The National Championships!

 

Hi everybody!

This weekend (1/2 December), ArcheryGB hosted their Indoor Extravaganza at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry. It was the Junior Nationals and the Back2Back shoot off on Saturday, and the Senior Nationals on Sunday. My friend Chris and I entered the Senior Champs on Sunday and Chris drove us up for the afternoon session.

This was by far the largest shoot I’ve ever been to, the venue was huge with over 900 archers shooting across the 2 days! When I walked into the hall, I was a little blown away by how many targets there were and how many archers were taking part!

 

We were early as the roads were clear on the way up, so we signed in, set our equipment up and had a wander around the trade stalls. Wales Archery, Merlin and TheArcheryCompany had mobile shops on display among other retailers, so I treated myself to a few bits and bobs I needed and grabbed a brand new fletching jig from WA. The one I’ve been using is a little simple and I could do with something better quality.

I managed to grab myself a nice little keepsake too :) ArcheryGB were selling 122cm FITA targets from the Olympics. These are full size coloured targets that were ready for the Olympics but were never used, and they are made of a waterproof treated fabric so they are more like a canvas print than a paper target. They were only £2 so I grabbed one which I’ll keep rolled up in my cupboard, and as and when I ever get my own man-cave/workshop its going on the wall as a big poster!

The announcements were made for us to get ready, and then it was onto the line! The round was a FITA18, inner 10 scoring. My shooting was fairly strong with only 1 arrow dropped out of the gold, a high 8 where I punched the release but no other issues. The lighting in the hall could’ve been better, the targets were dimly lit and a little tricky to focus on. The other side had black curtains behind the targets which made it even worse I’m told. It was only a minor complaint though, my target companions were great guys and we had a fun time shooting together all day and chatting which took the edge off how big an event it was!

 

I was a little behind, but had a string of 10’s in the final half dozen and finished on 569.. the same as the last competition I shot – consistent! The scores went in and we all waited anxiously for the announcement of what was required to make the cut, the top 32 archers that go through to the shoot offs for a chance at the final.... The announcements came out and the list of names was put up... the cut was 567 and I was through in 25^th place!

The ladies shot the Recurve and Compound eliminations first, so I had a chance to have a quick practice and get ready. The call came out and I collected my scorecards, and was drawn against an archer named Colin Geenes in the shoot off. We exchanges scorecards and went up to the line to shoot...

Oh..my..god. I didn’t think it was possible to be so nervous! I usually get a pang of nerves on a target shoot when you move from sighters to scoring but nothing serious as it’s just me against the target – I score what I score and that’s it. This time, I was shooting against someone, and the pressure was on. I found it quite hard to concentrate and was a bit wobbly! We drew 2 ends, and then Colin won 2 ends with a perfect 10 10 10 (very impressive shooting under pressure, fair play!) and took the match 6 points to 2.

 

So the end result was I came 25^th in Gents Compound out of 105 competitors, and joint 17^th in the shoot off with the other archers knocked out in the elimination.

I wasn’t disappointed with this at all, as I was fully expecting to be knocked out in the first round given the level of skill I was shooting against but I was absolutely thrilled to have made the cut and the shoot offs on my first ever National Championships, and hope I did my sponsor Wales Archery proud on my first official outing shooting for them  It was my big shoot debut and it was great to see my name up on the board with the leading British archers, albeit some way behind them but still a great feeling!

Also worthy of note is that I was very impressed with the way the shoot was run and organised, everything was clear and the presentations, announcements and control of the shooting was spot on, as was the quality of the equipment and targets – a credit to the work party and organisers for their efforts and hard work!

So - the usual post-shoot performance review... I was happy with my shooting and couldn’t think of anything I would criticise myself for archery-wise, but one thing is for sure, I need to do a lot more preparation for shooting under pressure before next year. My shooting was good enough to carry me forwards a little further, it was entirely nerves that gave me problems so I’m going to look into techniques to strengthen this aspect of my shooting and improve my mental game and focus.

Amazing News!

I’ve had some fantastic archery news in the last week!

First of all, I received an email from Mat Symmonds, president of the Welsh Field Archery Association – saying that I have been selected for a position on the Welsh Field Archery Squad for 2013! So next year I will be able to represent Wales on the field circuit as an official member of the team J Woohoo!

The other bit of news is.. I am now a sponsored pro-staff shooter! I sent an email to Wales Archery Specialists a little while ago enquiring about the possibility for sponsorship. I’ve always been impressed by the service they offer and recommend everyone to their shop. As I have been doing so well in a lot of competitions recently, and shooting on a par with many sponsored archers I thought the time was right to ask if I could represent and promote Wales Archery in an official capacity and join their shop team, and they have agreed! So I am now on the Welsh squad, and a Wales Archery Specialists pro-shooter – what a result! 

