More pictures came in courtesy of one of my fellow archers, both are from the qualification matches.

 

Inaugural Sunshine State Collegiate Cup 2013

 

Me on the line... for some reason I always take longer than the rest of my fellow bare-bows. Then again, I do need to let the lactic acid out and I need to do my best Raven (from the Teen Titans) impression between shots. The rest of my pictures can be found HERE

 

Archers of UF who shot at the Sunshine State Collegiate Cup. We had quite the impressive barebow contingent but we had all divisions represented -- barebow, Olympic recurve, compound freestyle, and compound bowhunter. 

 All of our collegiate archers, including the team from Georgia State University and Georgia Tech. Our guests represented all divisions but barebow.

 I took the gold medal for barebow as well as finishing the 72 arrow qualifying round in first place. It was a pretty close squeaker but I managed to pull it off somehow!

Match-Play Shooter of the Year 2013-Apr-14

Click on here for the full suite of pictures

 This was the one picture of me throughout the shoot, courtesy of Coach A, who was my external brain and reminded me of WHY I was having some shooting issues. It was quite the shoot and I had great company in the form of an older gentleman who also embraced barebow archery, even if his arrows kept threatening to tickle my nose! Now that Coach A has helped me trouble-shoot, I should be in THAT much better shape for Sunshine Cup, Gator Cup, and the Sunshine State Games!

USCA Indoors 2013 Booty

I think this is very self-explanatory.

Forgot to mention USCA...

USCA Indoors 2013

The pictures on the link should explain *everything*...

NFAA SE Indoor Sectional and FAA Indoors 2013

Here's the full suite of pictures...
http://s1281.photobucket.com/user/GuenhwyvarAnCrosaire/library/FAA%20Indoors%20and%20NFAA%20SE%20Sectional%202013

Apparently I got to be a trail-blazer in setting the SE Sectional record for women's longbow even though I didn't shoot particularly well when I hit the wall. This was in the beginning of March, by the way. It's just been a while since I've last gotten around to do any blogging.

I've also been training for Gator Cup as well as the slim possibility of shooting the USIAC Outdoors in Utah next month. I was a bit disappointed to find out that USIAC puts barebow at only 50 meters instead of 70 meters, but Gator Cup this year will be a 4-distance FITA round with eliminations at 70 meters. Yes!!! Granted... I'll also be doing the equivalent of showing up to a gun fight with a pair of scimitars, but the real fun is seeing friends and just seeing how much damage *I* can do!

 This was at 50 meters during rather chaotic wind conditions, although the pre-dominant wind was from the west. Every now and then though the wind would swirl randomly, typically AFTER I release. If I can do this (or better) consistently, I'm in great shape for USIAC and the 50 meter portion of the FITA round, although the FITA round will involve an 80 cm target face and probably the little 6-ringer.

 

 Preparing to shoot at 70 meters. I'm still lugging around about 23% body fat (trying for the 13-16% range, definitely no more than 18% but unfortunately will have to keep it above 12% to avoid risking Nasty Things (tm)... female biology can suck so badly especially when it comes to metabolic function and wasting resources on building up useless stuff instead of muscles) and nowhere near enough muscle, but at least I can run again even if I still can't quite keep up with the ROTC Marines or Army or Navy kids yet. I have yet to see any of the Air Force kids but if I can keep up with the Marines and/or pass them up on sprints, I'll be extremely happy! I should also be looking a lot better once I can fully implement a better optimized hypertrophy training program!

 Zoom-in of the 70 and 90 meter targets. And yes, I actually had some fun at 90 meters just because I could and wanted to see what would happen... besides, I think two of my favorite Olympic archers planted the little bug in my mind after watching them make it look like THIS should be a standard distance for everyone, including barebows with wooden arrows!

 

The un-zoomed out view of 70 and 90 meter targets. It's kinda tiny. It actually doesn't look THAT bad but my camera does distort some imagery!

 The second (and final) round at 90 meters. My first round had my arrows landing in a nice pile about 10-12 meters short of the target. This round, I was able to get 7/9 actually on the target somewhere. I broke one and another came a little bit short because I was still in the process of guessing. It's NOT a linear function by the way.

I also trained at my favorite (and most commonly used) distance -- 70 meters. If I can do this consistently in competition, I'd be in GREAT shape. Granted, I won't be keeping up with the likes of Khatuna Lorig or Crispin Duenas or Lee Ford-Faherty but it'll be fun just letting folks know that a longbow can do some serious damage to inner target rings at long distances! And who says barebows have to be relegated to 3D or maybe the occasional field round?

I'm still surprised at how few barebow archers participate in target events and how there's almost this strong discouragement from doing so or trying to rise above the mediocrity that seems to prevail in a lot of the barebow, particularly the traditional, circles.