drift it made things worse.  The grouping was a lot worse as well.  So, I went back to ten yards and moved the cable guard OUT this time, just a little bit.  Resighted in at 10, moved out to 80, and repeated that process a few times until it felt like I had a good horizontal group at distance and and no drifting between 10 and 80.

At 80 yards though  I noticed that my group was about X-ring wide but a little bit taller than the 5 ring.  I was getting tired and it was starting to get a little dark, so I moved up to 55 yards to see if I had the same thing.  I did, so to solve that, I tried some tiller tuning.  I put a half turn into the top limb and shot my whole quiver.  The group ranged from about three inches under the spot to about a shaft in at 6 o’clock, which was still too tall of a group, maybe even worse than before.  So I took that half turn back out, and then another half turn out so that I was half a turn less than I had started.  Strangely enough, taking turns OUT of the top limb (thereby lowering draw weight) moves my sights up.  I figured out that 1/2 turn = about 6 clicks.

That group seemed better, but it still a little tall, so I took another turn out.  I did that a couple more times, finishing (I think) with 1.5 turns out total, though it may have only been one full turn.  I kind of lost track.

I shot one really good 6 arrow group, with 4 X’s, a solid 5 and then a 4 at 7 o’clock that I aimed there.  I really wanted to get a good 6 arrow group, so I stayed and shot a few more ends, but it was almost too dark to see and kept winding up with two groups: one group with about 7 arrows in the center, and one with 3-4 between 1-2 o’clock on the line or just out.

I think that the bow is shooting better, and I know that it is holding pretty much rock steady, even with both shoulders being sore.  I’m not sure why my right shoulder has been hurting lately, but it has been, similar to how it felt around the first of the year but it actually gets sore while shooting which wasn’t doing before.

I’m not sure if I’ll get to shoot again before the RSVP ride since I have to work on the van tonight, but hopefully I can follow up on Thursday.

I felt pretty confident coming into this shoot, but after only 21 arrows my cable guard on the PSE broke off.  I grabbed the Hoyt and switched the sight bar and stabilizers over, but the Hoyt wasn’t sighted in and my first arrow was a 6.  I aimed my next two in the blue and pulled an X and a 10 out of them, but moving forward I continued to have left and right issues at the two longer distances. I wound up shooting a 3 and a 8 on the next end because I moved my sight the wrong direction.

Mom took the PSE to the Nock Point and got a new cable guard, but she didn’t get there until the lunch break.  I switched everything back and shot 50 and 30 with the Dominator, but things still continued to go left and right all day that I didn’t really understand.  I started getting pretty frustrated by the time we started shooting 30 meters.  I dropped three points in the first two ends, and that really ticked me off.  I took my binoculars off and started just shooting for form.

I decided that I wasn’t going to let anything down and I was only going to focus on hitting my form.  I only broke that rule once, when my sunglasses slid down my nose and blocked my ability to see the target.  I also decided that I wasn’t going to move my sight any more.

I cleaned the last four ends and actually shot some decent groups, although it felt like I grouped in a different spot every end.  I finished with a 1342 on the day, which wasn’t too bad I guess given the issues, but I was still disappointed, especially with the 334 I shot at 50.

I had high hopes for Sunday, but those hopes were quickly quashed.  We shot the 50m OR round, and right off the bat things were not working well.  Almost to a tee, every shot that I thought felt good would miss – hitting four cardinal points and most of the ones in between – and every shot that I struggled through or crept on would hit tens and X’s.  Four or five ends of that, and I got really frustrated.  I’d been trying to keep my attitude good, but I finally lost and acted a bit of an ass, I’m afraid.  Everyone could tell that I was unhappy, which is pretty much the opposite of what I want.

During the eliminations, I shot OK for the first few ends, but by the gold medal match I was pretty much all over the place.  I remember one end in particular, around end three of the match, that I thought to myself that all I really needed to do was just stay in the gold.  Immediately, on the very first arrow, I bobbled, collapsed and damn near shot a 6 on the first arrow.  I backed that up with a 9 and an 8 for a whopping 24, which completely wiped out every bit of the lead I had to that point.

That really ticked me off, but I didn’t know what to do to avoid it in the future.  I was so frustrated, and every time I tried to hit my form, the arrows avoided the center as if there were a force field over the ten ring.  When I can’t buckle own and shoot good form and get results, I don’t know where to go.

In the end, I won the Gold Medal match by shooting only two tens and a 136, which pretty much tells the whole story.  On that day, against those people, it was good enough for the win and that it is all it was.  I can’t imagine ever winning another round by shooting 136, and certainly not a medal match.

After everything was all done, I lined up the string with the center of the bow, and I noticed that my scope was way off center, about 1/2 inch outside of the string.  I do not remember it being that way prior to the cable guard issue.

I made a minor adjustment to the cable guard, and shot some arrows at 70 meters.  After sighting in, I put 8 of 11 in the ten, with two of the three misses coming from shots that I knew were going to miss when I shot them.

I figured there would be additional tweaking of the cable guard required.  I felt a little better after I figured that out, but all in all, I was still disappointed in my performance this weekend: both mentally and physically.

Here is the elimination bracket:

Quite some time ago, almost a year ago actually, a fuel injector went out on my Z.  I looked into replacing it then, but according to the instructions in the manual it was going to be a very big job.  You have to pull the Air Plenum off to get at the fuel injectors and that was something like a 10 hour job and pretty much required pulling the whole top end of the engine off, which I was a little apprehensive about doing.  The car was still drivable, but it performed horribly and sounded worse, so I didn’t really drive it and I never did the repair either.

That all changed a couple of weekends ago.  Read through for the blow by blow.

(continue reading…)