The Think Tank

Today was the first day of the Oregon State Indoor Archery Championship, and it marks the first tournament I have competed in since 2002.  Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City is playing host to this years tournament.

Our friend Debbie Lane is the person who convinced me to start shooting again.  She was shooting in this tournament and I decided to join her.  Debbie arrived early in the day and went to practice early and was in the cabin when we arrived.

Maure came with Mom and I this weekend and Shannon, her brother Kevin, her mom and dad (Sheri and Brad), and Joel all came to watch me shoot today and cheer me on.  I really appreciated the show of support from everyone and wanted to make sure I said a special “Thank You!” to all of them.  It really meant a lot to me.

Today I shot a 300 with 49 X’s.  For those of you who may not understand the scoring, I’ll give you a quick overview. You can see at left a plot of all my shots today.  The white area is worth 5 points, the first blue ring is worth 4, the next is worth 3, etc.  The innermost ring in the white is called the X-ring, and it counts as 5 plus an X.  X’s are used as tie-breakers.  One round consists of  60 arrows, so a perfect score is 300 with 60 X’s.

I haven’t seen the final scores from today, but I feel confident that the leader will be in the 58-60 X range, so my 49 X’s should be well short of that.  However, I feel that given that I’ve only been back for three weeks or so (after not shooting at all for seven years), I shot pretty well.  My personal goal for today was to shoot a 300 with 50 X’s or more, and I came pretty close to that.  Better than the score, I felt that I was performing my shots very well for the most part.  Three or four on every end felt about perfect and hit pretty much dead center, which is encouraging.  A couple weeks ago I was lucky to get 5-6 perfect feeling shots per day, so this was big improvement.

In fact, today was the first time since I came back that I shot a 300, so that was good.  By the competitive standards of my youth, the 300 alone is a fairly low bar, but I’m more or less starting over here so I’ll take it.

I definitely feel like I can pick up tomorrow where I left off and improve on it a little bit.  Hopefully I can kick the X’s up some and get over 100 X’s for the weekend, which will satisfy my original goal.

I shoot the 2pm line tomorrow as well.  Any and all positive thoughts that you throw my way will be greatly appreciated!

The rest of this post is just a shooting journal for my own records.  Read on if you like, but its doubtful there will be anything very meaningful in it.

(continue reading…)

Due to Blazers games and the weather predictions, it seems likely that I will not get to shoot this coming week, so I went to Archers Afield today early and tried to get some good shooting in.

I shot the blue Scepter again today, having re-served the string last night and tying in a new nock point.  I checked the arrow flight first thing to ensure that that the nocking point was correct, and it was still shooting bullet holes.

At first the only other people shooting were two girls shooting long bows, and since they were shooting very quickly, I decided rather than make them wait for me every end I would shoot a 3-spot target.

I started out shooting blank bale for a couple of ends just to make sure I had the feel for my form.  Then I shot two practice ends, dropping a point on each one.  When it came time to start the scoring ends, I found myself feeling a combination of nervousness and excitement.  Like I’d been through the testing, the bow was shooting pretty well, and I felt like it was time to get down to business and start shooting the scores that I know I can still shoot.  The focus on score rather than form made it a little hard to concentrate on the actual shot process, but I viewed it as an excellent opportunity to practice shooting while feeling a little bit nervous.  I figured I’ll probably feel that way at State.

I did my mental one-arrow shoot-off training technique for the first four or five ends, the whole time I was feeling nervous, and it had only nominal success.  I dropped a point on each of the first few ends, but the other 2/3 were pretty good, so I guess that’s not horrible.  Its just not as good as I would like it to be, or as I feel it will be with some additional practice.  I think the new bow will be a good change too.

Starting on end 7 or 8, I felt a lot better.  I had much better focus on proper form, keeping my bow arm controlled, letting the bow swing straight down so the wheel hits my belt, and my release hand snaps around to touch my shoulder.  I also remembered the proper grip on the bow.  The riser is coming straight down the outside of my thumb from the joint, with the first knuckle of my index finger just a little over the shelf.  In this position, if I were to extend my index finger it would be in front of the bow.

I cleaned my last three ends, scoring 3x’s, 1x (both very close), and 2x’s, again with the miss being very close.

By this time several other people had shown up and were shooting 5-spots, so I put my NFAA face back up and started shooting again.  I shot pretty well, although looking a the arrow plot I see that there was a lot of up and down variation.  Things were pretty controlled for the first six ends, although as I got more tired and my shoulder became more sore, it was increasingly difficult to keep up the proper form.

Between ends  6 and 7, I took a long break and spoke with Kris Demeter for about 20 minutes and I put my tennis elbow band on.  My first shot took a little long to release, but it was dead center.  The second shot was a little bit shakier, but felt pretty good when it came off, so I was very surprised to see that it hit in the blue.  Only by about 1/10 of an inch, but it was a smurf nonetheless.  I was surprised, and made a special effort to shoot solid, strong shots after that.  All three arrows were inside out.

The next end I pulled up and felt like I held and released well, but I couldn’t see the arrow anywhere.  I got my glasses out and looked and saw that the arrow was at 6 O’clock, between the left to targets.  I have no idea why that happened.  My next arrow went 6 O’clock mid four ring.  My third shot did the same thing, so I went over and shot through paper.  It shot two perfect bullet holes, so I went back and shot another end, all of which were 5/4 line low.  I adjusted my site and shot another end, all of which were low again, this time 5/X line, but still low and not terribly consistent.

I was very tired, but I was trying extra hard to make sure I was shooting strong and I didn’t feel I was shooting that poorly.  I really have no idea what happened.

I quit after that because my arm was very sore and I didn’t think I could shoot well enough to do much testing.  But I do know that I didn’t shoot badly enough to miss the target

Additional information: —————————————

Start date: Feb 20, 2011 1:07 PM Target: FITA Total score: 293 13 X’s

Start date: Feb 20, 2011 1:07 PM Target: NFAA/IFAA Indoor Total score: 149

Shot a 60 arrow round today with the blue scepter, no practice. I started out really well for the first 20-25 but I got a got pretty tired in the shoulder after that. When that happened the groups opened up some.

I did some smurfin’ early, and I’m not sure why. It was out to the right which is something this bow has been known to do.

The biggest I remembered today was that I need to feel the form, the ending position with my bow arm forward and controlled, the wheel coming to rest on my hip and my release hand hauling around to touch my shoulder. It is especially important to focus on this for shots that I am struggling on.

Even after is was tired, I shot really good arrows when I kept this at the forefront of my mind while I was aiming.

All in all I felt pretty good about today

I do need to re-serve the string though, because it is loose.

Additional information: —————————————

Start date: Feb 18, 2011 5:13 PM Target: NFAA/IFAA Indoor Total score: 299