I am absolutely over the moon! This is what I have been hoping for and working towards all year, spending a lot of time and effort improving my game and attending as many shoots as I can to raise my rankings and now with this news, it has all been worth it! J

 

I am visiting Wales Archery on Friday to pick up a few bits and pieces I need, and they have a pro shooters shirt there ready for me, so I will be able to wear the Wales Archery colours at the Nationals in Coventry this weekend, the biggest indoor shoot on the UK circuit – one hell of a debut! My usual scores on that round are 565-70 and the cut last year to make the top 32 archers in the head to head shoot off was around 560 so with any luck I may get into the final... fingers crossed!

 

The Welsh 3D Championships!

Hi everybody!

This weekend on the 25th November was the Welsh 3D Championships at Llantwit Major Archers course in Fonmon, an IFAA unmarked 3D round of 28 targets. As my main bow Maya is set up at the moment for indoor target with huge slow arrows it wouldn't be suitable for this shoot, so I spent a little bit of money on a 5 pin hunting sight, a bow quiver and a short dampener and set my second bow Vasquez up as a BowHunter Unlimited rig.

Check it out, dressed to kill!

The Guardian is really a hunting bow anyway - being short, fast & quiet so this is the kind of outfit that the bow is designed for. It balances great even with the bow quiver fitted and is extremely accurate and fun to shoot. This type of bow just suits unmarked 3D a lot better than an unlimited setup in my opinion.

The weather for the previous week before the shoot had been absolutely atrocious, with record rainfall and severe flooding in many parts of the UK and rivers bursting thier banks everywhere. The decision was made to go ahead with the shoot as there had been a break in the weather, but by now the damage had been done! What the hell, we're field archers and this is what we shoot for!

The mud was up over our ankles in most parts of the course, and the climbing/walking was very hard going with slips and slides being par for the course. I almost fell over several times and the river crossing was interesting! There is a shallow stream with  stepping stones that you need to cross 4 times in total during the day. The stones were completely submerged in fast flowing water... this river is normally about 6" deep and about half as wide as this...

I shot fairly well through the day considering it was a new style and put in a decent score, coming in second place by 5 points. The 3D round is scored 10 points for a 'kill' in the inner zone, 5 points for an outer zone 'wound' so i was only 1 killshot off taking 1st place, not bad for my BowHunter style debut :)

I had a lot of fun shooting the round and it only took about an hour to clean the mud off my boots and equipment! The next shoot on the calendar now is the big one, the National Indoors at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, really looking forward to that one!

Wobbly bits, and a good result!

Hi everybody!

I’ve been looking at adding some dampeners to my Insanity CPXL because my friend Chris just bought a new  Hoyt that comes with AlphaShox limb dampeners. After trying his bow out you could really feel the difference when they were fitted and I was jealous!  So I went looking around for something that I can add to my CPXL to dampen the vibration that is left in the bow after the shot.

After doing some research and watching some impressive tests, it seems that BowJax are the best on the market and BowJax Revelations which would best suit my bow. Direct from them they wanted $18 per pair + $25 to ship to the UK! But after a search I found a US seller on eBay that were charging $16 for 2 pairs of them, with $8 shipping – that’s more like it! They turned up in about 5 days and I put them on the CPXL and took it for a test drive...

 

Wow, what a difference! It has dramatically changed the feel of the bow post-shot. It sounds totally different, a lot quieter and there is far less vibration - impressive! So much so that I’ve ordered the BowJax string stop enhancer as well, which apparently makes the bow even quieter and is less harsh on the string as it is a softer stop . These are only available stateside but luckily, I have family on holiday with friends in the US at the moment so they have been mailed to them and they are bringing them back for me in a few weeks – result J

So that was the wobbly bits! Now on to the good result!

 On Sunday 18^th November I went down to St David’s College to shoot their annual FITA18. Everything was going well and my shooting was on form. My first dozen was 116 and my name went up on the leader board in first place, which is a new experience J As the day went on I stayed out in front, and going into the final dozen I was 5 points ahead but I had a string of 9’s where I was just outside the 10 ring and lost the advantage – so the archer in 2^nd place closed the gap.

When it came to the results, they read out the 3^rd and 2^nd place scores and awards, and it turns out that I had the exact same score as the other archer – with exactly the same X and 9 count! They had already put all the targets away so awarded a joint 1^st place instead of a shoot off, so I came out of it with a gold medal in joint first place – woohoo! The medal/memento board is looking healthy these days!

The archer that I drew level with is a professional sponsored archer with experience on the pro circuit, and if I had scored just one more point in the final dozen I would have come in ahead. I also beat a few seasoned target archers so I am really happy with the result, it shows that the effort is paying off and my shooting is reaching a respectable level these days in both Field and Target archery.

St Kingsmark's Annual Portsmouth

Well, the indoor season is now well and truly upon us and I have shot my first competition of the season. It was a nice introduction into the season shooting the Gwent County Championships & Open,  a 3 spot Portsmouth round hosted by St Kingsmark Bowmen at Beachley Army Barracks.

I drove down with Mr Bruno and we were shooting the afternoon session. We arrived a little early so had plenty of time to have some food/drink, get our equipment set up and signed in. The hall was absolutely freezing so I was glad I wore the extra layers under my club strip!

