Hi everybody!
It's been quite a while since I shot this, but I forgot to update my blog!
The weekend of 29/30th of June was the Welsh & Open Field Archery Championships, hosted by Llantwit Major Archers at Fonmon Castle. It was a 2 day shoot, shooting an IFAA Hunter round on Saturday and the Field round on Sunday. We went down nice and early on the Saturday and got a few practice ends in to verify my marks and make sure everything was good, and then grabbed a spot of breakfast before the groups were called and we went out onto the course.
The Hunter round was shot on the South course and the weather was actually really good for us! It started off slightly overcast, but this lifted and it was nice and sunny all day. The ground was fairly dry and easy going compared to usual, so footing on the targets was ok. I shot a good round, with consistent performance between the halves, shooting 266 in the first half and picking up 2 more points for 268 in the second. This put me on a final score of 534!
This is a new PB for the hunter round by 8 points, my second GBM score and the highest IFAA score I have shot to date! I was absolutely thrilled with this result, and it put me in joint 1st place with David Home, a professional archer who also finished on 534 so the shooting was going to be tight on Sunday.
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| Shooting the 53 yard walk-up |
On the Sunday we started slightly earlier, and were split into groups based on bow style and position so I was shooting with David and the other AMFU archers, and the pressure was on. Fatigue is always an issue on the second day with stiff shoulders and tired backs. I didn’t shoot any practice arrows and I think this was a mistake as my first few targets felt difficult to shoot and were a bit shaky.
Because of this I dropped points early on (10 points on the first 5 targets) which dented my score too much to recover from. Once I got up to par I shot the rest of the round fairly well but because of the poor start I finished up on 522 points.
The results went in and David Home took the win by 7 points, and I finished in second place by a comfortable margin and came away with the silver medal! I am really pleased with the results – a silver medal, picked up my GBM patch from 2 weeks ago, and shot a new Hunter and all-time PB.
So lessons learned for this weekend – get more rest the night before day 2, eat/drink more healthily between the shoots (I doubt the Chinese takeaway and ale did me any favours!) and make use of the practice targets to warm up before going back out to get on a roll before you start scoring.
Equipment wise I am really happy with how the CPXL is shooting now. The new strings are settled in and shooting very nicely indeed and I seem to have everything dialled in. It is holding steady and putting arrows in the X from 20 feet to 80 yards, so long as I shoot it properly so it can be left alone now.
I don’t have any tournaments on for a little while, so I am going to use this time to have a bit of a play with my other bows. I haven’t shot my Guardian in a little while so I will take that up the club to have some fun with, and my Brigadier is in the middle of a makeover!
It was matt black and a bit worn from its previous owners so I had it stripped and powder coated. I always liked the look of the Specialist in the limited edition gloss-white, so I had my Brigadier done in that colour.
I am in the process of refitting the various components but the coaters didn’t mask off the threads as they were supposed to, and the arrow rest/sight mount threads are caked up. You can’t get the screws in them and the rest one rounded off the first thread, but one of my friends has a set of taps so he can clear the threads for me. I am going to pop round to his place in a few days and get it sorted. Once that’s done then I can reassemble it properly and tune her up ready to use in the next indoor season.
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