The Think Tank

*** UPDATE ***

With the aid of some Goof Off and Turtlewax Rubbing Compound – and a little bit of elbow grease – we managed to get all of the paint off of my car.  So at least there is a happy ending to this frustrating tale.

*** ****

We went down to Sweet Home last weekend to help Debbie repair/replace her fence that was blown down back in March, and when we returned home we found that someone had spray-painted my Corsica.

Adding insult to injury, a fuel injector went out on my Z on the way to Shannon’s house last night.

All-in-all, it was a rough weekend for my cars.

Mom and I came up to Seattle last night so I could shoot in a club-hosted STAR FITA event this weekend, which is just a fancy way to say that this tournament meets all of the qualifications of a US Archery Association shoot, and therefore any score shot at this eventcounts towards team qualifications and national and/or world records.

Sadly, I do not have to worry about breaking any national or world records this weekend.  Today stunk to high heaven.  I experimented with an adjustment to my rest yesterday, actually making the arrow tune out as it should instead of relying on group-tuning, which is to say adjusting things until it seems to group well despite the arrow being all catiwhompass on the bow.  It seemed to be working alright yesterday afternoon, but today was a whole different story.

Sadly still, I can’t blame it all on that.  I shot pretty badly on top of everything, not holding well, executing poorly and eventually I got very frustrated and had a hard time even thinking straight, much less shooting straight.

I shot a 1335 today, which is 105 points off perfect. It wasn’t the worst score I’ve ever shot, but it was definitely among the worst I can remember.   (To give some contrast, National Champions are shooting right around 1400, and you can probably make the US Archery Team if you stay in the 1380’s.  Decent guys at the state level shoot around the 1360’s.  I expected to shoot around 1350-1360 and I sailed smoothly under that bar without even rustling my hair.)

They didn’t get around to posting the scores by the time I left, so I don’t know for sure, but the only guy I saw who was scoring worse than me was the poor fellow who lost an arrow early in the morning and only had five arrows left to shoot… which is problematic, since you are actually supposed to shoot six arrows at a time.

Oh well.

Seems like every post I’ve made about a tournament since my return to archery has been pretty much just like this one: not the worst I’ve ever done, but very far below where I think I should be at this stage, which in turn is along way under where I was.  This one was more disappointing to me the others, since I’ve been practicing pretty well lately, so I thought I might actually be able to do something respectable this weekend.

I did put the rest back during lunch, and the second half of the day was better, although not terribly impressive given that we were at the close distances.  Still, it did give me a little glimmer of hope for tomorrow.

We will start out tomorrow with an elimination round at 10 AM, and follow that up with 900 round in the afternoon.

This was not a very good day for me.

Yesterday I adjusted the rest by bring it out about 1/8 of an inch (maybe more) which brought the arrow around into true center-shot.  I was concerned because the arrow was very clearly pointing pretty far off to the right, and I just don’t see how the arrows could be flying well.

It seemed like things were going pretty well yesterday afternoon at Sylvan, but that was not the case today.  Today it was back to how it had been when I first moved outside: lots and lots of left and right variations, and very little correlation between what I feel are good shots and where the arrows land.

I actually started out pretty well at 90 meters, but I pretty much shot at least one 8 every end.  My first three ends were OK, scoring 55-55-52-57 (the 52 was thanks to an unexplained 6 on the right side).  After that things really started falling apart.  I whimpered out of 90 meters with a 51-49, the last end consisting of a 10-9-9-8-7-6 for a total of 319.  That’s not so great, but not awful I guess, when you consider this is the first scoring round at 90 meters that I have shot in nearly 10 years.

70 meters was a disaster.  I shot a grand total of 1 x at that distance, and I liberally peppered the red with errant arrows.  A few of the shots were poorly executed, but strangely enough, those few badly performed shots were the only ones that actually went more or less where I expected them too.  I told mom at half time that it felt like things were so screwy that when I did actually manage to hold well and execute a good shot, the only thing I knew for certain was that the arrow would not land in the middle.

I tried to keep my mental game on track, but I was highly frustrated by half time.  Call me crazy, but when I hold in the gold and release OK, I don’t think I should shot arrows in the blue.

During the break at the half I moved the rest back in to where it was before I attempted to replace launcher last week (28mm, measured from the end of the T-square and against the inside of the rest).  I took a guess at where to put the sight to compensate for the drastic left-right adjustment I had made while mom went to hunt down some lunch.

