Chairmans Blog Season 2 with Debbie McGee
Season 2 with Debbie McGeePosted in Chairmans Blog on July 13, 2011 by El Presidente Debbie McGee, Jedi Knights, Arrow Spines, the Wife Swap, the Wind, Shiny new Toys and Gravy…
Season2 shoots 1 through 4
The Indoor Bit – Debbie McGee and a Jedi Knight Hey folks, it’s been a loooong while since my last blog so I thought one was well overdue. The 2010 Outdoor Season ended for me in September at Balbardie at the Eastern Area Champs where you may recall I finished my novice season with a PB of 947 for a FITA – missing my target of 1,000 but sharing my journey along the way. I had never intended to blog through the Indoor Season as I had a hunch I would be just too busy. In the end this would be right.
Over the Indoor Season I did a lot of work for the Eastern Area setting up and running a new Junior League with great assistance from my able assistant Debbie McGee (well OK it was Bill). In addition to this I was delighted to help our club out as we ran two new beginners courses with many a new member signed up. Finally along with Mark, Iain and Gilbert I qualified as a Level 1 coach. This led to a significantly reduced numbers of sessions practising which was further compounded by some awful weather leading to many cancelled club nights. The net result of all this was that I developed a few form faults which became quite ingrained and led to my scores dropping – nay plummeting like a loosely held bow from an archer (okay me) who has forgot to put his finger sling on - over the Indoor Season. To be honest there was a time in March when I shot a 400 odd on a Portsmouth (130+ points down on my average score not my PB), my ring finger on my drawing arm was wrecked, my bow arm had horrendous tennis elbow and I just thought “that’s it I just can’t be bothered anymore”, it’s true folks my archery got so bad in the Indoor Season el Presidente was ready to quit shooting for good at the March AGM.
So what happened? Well about a month before the end of the Indoor Season Obi Wan Murray came over to me and said “ use the force Kev” – well OK not quite he started to tell me all about the benefits of practising (with a bow not a lightsabre) at short distance with your eyes shut to develop the feel of the shot. Sure enough two of my good shooting buddies Gilbert and Donald confirmed the success they had with this technique (UNDER SAFE AND CONTROLLED CONDITIONS) and were amazed how good their groups got. Anyway Murray told me that I was “getting in the way of the arrow” and “don’t worry about it I’ve been there before and it’s pretty lonely but we’ll sort it”. The he just told me to shoot lot’s of arrows walked away and said nothing whilst he watched me shooting for about 4 ends.
Murray then proceeded to demonstrate that I had developed a couple of faults that were throwing off my grouping and that the poor results were wrecking my confidence, which made the faults worse and so on creating a horrible cycle. We worked on the loose A LOT, I don’t know how but over the indoor season I had lost any pretence of a controlled expansion, it was basically pulling the string to the clicker, waiting a long time until my brain said (SHOOT NOW) and then wrenching the string through the clicker and letting go with the fingers plucking the string in all manner of interesting directions but seldom back the way in a controlled fashion. This helped explain why I could maybe shoot some good arrows a lot of mediocre arrows and many bad arrows in any given round. My confidence just sapped as everyone else’s groups tightened over the Indoor Season and I was still regularly hitting blacks and blues on any given round despite practising as much as time would permit.
So I had to relearn how to loose, drawing the string and then expanding subtly through the clicker. I did as best as I could at this over the next month and gradually my groups improved firstly by eliminating the really horrid arrows and then blues disappeared and then 8s etc. By the end of the season I finally achieved my first C Class score (most of my shooting buddies had achieved that by Christmas) but it was too late to put together another two and gain my C Classification.
Outdoor Tinkering – Arrow Spine So the Outdoor Season started with abandon, I got myself an extender, V bar and twins to supplement my long rod stabiliser. I was also working with a much reduced draw length because Murray was convinced that was part of the reason I had been dragging through the clicker. The net result of all this was that even with the limbs fully wound in and me holding 45lbs on my fingers my Navigators just couldn’t reach 90m without aiming at the top of the flag – no surprise really if you look at last season’s blogs. I was hoping that I might have made it because we had wound in the limbs fully adding about 4lbs over the winter however the reduced drawlength must have cancelled out the benefit because my bow sounded like an unhappy croaking, galley as I drew it and the arrows were still only achieving 180 feet per second. To give you an idea we got Gilbert to shoot my arrows from his bow (similar set up) pulling to the same draw length and whilst his ACEs were hitting the gold mines were falling about 5m short of the target – and I couldn’t move my sight anymore.
So we knew it was the arrows, sure enough a quick check of the Easton charts confirmed that at the Arrow Length I had my Navs at were working out at 388 grains. An equivalent set of ACEs were only 287 grains – i.e. they were 26% lighter.
