Something has to give....

Hi all,

Here we are again at the beginning of another season and I have come to the sad conclusion that I am going to have to stop shooting bare bow for as long as I am captaining our summer league team. I just cannot shoot two different styles well and as I have made a commitment to the league team that will have to take precedence over my bare bow aspirations.  

 I know there are lots of people who shoot more than one style but how many of them can honestly say they are shooting both as well as the could, I was finding myself using the corner of my mouth, where I anchor for bare bow when I was shooting target when I should be under my jaw. I am going to shoot bare bow but it is going to have to wait until I can either pass on the summer league hat or until the team is at a point where my score is not so important, so I have  anew goal....get the summer league team up to scratch.

We have a problem with target archery at Noak Hill that I think I have mentioned before, unfortunatly it is also one of our greatest assets, we have our own record status ground that we can use from an hour after dawn till and hour before dusk 365 days of the year. "Big problem!" I hear you all shout, we should try only having a field for one or two day a week, when everyone wants to shoot at the same time and there is our catch 22. Because we can use the club at any time people are not tied shooting at set times and so they come whenever the can/want to. I see other clubs in the area with a busy shooting line with 20 or 30 people on a Sunday morning and then I look at us with  five or six archers on the line, the difference is that there will be the same number almost everyday of the week and field big enough for two independent shooing areas with a safety line in the middle we don't all have to shoot at the same time, which again splits us up. This is not a huge problem for established members as they tend to come over in the same group on the same day. For beginners it can be more of a problem as once they have finished their course passed their assessment and paid their membership they are left to their own devises, don't get me wrong we have lots of people ho are more than willing to give help and advice. But with on set shooting schedule they do tend to end up just shooting at a boss with no real aim other than shooting.

So we are going to try and get back to a regular Sunday shoot, using rounds that have several options for distance we will be able to accommodate anyone who wants to shoot and  start giving some direction to their shooting. The initial aim will be for archers to work up through their classifications and we will also have the odd week when we do not shoot a round but just spend the time working on good shooting maybe by pairing up a novice/improving archer with a more experience archer. I am also playing about with the idea of a sort of informal mentor type set up where each new member will have a go to person who will help them with their progression, this will I hope stop the old problem of being told six different thing by six different people. It will also mean that if you see a novice doing something not quite right you can tell their mentor and then they can deal with it with them.

So that is where I am going this season hopfuly I will be able to report back on good progress as we go forwards, but time will tell.

 

First class unstableised

Yes folks I did it, yesterday I managed to shoot a 706 albion without the long rod, and I still have one and a half weeks to go before I put it back on, so I might even equal my PB of 752. I am still really feeling like it is hard work for my bow arm by the end of the round which is another thing to keep an eye on when I put the long rod back on. This is also effecting my score at 50 yards, the last round I had 267 at 60 but only 256 at 50 and with the long rod on I almost always beat my 60yrd score at 50.
I started the round thinking that I would really pay attention to my release after it had been pointed out how inconsistent it had become, but as I shot things went from bad to worse. The more I tried to keep my release clean the bigger my groups got. By the last end I had given up and just shot normally and of course everything came right back. I carried on for the rest of the round and you know how it ended.

What can I say I just love shooting this bow naked....err... the bow not me....hmm

Great weekend

We had a league match against West Essex last Sunday (15th June), after not being able to field a full team  for last months match I was just hoping for a good day and getting five archers on the line so we would have a fighting chance. On the day we did not have the minimum five archers but six! So a good start, four of us were quite experienced with one of the others shooting in their second and one their first ever league match and only the second time they had shot at 80 yards!
The weather was kind with almost no wind, cloud cover to keep the sun off and a comfortable temperature if a little on the cool side. I was shooting with two great guys from West Essex, Brian and Sean and we had a really good time (well I did and think they did too). The long and the short of it was we won by 192 points, of our top five scores (you field a team of up to eight and then the top five scores count), the lowest was Peter who was shooting in only his second league match and scored just over 400, I think he came along thinking he was just making up numbers, but on the day without his score we would have lost, so well done Peter. Our other novice Sheila was shooting with such a low poundage bow that even with the sight reversed at 80 yards she was aiming at the tree tops behind the boss, she had the option  to shoot along side at a shorter distance but decided that she would like to shoot with the team so another well done.
As for me after my last round I was not expecting much but ended up on a personal best of 752, it was just one of those days when things clicked (or didn't) for me. Not much else to add except to say that West Essex as usual were great hosts and I expect the tea afterwards was up to their usual high standards, but I had to scoot off straight away and catch a train to Norwich for an urgent meeting in a bar with two old school friends, which led to a really good couple of days during which we ate far too much drank just about enough and did some things that some people think we are getting too old for....but that's a whole other story.

The start of another week and just had another weekend that I did not get to the club to shoot, good reasons though. Went to go to a friends new babies dedication at their church, yarn bombed a library (don't ask ....really just don't) and finally finished sorting out our son's bedroom reshuffle that he wanted. Not going to shoot on Wednesday (my day off in the week) as an engineer is calling to (hopefully) sort out our hot water or lack off, so I thought I would take the opportunity to rub down and re-oil the kitchen work tops. Then this Sunday we are off to Hastings for a nice lunch with my brother in-law, which will be great, really but I won't get down to the club (well if we are heading down late morning/early afternoon on I might be able to get a quick round in). Then it will be another week and I bet there is something that needs doing on the Wednesday and then on the 15th June we have our next league match against West Essex!

Do you ever get the feeling that you are in a time machine and each year some bugger racks up the speed another notch, I swear every year I have less and less time to do more and more things. I cannot believe that in less than two weeks we have our second league match of the season ( that means we will be half way through June, that's six months since my last Birthday, that means it's only six months till my next one......aaaghh!). But so far it has not been too bad a season, even with the elbow thing I have already shot three first class scores this season and set a new personal best. Now I just have to try and get at least five people for each of the remaining league matches this season and try to find some time to get a training schedule to bring on some of our newer members for next season.

Never enough time....

Gosh never enough time as soon as the weather started to improve it's time for the summer league (and guess who said yes to being the team captain) bit of a last minute scramble to put a team together but we managed it and won our first match of the season. We did not take part last year and so were a little out of practice and having only ever shot in 2 league matches myself it was a bit scary being the field captain as well.

Back on the line

Managed to get up the the club on Wednesday and shot nine dozen arrows, and while it was pretty cold I really enjoyed myself. I am using my old 26lb Winstorm Carbons to get back some kind of form and then in a few weeks I will put my 34lb Kaya Tomcats back on (I hope). I was only shooting at 30 meters but to start with my groups....well there were none, but by the end of the session I was starting to get four or five out of the six in a reasonable group. I think next time I get up there I will try a short western and see how I do, I really  must start working towards getting some kind of classification this year and get back out to 80 yards before the summer league starts.

That's about it for now I am going to get a few snaps of my training aid and maybe talk about what can be done off the range to improve form next time (within the next seven days).