Shooting Like a Caffeinated Pomeranian

I've learned a few things this weekend shooting the FAA Indoor Championships.

-- Decongestants to avoid trouble with boogers are NOT worth the jitteriness and shakiness. Not to mention the inability to actually hold and follow-through on the shot.
-- Cold medicine effects can still be felt the next day and make the target dance around.
-- Shooting immediately after severe illness also makes the target move a whole lot more.

Apparently my form generally held throughout the two rounds I shot today though, at least that's what one of the coaches at Newberry told me. Aside from a shaky bow-hand and being a little off-beat in my timing, most of my form was pretty solid as far as setting up the shot, transferring, holding, expanding, and following through went. My biggest problem was the fact that I couldn't hold my hand steady enough... so I usually did hit what I aimed at, just that I wasn't always aiming where I was supposed to.

I still had an awesome time with friends even if I looked (and felt) like roadkill on Friday evening and shot like a caffeinated, doped-up Pomeranian all weekend.

TBoF Charity Shoot 2011

Not a shoot I trained for at all but generally was able to succeed in using a modified version of the B.E.S.T. (Biomechanically Efficient Shooting Technique) designed by Olympic archery coach Kisik Lee. I took 2nd in the women's longbow division with a 280/400 although I did tie with someone who had the same score as I did, just that I had more 10s than she did. If they did it by misses, she would've taken 2nd and I would've taken 3rd but I was just glad that I shot as well as I did given that several of the shots were rather unfriendly to the mostly Olympic style shooter.

Sometimes Cool Stuff Happens With Witnesses

This was done at 18 meters on the 40 cm target, which are the parameters for the NAA portion of the State Indoor shoot coming up at the end of the month. Usually I don't have human witnesses but today I had a few, including someone who wasn't afraid of my purple camera! It's cool knowing that I can have the occasional run of good rounds where I can actually just about keep up with a reasonably good Olympic archer. It was a desperately needed practice session after wiping out my brains on research.

Hammer Curl Still

It's amusing what I'll do when I get bored of waiting for the artificial neural network to get trained on the evapotranspiration data... and my reading comprehension is about par with that of a fermented rutabaga filled with maggots.

Ultra-Rare Event

Nothing quite compares to being rudely awakened by some neighborhood . Not a particularly common occurrence here when it's not football season but when it does, it leaves me more than a bit irked. So while trying to settle back down into sleep, I cleaned out the camera and this is what I found. This was with the 42 lb walnut longbow with my IKAC/TBoF arrows at 18 meters. This is far rarer with wooden arrows than it is with carbons. If this were a regular occurrence, I'd be extremely ecstatic.

And now hopefully I can get back to sleep.

Boom!

Self-explanatory. R took me to the gun range just south of my place and crash-coursed me on the use of hand-guns. I still prefer the quietness and comfort of my bow but I certainly put a good handful of holes through the paper targets!

Wicker-Woman 2010

This year, we had a Wicker Woman instead of a Wicker Man. At first we thought the Wicker Man had an afro but turned out this year we had a female wicker entity. Note to self: loaded utility belt under shirt = unflattering shot.

And now back to work on trying to get myself to be less squishy! Now if I can just train R to actually walk with me continuously at a REASONABLE pace at least 1 km at a time and/or actually spot me while lifting (but first I need to get him to even step into the gym with me). Thank goodness the holiday season is finally over...