This weekend, I went to the EFAA National Championships hosted by March Hare Archers in Throckmorton. While an English tournament, Welsh archers can still shoot for classification scores as guests so I went up with one of the guys from my club to see if I could raise the bar a bit.
We arrived nice and early on the Saturday for the Hunter round. The weather was on our side with a bit of mist in the morning, which soon lifted to a really nice clear day. The course was quite flat with no real challenging angles and I shot very strongly all day. The only hiccup all day was on the bunny. I accidentally aimed at the wrong target (shot top target first instead of bottom, GNAS style) and nailed a perfect X on the wrong face so that was down as a miss but even with that, I came in on a new personal best for the Hunter round of 526.
We travelled to the local campsite we were staying at, The Cottage Of Content after the shoot and got the tent up, and chilled out in the local pub with a nice big gammon and chips and a few ales to wash it down with! There was a travelling fire performer group staying at the campsite and putting on a show, and I ended up jamming with them in the pit juggling and fire spinning for an hour! That was a nice unexpected treat J
We got up bright and early after sleeping like a log (the new sleeping bags are great!) and got the tent down, ready to head out for the Field round on day 2. I have been chasing 530 points to reach Grand Bowmaster rank and only narrowly missed it because of the bunny mistake on Saturday so really concentrated and made sure I took my time on the course. There were no mistakes or misses during the round, but a few 18's and a 17 in the middle meant I missed the 530 mark, but still raised my pb for the Field round by 7 points to 528 which is a career and season best – so still a winner in my eyes!
I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t reach the 530 but there’s always another time and I know that it is within my reach if I concentrate and shoot well. One of the main things I have been struggling with is consistency in my grip. I absolutely love my new Insanity CPXL but I have had a bit of trouble with the rounded back of the grip, the same as I had with the Guardian so I have ordered a custom Torqueless grip for it. I shoot a Torqueless on my Guardian and it makes a great difference to the feel of the bow, so I am hoping this will go some way to addressing this and will smooth out the inconsistency... time will tell!
The next shoot now is a Marked Forrester round for the final of the Welsh Field Masters Tour in Fonmon on the 23rd, followed by the Welsh FITA at the end of the month so it is going to be about 6 weeks before the next IFAA round so I have a bit of time to prepare. It's a long shot, but i'm hoping to go from unclassified to Grand Bowmaster in my first season of picking up a compound so I have one, maybe two more opportunities to do it... efforts must be doubled!
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