The lunch break was one hour long, and then we started shooting 50 meters.  My first shot at 50 was a 9/10 liner at 9 o’clock.  A couple of clicks brought it in pretty well.  My arm was very tired and sore, given as how I had already shot 72 arrows this point, and my aim was suffering accordingly, but more than that, my mind was so messed up from trying (unsuccessfully) to hit some spots at the longer distances, that I my form pretty much sucked.  I was wobbling all over the gold, I was holding the release wrong (not choking up on it and not getting my knuckles into my jawbone on the anchor)…  everything was just off.

Still, I started out OK.  I only hit a couple of X’s, but I did at least manage to keep most of them in the ten ring (59-59-58).  That’s when things really went to shit again.  Mostly this was due, I think, to a combination of fatigue and poor form for the above mentioned reasons, ending with 53-55-55 and groups just a little bit bigger than the gold.  I shot 339 at 50 meters, which is about what I should have shot at 90 meters.  <Sigh>

30 meters did start much better.  On the field courses I’ve been shooting, the 5-ring is about the same size as the X-ring on the FITA target, and I’ve been drilling that all day long.  However, today I manged only to keep them mostly in the 10-ring, which was OK in terms of this tournament, but not in terms of actual grouping.  That being said, I still went 59-60-59-60 on the first four ends, and my X’s steadily increased.  By the 4th end I was starting to feel a little more back to normal.  My aim was steadying up, my grip was better and consistent on my release, I was getting through my shots faster, and I started actually shooting X’s.  Strangely enough, I did not shoot any more 60’s on those last two, but on the final end I did at least shoot 4 X’s.  Sadly, and very disturbingly, I missed my last shot at 9 o’clock by about 1/4 inch.  That not only surprised me, as I thought it was a decent shot (not perfect), but it also kind of pissed me off.  The only thing I hate missing more than my first shot is my last shot.

My total on the day was 1335.  I certainly have shot worse than this before, but this is probably 30-40 points under where I expected to be.  Perhaps it is just another case of setting my expectations above my current shooting level, but I don’t think so.  I think this score just sucked.  I do think a fair amount of this was due to me shooting poorly, but I also think that the bow was not shooting as well it could have been, especially at the longer distances.

Hopefully I can build on the last part of today, and go into tomorrow with a little bit of momentum.

We will be shooting an Olympic Round (Eliminations) followed by a 90o round.  Scoring start at 10 AM.

Additional information: —————————————

Start date: Apr 30, 2011 10:46 AM Target: FITA Total score: 1335

— Sent from my iPhone

First off, I have been lax the last few days about sending in these practice reports, so I’m writing this five days later.  Naturally, I can’t remember everything that happened, but I do remember a few things so I will mention those.

I picked Shannon up after work and headed straight out to Sylvan.  I shot one end at 70 yards for practice (two liner 5’s at 9 o’clock and two inside out X’s), then went straight to the lower course again.  I had shot on that course the other day and wanted to compare.

I had shot a 270 that day, and I really felt I could get into the mid 270’s this time out.  That was my goal.

I did not start out as well as I had the previous time I shot this course.  I dropped 8 points in the first 9 targets.  I felt I was shooting pretty well most of the time, but I was a little surprised by a couple of the misses (especially the 80 yarder, which I thought I nailed but in fact missed by about an inch at 2 o’clock), but more or less I knew what I had done to miss the ones I that missed.  My groups were wider than they were tall, which made me think I was probably gripping the bow a little bit.  That reminded me that I had been trying to put the edge of the handle down the middle of my life line the other day, which is more palm than I have historically used, but seemed to work well the the other day.  I tried to pay closer attention to that.

Heading into the uphill 55 yard target (A23) which had given me so many problems the last few days, I was a little distraught.  I felt like I was really trying and shooting pretty well, but I was a little frustrated because I was doing worse at this point in the game.  Mindful of the difference in my grip, I paid special attention to that, tried to clear my mind, and pulled up for the first shot at the up hill.  I really wanted to clean it.

My first shot was nicely executed and it hit dead center.  The next shot was pretty good, but it was 6 o’clock 5/4 line when it fired, and it missed by about half an inch low.  Second shot was a another X.  I struggled through the 4th shot, letting it down twice, before finally executing a shitty, weak shot which hit several inches low.   I was disappointed because I’d really wanted the 20, but still it was an 18 which was better than I had done on my last two attempts at this particular target.