I tried lightening the points and even cutting the arrows a bit to lighten them. Unfortunately both of these actions made an already overstiff arrow intolerably stiff and they were just untunable. I eventually accepted defeat and new that I’d have to buy myself some new arrows so with my birthday in mind (June – so it was somewhat early ahem) I sucked it up and bought a new set of ACEs which Murray help me cut and tune over the course of a sunny evening. WHAT A DIFFERENCE, what I hadn’t realised until now was just how forgiving arrows with the correct spine could be. I could see my groups at 30m improve enormously and that was with some pretty ropey looses, I guess I just hadn’t realized how much I was being punished before when I had a mediocre loose. Sure I was able to get some much better scores at the end of the Indoor Season with my Navs at 18m but I was a sweating wreck at the end of the shoot and I still struggled at 30m when we went outside. With the ACEs I got away with a lot more and suddenly I understood what Gilbert and Donald were saying all indoor season when they said a bad shot is now an 8 (well not for me it wasn’t guys it could easily be a 1 or a miss but now it felt like that a bad shot probably would still be an 8).
So after Shoots 1 and 2 I got my shiny new ACEs. To summarise the eventual changes to my bow set up and equipment since the last outdoor season were as follows:
FITA 2.1 Eastern Area Double FITA Star, 14th to 15th May 2011 (shot prior to purchasing my new ACEs). - The Wife Swap
For those that remember the weather this Spring April and May seemed to have done some kind of weird wife swap, we had two glorious weeks in April when I wasn’t shooting (Patio building – yaay) and then May (normally a relatively safe(ish) bet in Scotland) was a howling gale for most of the month.
So FITA no.1 was up at Penicuik and I can honestly say that the weather was absolutely horrendous. The vast majority of the field were down by 100 to 200 points and there were a large number of retirals. How did I get on?
90m 50 points – Seriously I hit the boss about 50% of the time in the wind and even that was basically aiming my bow somewhere into the air above and to the right of the target. The thing is I actually didn’t get phased by it because the wind was so bad it was almost funny – only one Gent in the whole recurve field broke 200 and I counted 6 MB archers beneath him.
70m 124 points - Well at least I could aim at or to the side of the target now J. I spent most of the time just trying to figure out how far to aim off and it showed. Sure the rest of the field were struggling too but this was a poor performance on my part. Again though I just didn’t bother about it because there was nothing I could do about the weather and any form issues were just getting accentuated by my overheavy and out of tune Navs.
50m 156 points – Same story as 70 to be honest I just couldn’t group them at all.
30m Although I normally step into 30m with a bit of trepidation because of last season’s consistent ability to underperform at this distance on this particular day I didn’t really care. It was still blowing a gale and everyone just wanted to get home. I was therefore somewhat surprised when I turned in a 290 which was 8 points better than last season’s PB of 282. I’m not by any means saying that this was good shooting however in the wind and at my least successful distance I was pretty happy to shoot a PB.
Total for the day: Target Score 1,000 Actual Score 620 Prior best 947
OK it was a shocker – my lowest ever score at a FITA, I’ll put it down to lack of outdoor practice, the wind and most importantly me. However I honestly was very happy because of the 30m score and to anyone in the club reading this thinking that Archery competitions seems like self inflicted torture I would say to you that the beauty of the FITA system is that you get five opportunities to win really (the overall score and the four different distances) and in case you are wondering no I’m not deluding myself - to me a win is setting a PB – I can’t really dictate how the other competitors will shoot.
FITA 2.2 – the Wind So Gilbert picked me up on what was an equally rubbish morning and by the time we got to Penicuik we half convinced ourselves that it would be cancelled. Certainly looking at the target list and the lack of scopes on the line one would have been forgiven for thinking this however a small but committed (pun intended) band of archers set themselves up for Day 2 of the fun.
90 & 70m were 165 and 206 for a total of 371 for the long metric which was still sub par but a significant improvement on yesterdays 50 and 124. 50m seemed pretty similar with a 226 posted which was 70 points up on the previous day.
