Thursday 10th February 2011

Todays run time

200m: 37s

1.4km 6m 59s

@ SOPA

Cloudy for most part, some rain, no wind, turned brighter and warmer.

3x 6 arrow ends @ 90m, 122cm, unscored

2x 36 arrow rounds @ 90m, 122cm, scored

3x 6 arrow ends @ 70m, 122cm unscored

2x 36 arrow rounds @ 70m, 122cm scored.

Total 180.

After my two scored 90m rounds, Ricci came along and gave me a little coaching on changing my elbow position to help with faster better expansion, and also how I could strengthen my bow arm with weights.  I tried to use the change in the 70m rounds, which, I think worked when I managed to do it, so once again it's back to habit breaking to change to new technique.  It isn't actually different to what I've been telling people, but rather I've never really had anyone who was able to provide me the feedback I needed to make it work for me.

For the 90m rounds, I scored a 228 and a 257, while with the 70m rounds, I scored a 296 and 298 for a practice QRE score of 594, which, while isn't a new PB, is consistent in itself and high scoring, so I was pretty happy with that.

I still need to improve my 90m but that will come in due course.

Tuesday 8th February 2011

Todays lap times:

1.4km - 6m 54s

2.35km - 11m 45s

@ St Pauls

Started overcast, still, turned sunny with breezes

2x 6 arrow ends @ 90m, 122cm, unscored

3x 36 arrow rounds @ 90m, 122cm, scored

4x 6 arrow ends @ 90m, 122cm unscored.

Total 144.

I shot a light-ish day of shooting, working on trying to bring some kind of consistency to my 90m shooting.  Towards the end, I settled my hand position much better but was tired from shooting and so my releases were going badly.

Score wise I put down a 258, 238 and 235 for the three rounds, with a top scored end of 53 (in the 235 round) and lowest score end of 27 (also in the 235 round).  Around average really for me.

Monday 7th February 2011

I decided that today should be a rest day after last week's shooting efforts.  While I'd like to continue to put down large numbers of arrows weekly, I need to slowly work it up, so this week I would expect to shoot less, but hope for better quality of the arrows I shoot.

I did a block and 3/4ths which equals to 2.35km according to Google maps, in 12min 29sec, still a good two minuites and so (really three minutes) off the pace, but it's a half decent start to work on.  I paced myself, I probably could go a bit faster but I am not yet sure how to pace myself faster without burning out quickly.  Something to work on over time I'm sure.

Today's run times. 6th February 2011

1:56
1:56
46s

I made a shared google calendar
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AheZng5fglAkdFVmU0stYlFmbnFzZ2J6UmlQRkRQTlE&hl=en&authkey=CJ-Op-IM

Sunday 6th February 2011

@ Sydney Bowmen

Hot, sunny to start, cloud cover later turning gusty.

3x 6 arrow ends @ 60m 122cm unscored warmup

Canberra round

Total 108

Shot the invitational teams event at Sydney Bowmen today.  4 person teams shooting the round with agglomerate scores for placing.

Putting the team scores aside, I scored much better than I expected, considering that by the end of the practice and round itself I had done 924 arrows this week, a monsterous number for me.  I did struggle all day in being able to have good releases, and had immense difficulty in bringing my shoulder around and using my back.  Once the wind came up at 40m, it was real fight to put arrows down cleanly.

Score wise, I put in a solid 796, pretty much around my usual envelope (800, 799, 774, being the last few I've shot).   In terms of the breakdown of score

60m: 258 with 15 gold

50m: 261 with 17 gold

40m: 277 with 28 gold.

Looking at it from a 'gold' perspective, half my arrows in gold at 60m, around half at 50m, nearly all at 40m.

The points to be gained really do come down to my 60 and 50m distances, being always very close in score.

It was a solid day of shooting anyway.  Lets see how I manage to recover for another week ahead.

Saturday 5th February 2011

@ SOPA
Very hot, sunny, bright, some light winds at times.

1x 3 arrow end @ 30m, 80cm unscored unofficial warmup
3x 3 arrow ends @ 30m, 80cm unscored official practice
12x 3 arrow ends @ 30m, 80cm scored Club League
6x 6 arrow ends @ 30m, 80cm scored.

Total 84 arrows.

It was pretty hot today, so hot that the club event was cancelled after the first session, apparently two people were suffering heatstroke and their thermometer was reading 40°C. I shot pretty poorly today, and it felt like every shot I took was doing SPT. My hold times were too long and I had issues in expanding properly today, along with clean releases. Score wise, it was okay, a 329.

Afterwards when the event had been called off, we could still shoot, so I proceeded to continue, and put down a solid 333.

The scoresheet from the club round.
Session: 1 ( FITA 80cm at 30 metres )

1 = 27 27

2 = 27 54

3 = 26 80

4 = 29 109

5 = 27 136

6 = 25 161

7 = 29 190

8 = 30 220

9 = 27 247

10 = 27 274

11 = 27 301

12 = 28 329

Its been a long week of shooting and I may be suffering the fatigue of it, will have to see how I manage in the club event tomorrow at Sydney Bowmen, being a single Canberra. The weather is predicted to be cooler with winds and potential rain also.

Today's run times.

Same routine as before.
2min 3s
1min 57s
57s

Staying around the same.

One thing that is niggling me is, I know everyone's body types are different, and same for muscle. While I'm sure people will say that, everyone can be trained to run these distances in these times, a part of me disagrees. Its like saying, get a fit and healthy 150kg person, and you'd expect them to be able to sprint the 100m in 10 seconds, just because it's train-able.... To me, certain body types are more suited to certain activities etc. Over the years, I have come to realise that I'm much better at bursts of activity rather than sustained activity, and this is something I have noticed also from my Kendo experience, and I have a decent recovery inbetween (decent, not fabulous). I'd rather see a fitness testing methodology that can take into account these measures instead of a simple one-size-fits-all scenario. Of course, that makes life much harder for some people out there, so until that day, I'll just have to keep running or something.