Indoor Archery Season, 1995-1996
This was quite a good season; there were a couple of disappointments, but
overall, the consistency was quite good, and I set a few new personal bests
and Scottish Records.
- Dunstable Open Portsmouth, 15th October
- First, by only two golds. Still, if I hadn't shot the eights, I
would have won by two points. Not a bad start to the season.
- Elswood Bottle Shoot (25m Fita), 29th October
- A bit of déja-vu here; I spent the day before putting up a fence
in the garden, which probably had some affect on the score (I did some
heavy work in the garden before the Braintree Stafford in April, with
similar results). I still managed to shoot a personal best, and came
first.
- Hawks A.C. Vegas, 29th October
- Another personal best (which wasn't surprising, since it was the first
Vegas I've shot), and Scottish
Record (which also wasn't surprising, since nobody had claimed it
before!). I came fifth, which wasn't bad, considering the
quality of the competition.
- Green Dragon 500, 12th November
- A poor performance, I just couldn't seem to shoot any nice shots. An
especially bad last dozen left me in fourth place.
- Hertfordshire Championships (Fita 18m),
26th November
- Just don't ask...one of `those' mornings. I wasn't shooting too badly, I
just kept hitting nines instead of tens. I was second in my
session, but my overall position won't have been that good (results
haven't arrived yet).
- Bedfordshire Championships (Fita 25m),
26th November
- A nose-bleed half way through the round meant that I shot a couple of
dozen with cotton wool stuffed up my nose. It didn't help, but I made up
for the poor performance in the morning by shooting a new
Scottish Record, and placing
first equal (there was an exact draw between myself and Gary
Hardinges on score, hits, tens, nines and eights, so the prize was
split).
- Clophill A.C. (Double Portsmouth), 10th December
- Freezing fog and a late departure meant that I almost didn't make it to
this tournament, and after the first session I was almost wishing that I
hadn't. The cold in the hall affected everyone, and I shot my worst score
of the season to take third place in the single round. The
second session was better, I shot the best score of the day to take
first place in the double round.
- Compound Indoor Champs (Fita 18), 17th December
- Worse than expected traffic made another competition at which I only just
arrived on time, and took quite a while to calm down. This competition
was shot on a three-spot face, and I found that my groups on two of the
targets were consistently tight, but the third was poor. Overall, I could
only struggle into third place in the gent's recurve section.
- Kestrels A.C. (Worcester), 4th February
- The cold weather and 'flu meant that I had had rather less practice than
usual in the preceding month, but I managed to shoot an acceptable score
to take first place, and two
Scottish records (because nobody
had claimed them before!).
- Scottish Indoor Championships (Fita 18m), 25th February
- Every time I have been to this competition, something has gone wrong, and
this year was no exception. This time it was equipment; when I tightened
up my V-bar, the thread on the extender sheared. I managed to get the
thread out of the bow bushing, and bought a new extender at the shop
which was present, but I couldn't free my V-bar from the old extender. I
shot with a borrowed V-bar, which sounded tinny, felt bad, and at the end
of the competition the thread from one of my rods got stuck in it.
Needless to say, I was somewhat stressed out by all of this, and shot my
worst Fita 18 of the year, coming third and missing the
selection for the Scottish indoor team by one point.
- British Indoor Championships (Fita 18m), 17th March
- This competition went surprisingly well, considering that I added 1.5
inches to my draw length and changed from ACE 520s to ACE 470s the
previous week. I came seventh, just beating my previous
personal best, and it could have been even better if I hadn't been
getting tired from holding too long at the end.
Last modified on 12th February 2004 by angus@harlequin.com