Well there's always the raffle

Well, I have to say that I did not do myself justice at the Hertfordshire Archery Association Indoor Championship.  515 is not a good score for me.  It's below my average/

There were many reasons for my poor score:

• Long drive to venue
• Cramped venue
• On my own
• Lack of preparation during the week.
• Brain not in gear

And it was the last one that was the biggest problem.  I just couldn't get my brain to focus on what I was doing.  I just aimed and fired.  No thinking whatsoever.  I fired 60 arrows and each one felt different.  I just wanted to shoot my 60 and go home. That is not how we do archery.  I will have to concetnrate on this aspect of my game

The other reasons that I found the comp difficult are a bit more harder to pin down.  I drive 60 odd miles on my own.  The journey was along so rather odd looking and windy country roads.  Couple that with my comp buddy Richard (TheAgeingArcher) not being there (he had shot the previous day so was not there with me. ) I was not really ready for this.  When I sat there waiting for the start I was more nervous than when I was at Telford!

I'm also feeling the decision to cut down on my archery before the comp to be a mistake.  I am concerned that my wrists weren't used to the extra weight on my long rod so my last practice was on Wednesday.  Maybe 4 days is too much of a break before a comp.

The last thing was that I found the venue very cramped.  Now yo might find that odd given the 2020 venues but a lot of the competitors were tripping over each other to get to the shooting line.  The judges table had been placed in equipment line effectively taking up the space for 3-4 of the bosses.  At one point we have archers lining up to approach the shooting line, archers coming back from the shooting line and everything grinding to a halt because we the returning archers were waiting for the archers on the line at full draw to shoot so that the second detail could approach.  But who am I to kick up a fuss?

Next time I'll get it right.

But as always, I met a few more archers, some new faces and lots of jokes were flying.  So all in all a good shoot.  But still one I'd rather forget.

Oh and one last thing ... I won more raffle prizes!!!!