The FITA All British Championships

Hi everybody!

This weekend was the FITA All British & Open Championships at Pentref Bowmen. This was a 2 day tournament, shooting a FITA 24 Unmarked round on Saturday, and a Marked round on Sunday.

The weather for this shoot was absolutely stunning! We had sun all day with only minor cloud cover on Saturday, and on Sunday we had glorious sunshine all day – and not a breath of wind all weekend! Definitely the best shooting conditions that we have had all season.

On Saturday I arrived nice and early and got everything set up, had a good breakfast and shot 2 dozen or so arrows on the practice targets to get warmed up. We got into our groups and were led out onto the unmarked course.

On the unmarked round, you shoot 24 targets at various distances but none of the distances are given – you need to estimate and work out the distances which can make many of the shots quite tricky.  I have a system whereby I can estimate the distance depending on how much of the target I can see through my scope. This worked well for most of the targets, with only 2 targets catching me out when I shot high 3’s. As I had misjudged the distance, I didn’t know how much to adjust the sight to bring them in so I just aimed off the same amount and put the remaining arrows in the gold.

I had a great day with some strong shooting, and finished on a new personal best for the Unmarked round of 385 – up 24 points from my previous best of 361! I haven’t shot the Unmarked round for about 6 months which explains the big jump, but this was a great result – it was my first Master Bowman level score (377+) and was over the threshold to get my next Arrowhead badge so I put in the claim form.

Day 2 was the  Marked round, shot on a different course of 24 targets again but this time the distances are given. Contrary to what you may think, the marked round is usually harder as even though you are told the range, the targets are further away. I had a fairly good first half, and a new personal best for a half in the afternoon with 197 finishing on a total of 381 for the marked round - another MB score!

The results were announced once the courses had been cleared and all scores submitted, and I ranked in 4th place at the British Field Archery Championships, only 6 points short of making the podium. I was absolutely thrilled with this result! So in summary I shot my first 2 MB level scores, won my next Arrowhead award and finished in 4th place - not a bad result for a weekend of shooting in the sun!