Saturday, March 17, 2007

Almost Asymptoted

I'm now at 46 lbs and 269 fps on my Bowtech Equalizer. I'm also starting to enter the "danger" zone in terms of dry-fire risks with my 225 grain arrow, which is putting me at about 4.89 grains per inch. The standard safe minimum weight is 5 grains per inch, which already incorporates a pretty good cushion, but it's enough to have me want to start using heavier arrows once this batch is nicely munched on. A lot of my compound tournament shooting buddies shoot between 4.6 and 5 grains per inch to maximize arrow speed, but as a traditional archer who cringes at going below 8 or 9 grains per inch and has a habit of shooting 550 grain arrows at a smidgen below 40 lbs, it is a bit unnerving. I guess that's what those stabilizers and other shock absorbing devices are for! While my coach was adjusting my bow, he indicated to me that I'm almost at the limit of what he can crank my bow up to and he hinted that I might want to upgrade to 60 lb limbs if I want to get to even more blistering speeds. I might just take that offer once I build up the strength.

And now time for me to start loading up like a madwoman on vitamins, fruits, and veggies. My coach looked like he took the equivalent of a sophomore (masochist track EE) courseload at Caltech (ACM 95, EE/CS 51, Math 2, Phys 12, EE 20), didn't eat for a few days, and then got locked up for a few more days in an organic chemistry lab... and he mentioned something about his boss having mono and someone in his family having the flu. Go figure -- with my luck, I probably picked up some viable germs from him when he corrected my shooting form today.

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