30m OK so based on yesterday’s PB I was well up for shooting this distance now. End 1 – first arrow in the 6 followed by two 8s a 9 and two 10s – total 51 End 2 – 10,9,7,10,8,7 – total 51 this game is starting to be fun. End 3 – 9,9,8,X,9,6 - a huge gust blew my bow arm off target giving me a 51 again. End 4 – 10,8,8,9,8,8 – total 51 starting to fight the wind on every arrow now. End 5 – 9,8,8,X,6,6 – 47 the two blues were a real struggle in the wind, lot’s of coming down and resetting. End 6 – 9,8,7,9,8,2 – I was up for this and I really was determined to concentrate in the wind and get my 300 for the first time. The wind was pretty strong by this point and people all down the line were resetting. I shot arrows 142 and 143 for a 9 and an 8 giving myself 30 seconds to shoot the final arrow of the day…and the wind kept puffing, having already blows several houses (ok tents) down. Twice I reset because the wind blew the arrow off the riser (stupid flappy clicker). So with about 5 seconds to go I reset came to draw and just wrenched the arrow into the 2, the problem was that the arrow hit the 2 about a third of a second after the judge blew for time over (her opinion and I had to concede I was past the whistle – archery is a game of honesty above all things I think). I looked round at my fellow target companions who all gave a collective groan because we all knew that it is the highest arrow that get’s discounted so suddenly my 43 became a 9,8,7,Miss,8,2 for a 34.
I hadn’t done the maths before the start of the end but it turns out I wasn’t on for the 300 because of the 2 anyway but if the 9 had counted I would have got a 294 and raised my PB – still them’s the rules..
Target Score 300 Actual Score 285 Prior best 290 As I said – stupid wind, stupid flappy clicker, stupid Kev…
Total for the day: Target Score 1,000 Actual Score 882 Prior best 947
I was actually pretty happy, the weather still sucked and I’d brought my score up by a good whack on day 1 cutting the 127 point day 1 lead the guy ahead of me had to 16 points on the aggregate score. OK so the last arrow in the wind was a total mess but my standard of shooting at this distance had improved a great deal on the first season.
I should also mention that my shooting buddy Gilbert got his 1,000 point FITA star on this day too – well done mate – thoroughly deserved!
Gilbert and I attended a York in Glamis a few weeks later which is set within the grounds of the castle and must surely be the prettiest ground on the circuit. The wind was horrendous, as we drove though the gates and up the road towards the castle you could see lots of stately trees which had been blown over and cracked into horrid shapes by the gales. In the ends the shoot got cancelled after 8 dozen arrows because two bosses blew over and quite a few arrows got smashed (none of them mine). It was so windy I can’t really say I learned much that day other than if you are walking back towards the shooting line after collecting your arrows and your tent is suddenly 10m further away than it was last end it is time to collapse the shelter and put it in the bag.
FITA 2.3 – UK National Series, Penicuik 18 June 2011 – Shiny new toys 90m 164 – this was still a struggle to be honest. I was trying out my shiny new ACEs so I couldn’t blame the arrows anymore. I just had a lot of poor arrows and ended up with a miss on every end which is just not good enough.
70m End 1: 9,8,8,7,7,5 for a 44 – Good start, sightmark confirmed pretty quick. End 2: 8,7,7,4,4,4 total 34 – Hmmm not sure what happened on the three 4s but let’s forget them. Ends four and 5 were 46s which is good for me. End 5 – X,7,6,6,6,5 total 40 – meh. End 6 – 7,7,6,6,5,3 total 34 - a poor last end, just couldn’t hit the gold frustratingly.
Target Score 250 Actual Score 244 Prior best 259 Down by 20 points or so on where I should have been.
50m (shot in ends of 3 but I’ll count them as six to keep it going) End 1: 7,5,5,8,8,7 total 40 – A poor first end, not sightmarks though just post lunch inactivity I think. End 2: X,9,4,10,7,7, total 47 – better much better End 3: 10,9,7,8,6,6 total 46 – again keep it up. End 4: 8,8,5,8,7,6 total 42 – Stupid 5, bad shot move on. End 5: 7,7,7,8,8,8, total 45 – no great arrows but I’ll take the score. End 6: 10,8,7,9,6,6 total 46 – The first three made up for the last :D
Target Score 250 Actual Score 266 Prior best 248 A new PB, no jolts and felt very confident – I was happy with this, the key thing for me was that I did not let 50m scare me the way it did last year and that after the 5 in end 4 I just forgot about it and moved on.
30m End 1: 10,9,9,10,8,3, total 49 – a good first end for me, first arrow sight mark was wrong though. End 2: X,9,8,9,9,8 total 53 - this is solid, no worse than a 9 though please. End 3: 9,9,9,X,10,9 total 56 – I love this game End 4: 10,8,6,X,8,7 total 49 – unhappy with the 6 and the 7 which were down to a lack of focus. End 5: 10,9,8,X,8,8 total 53 – keep it going… End 6: 9,9,8,10,8,8 total 52 – hmm I’ve shot better but I didn’t blow it at the end though.
Target Score 300 Actual Score 312 Prior best 290 Loving it – finally broke though that 300 barrier and I didn’t feel like a wreck at the end of it. It just felt like fun!