 
I had a bit of a shaky start with a couple of wild 9’s but I managed to find the 10 ring eventually, and held a steady pace for the rest of the shoot and finished on 572 which is a new PB, up from 565 that I shot last year (I haven’t scored a Portsmouth round at all in the last year!) . When the final results came in, the top Gwent shooter was in the 560’s and my score was in second place so I came home with a silver medal in the Open. 

I was over the moon with the result and very happy to bring home something shiny! But I was also a little disappointed with 572 as I was hoping to nudge closer to 580. So as I always do, I looked at this as a learning experience to improve my game. I noticed that my shots that were out of the 10 were almost all low hits, 6 o clock outer  10’s/9’s. After watching a video of myself shooting, and some feedback from a coach at the club it seems that I am relaxing my bow arm prematurely. The arm is relaxing and the bow arm dropping before the shot is complete, so I am going to use my practice sessions to work on keeping the bow arm steady and solid, and keep a firm pull into the back wall against this without pulling the arrow into my face which causes clearance issues and erratic arrow flight.

 

Roll on the next one!

 

Going Indoors!

Hi everybody!

As you can see from my previous few posts, I have gotten absolutely soaked through on a few outdoor shoots in a row and it’s getting cold and wet out there. I had one more outdoor round left on my calendar, a Hunter round in March Hare on the 20^th October but I have made the decision to call that one off and go to ground for the winter, it’s time to retire indoors and break out the linecutters to shoot indoor target until the start of the next field season in February next year.

I have my 2315 X7’s which are the largest size legally permitted in FITA indoor competition from last year, so I am going to be using those for the season. They are 31” with heavy 220gn ProPoint Pins and large fletches, optimised for indoor shooting.  The only thing I don’t like about them are the huge plastic SuperNocks. They are cumbersome, chunky and have a poor string fit in my opinion so I got in touch with GoatBoy Archery who do custom work, and Nick was very helpful in machining a dozen inserts for me to glue into the Unibushings to reduce them down to accept regular G-Nocks (my favourites, G nocks or G Pins). I’ve fitted these and they are absolutely perfect, check it out!

I refletched them with large 4” white Bohning Killer Vanes with quite a hefty offset to give them a stabilising spin, and they were ready. I went up to the club last night to try them out and it only took 5 minutes to adjust the rest height for the larger arrow and find a rough sightmark. You can tell the sheer weight of these things (650 grains) as the 20 yard mark for them is the same as my 43 yard mark with my FMJ’s!

I wanted to shoot a scored round to see how the new bow and the newly configured arrows feel so had a look in the target bin, and found an IFAA 5-spot face. I’ve only ever shot the IFAA indoor round once about a year ago and scored 297/300 with 37 X’s so I thought that would be a nice benchmark,  put the target up and started shooting. This is how the round came out after a 5 minute tune and quick sightmark..

I shot a clean 300 with 51 X’s! That was 1 X better than the score that won the WFAA championships last year! It was shot in club conditions and not as much pressure as a tournament, but I now have great confidence in the kit and know that I am capable of a winning score, so I need to work on my mental strength and keep my head in the game, stay focussed and bring it home.

I’ve got a few weeks to tweak and prepare, the first indoor round is a FITA18, the Gwent County Open on November 4^th at St Kingsmark Bowmen, so i’m going to shoot indoor 3 spot exclusively from now on to prepare.

Bring it on!

FITA Welsh & Open Field Championships 2012

The last weekend of September is always the FITA Welsh & Open Field Championships and it was hosted by my club, Pentref Bowmen as usual this year. Being a 2 day FITA event, the shoot was in the usual format of a 24 target unmarked course on the Saturday, followed by the marked distance round on the Sunday.

Everything was tuned nicely on my bow and my sightmarks were good, so I rocked up nice and eager to day 1! I have been shooting IFAA rounds pretty much exclusively for a while, and don’t have a really accurate ranging ‘cheats’ system so the unmarked was going to be a nice challenge J The weather was fairly decent with little wind and mostly cloudy all day, and the course was easy enough to walk with only a few muddy/difficult areas.  I shot quite well with only a few of the longer targets giving me any trouble on the ranging, finishing up on 364, 20 points into Bowman and a 16 point increase on my unmarked PB!

Unfortunately this wasn’t to be repeated a second day! On the way to the club for day 2, the heavens opened – and stayed open all day. It rained relentlessly all day for the full duration of the shoot and through the night, the ground was sodden and very difficult to navigate with mud up over your ankles a common thing. I have to say a big thanks to Tracey Anderson of the GB squad for her loan of a Ziploc bag to keep my sight/scope clear in between targets!  Her shooting was on fire and she had an amazing weekend with some incredible targets, especially 3X’ing  the longest distance in heavy rain. In the end, totally soaked through my so called ‘waterproofs’ I finished on 352 which is 12 points below my PB, but given the conditions and that my PB was shot on a much flatter course in good weather i’ll take that score and be very happy with it J

So all told, I finished with 2 x Bowman level scores and ended on a combined total of 716 which put me in 8^th place overall, 6^th welsh. I had hoped to make the top 5 Welsh and only missed out on it by a handful of points , so it’s within my grasp and there’s always next year!