The next target is uphill as well and had given me some trouble the last time I shot.  I really wanted to stay clean from this point, since I wanted to stay in the 270’s, so I was pretty careful with these shots.  I let down twice, and one of the shots was sitting at 3 o’clock when it went off, but it still stayed in the spot.  As it turned out, my first shot was dead center, but it looked low so I adjusted my sight and put the last two side by side on the X line at 12.  One was in and one was out.  Still, they were all 5’s so I called it good.

The next target is a 35 fan, which shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I had 18’d it the last two times because it is a heavy sidehill and I kept forgetting to watch my bubble.  I was mindful of that, and again I was careful and did not try to force anything that felt slightly off.  I let down three times on this target, but in the end I shot good shots and scored a 20.  Only 1 X though.  All three 5’s were out to the left, in the direction of the slant.

The next two are a 20 yarder and a birdie, so I wasn’t worried about them.  I shot X’s all the way, and then it was onto the last target, a nice and flat 65 yarder.  I dropped two on this one the last time I shot it, and I really wanted to clean it this time.

I was a little nervous.  I knew I was down 9, so a 20 would put me at 271 which was better than the last time, though not as good as I wanted to do.  I decided to play my little game in my head, telling myself that a 20 would win and a 19 or worse would lose.

I pulled up, held well and shot a nice shot on the first arrow.  I thought it would be an X, but it turned out to be just out of the X at 1 o’clock.  The next arrow was a little scary as I bobbled left when it went off, but it stayed solidly in the five.  The third arrow was a little shakey on the aim, but well executed.  I was disappointed to to see that it was a mid-five at 7 o’clock instead of the X that I wanted, but at least it was a five.

Then it was the moment of truth, the last arrow.  I knew I wasn’t going to miss the four, so I had a 270 at least, but I really wanted to clean out the end of the course, and I REALLY wanted to hit my last arrow.  The only thing I hate worse than missing my last arrow is missing my very first arrow.

I decided it was time to be extra careful.  What I mean by that is that I wasn’t going to force anything…  if I held too long, if I wobbled too much, if anything was wrong at all I wasn’t going to shoot it.  Normally when I hold a second too long, or wobble out of the spot a little bit, I might try to pull it out.  But not this shot.  It was going to be perfect or nothing.

My first try I pulled up, held rock solid in the 5, but could not get the shot to go off.  Undoubtedly it was because I was nervous.  I let it down.  Second time up, I did not hold very well and gave up on it quickly, letting it down again.   Third try was like the first, though I held it just a bit longer trying to get it to go.  I let down for a third time.

Shannon asked if something was wrong, and I said I was just nervous.  I shook out my shoulder, looked at the target, saw the arrow hitting the X in my mind, then I played my training game again.  “X you win, 5 you lose,” I told myself.  I let that sit in my head for a moment, then I said “Alright.  Now, just shoot your form.”

I pulled up, held solid, felt where my release hand was going to be after the shot, pushed forward with my bow arm just a bit and Blam! The shot went off.  The last time I had seen the dot in my scope, it was right in the middle.  The arrow sailed down range, dropped slightly along its arc and landed almost silently.  Even before I pulled out my glasses, I knew it was a win.  The X ring was torn out.  No paper sound meant an X, and a quick look through binoculars confirmed it: Inside out X, on the edge of the upper-right leg.

That felt really good.  Not only did I lay down a new best since my return to shooting, but I also fought through some nervousness and in order to do it, I had to clean some targets which had been giving me trouble.  I was very proud of that.

I did feel that I was still getting some excessive left and right movement in my groups, but all in all I happy with how I shot, and especially how I finished.

Additional information: —————————————

Start date: Apr 22, 2011 5:51 PM Target: NFAA/IFAA Field Total score: 271 28 X’s

— Sent from my iPhone

I shot this round with Mom, after having adjusted the rest a little bit and installing the knurled knob on the release.  I did not write a report at the time, and I don’t really remember anything substantial about this day.  I finished with a 270, which was 6 point better than my previous best on the same course, but it was 11 X’s better, which is significant.

I felt I was holding really well, and mostly I felt like I shot very well.  However, when I missed I missed pretty big, which was a bit concerning.

Additional information: —————————————

Start date: Apr 20, 2011 6:04 PM Target: NFAA/IFAA Field Total score: 270 33 X’s

— Sent from my iPhone