Total for the day: Target Score 1,000 Actual Score 986 Prior best 947
Yup you guessed it – I still didn’t break the 1,000 point barrier largely because of my sub par 90 and 70m scores. Still I set PBs at 50m and 30m and broke my overall PB by nearly 40 points. I went home thinking, if I could just practice a lot more at the longer distances and maintain my short metric scores I really would have no problem getting my scores up a good bit. So goes the theory anyway.
Shoot 4 a York – Pentangle, Kilwinning 19 June 2011 – MMMM Gravy
The next day was new territory. Gilbert and I along with Margaret from the club had qualified to represent the Eastern Area at the annual inter area shoot between the three Scottish Areas and the two most northerly English Counties – the shoot collectively known as the Pentangle. I picked Gilbert up early in the morning and we headed off to Kilwinning to an unfamiliar ground for the shoot. The weather was OK and a rather large weather vane (which handily also produces electricity – always wondered what they were for at our ground) made it pretty easy to tell what way the wind was really blowing if like me you get a bit suspicious of that little flag on top of the boss at times.
For those in the club that haven’t shot a York before it is a different type of round to the usual FITA you read about in my blog. Importantly rather than shooting 36 arrows at each distance you shoot 6 dozen at 100 yards, 4 dozen at 80 yards and 2 dozen at 60 yards. You’ll note that all distances are measured in imperial measurements not metric. Finally 5 zone scoring is used (e.g. a gold is always a 9 – you can not get a ten) and the face size remains at 122cm at all distances. In summary it’s still archery but there are enough differences to make it a different experience on the day from shooting a FITA.
I had no real benchmark for my scores on this as I’d never completed a York before – the scores aren’t really that comparable to a FITA because of the imperial scoring system however there is a clever calculator you can use for your total score which calculates a FITA equivalent at the end.
100 yards End 1 – 5,5,1,1,1, M - 13, really struggled in the wind, I couldn’t figure out where to aim off leading to lot’s of poor arrows. End 2 – 9,5,3,3,1,M – 21, another poor end with only one good arrow. End 3 – 9,5, M, M, M, M – the first MMMM I’d had at competition in a good while – as great a sound as it may be on a gravy or coffee advert it ain’t much fun in an archery competition. End 4 – 9,7,7,5,3,1 – 32 – Angry Kev does not do gravy… End 5 – 9,7,7,7,7,5 – 42, …he eats gravy for breakfast… End 6 – 9,7,5,5,3,1 – 30,…no wait a minute that doesn’t work…Doh!
Anyway we were given a fairly decent break for food/drink etc. (not a Bisto product in sight I swear) and then cracked on with the remaining 36 arrows at 100 yards.
My ends went 13, 14, 26, 23, 25 and 38 – other than the last one I was unhappy with all of my performances. I’m not sure if it was having too long a break or because I’m so used to moving to 70m after the first session but I have to say I found 100 yards a struggle all in.
Total Score 291
80yards End 1 – 9,9,7,5,5,1 – 36, other than the first sight mark shot I was happy enough. End 2 – 9,7,7,5,3,3 – 34, hmm not a step in the right direction. End 3 – 9,9,9,9,7,7 – 50 – this is it we’ve woken up now here we go… …but apparently we’d already gone I finished off with ends of 40, 34, 32, 32 and 40.
Total Score 298
60yards End 1 – 9,7,7,7,7,1 – 38, same story with the sightmark, I’d been off all day. End 2 – 9,9,7,7,7,5 – 44, meh End 3 – 9,9,7,7,7,5 – 44, extra meh End 4 – 9,7,7,7,5,3 - 38, uncharacteristic for me but I think my focus had kind of gone at the end to be honest.
Total Score 164.
Total Score for first York 753.
Analysis – Hard for me to say much on this as I had never finished a round before. I’m in two minds about the York round to be honest – if you shoot well at 100yards on the day they are great as you only need to hit the outer gold for a top score each time. However if you are struggling on the day like me then 6 dozen arrows (i.e. half the round) at 100 yards seems like a long process.
We did the FITA conversions and it turns out I scored a 932 FITA equivalent which is useful progress on the early season but a bit disappointing to be honest. Gilbert however scored an 1130 equivalent which is a fantastic achievement – well done my friend.
As an team Gilbert and I along with John Purdie from Crief managed a 3rd place Gents Recurve of the 5 Areas (and top Scottish Area) which we were happy with for our first proper York and team event. Gilbert also scored a very creditable 4th place. The Ladies did even better with Margaret, Caroline (Bannockburn) and Jen (EUAC) winning Ladies Recurve Silver and Margaret and Naomi (EUAC) winning Ladies Individual Silvers in Recuvre and Compound respectively.
Lots of practice in July will be had for the next Tournaments which are the Scottish Champs in August.
I’m off to watch Star Wars with my Sunday Roast and lashings of Gravy…
|