Dilimba...

Des

Supporter
Supporter
As the weather has been pretty good for the past week or so, i've managed to shoot quite a lot. 650 arrows this week, shooting every morning and Tuesday evening. Started getting used to the regular early mornings now, even waking up at 5am a few times just before my alarm goes off. If I leave the house at 6am and get to the field for 6:30 it's just about light enough to see the targets.

Decided to change the points in my X10's from 100gr tungstens to 120gr steels last weekend. As the arrows were slightly on the stiff side and with the extra speed I hoped this might improve the groups a bit. So Monday morning's practice as making sure that my 90m sight mark was ok, which it was, only slightly lower than before. Groups wise it did seem slightly better. Recent 100y and 90m shooting hadn't been great anyway so any sign of groups was encouraging.

Tuesday morning it was 70m. This did seem to feel better than it had and the groups seemed to be good. Scored a 720 shooting 9 arrow ends



Really pleased with that. It's probably the most comfortable i've felt since shooting regularly again.

With the longer distance sight marks sorted, it's been mostly 50m on an 80cm face for the rest of the week. I bought a 100m measuring tape on bay so I don't have to pace the distance out. It's a punishing distance for me, always has been. Of all the distances it's the one that I usually drop the most points at, so I wanted to shoot it as much as possible before Sundays county match against Leicestershire & Rutland.

Shooting this morning, again 50m, was really hard work and I felt pretty frustrated with the shots and lack of consistent groups. Putting it context, i'm shooting 10 arrow ends at a faster than tournament pace, so i'm likely to get tired. But I guess I was hoping to see and feel more of an improvement by now, having been back and shooting very regularly for over a month. It occurred to me this morning that the issue could actually be my limbs. I mean my bow limbs, as much as my out of practice fast approaching forty arms and legs.

Something that Dan Heaton said a few weeks ago has been stuck in my head a bit. Chatting to him at Chiltern a few Saturdays ago, as he's looking at getting some MK Vera limbs. Tom Barber gave him some advice about them saying they're a fantastic limb when you're shooting well, but they will really punish a bad shoot. Meaning they're very unforgiving. Now, I might be wrong but, an unforgiving limb is more than likely to be one that the archer finds difficult to maintain full control over. Modern limbs now are all faster than ever and made of crazy materials etc, and i'm wondering if mu 42lb EX Primes are simply too much for me. I certainly don't have full control at the moment.

When I first started shooting the Primes they felt really great, fast and positive but I knew they would take a bit of getting used to. I think i've now come to the realisation just this morning that i'm only going to get used to them if I shoot even more arrows daily and maybe evening do extra training on top. Realistically that isn't going to happen and i'm not sure that I want to do that. Having really enjoyed shooting again i've been thinking that next year it might be possible to shoot 200 arrows a day if I get to the field for 6am when it's light enough, and even shoot for an hour after work some days. But that might also depends on what else is going on in life.

After 130 arrows this morning and with slightly aching arms and shoulders, I swapped and shot my 42lb Petron limbs for the last 10 arrows? and shot the best group of 10 arrows at 50m that I can remember, certainly better than anything else this week. OK the groups was nearly 2 feet lower, but still! They were noticeably lighter to pull, noticeably smoother and lighter at the back end through the clicker, and the bow sounded much much quieter than before.

I'm going to shoot the FITA on Sunday with the Prime limbs. I have to now as i've spent the last week getting sight marks and i've also made the arrows heavier. But I know that if I did shoot the Petron's I would get a better score if I had time to get sight marks. It's now knowing what to do going forward. Doesn't seem like there's any point in shooting the Prime limbs indoors, as i'm not likely to shoot enough to be able to handle them fully. But saying that it's only 3 arrow ends and others seem to manage them ok and shoot well. Or do I sell them, get some 44lb Petrons for next summer and shoot the 42lb limbs as they are through the indoor season?? Comfortable, smooth and reliable. It's a di-limba... get it? :lookaroun

I've been reading back through a lot of my old blog posts recently. Apart from cringing at my terrible grammar and spelling and getting past the fact that it does indeed sound like a student wrote it (Ian Hannaford's words), it's really great being able to reference back and have that past information there. It's really interesting looking at old pictures of myself shooting and see the difference to now where i've change so much of my form. It's also a reminder that it took me a long time and a lot of patience to achieve some of the goals that I wanted too.

Looking forward to shooting indoors. Not entirely sure what my routine will be yet. Likely to shoot either with Duston or Targetcraft on Tuesday evenings, Duston on Thursday evenings and Targetcraft on Fridays especially before a shoot.
 

Vagabond

New member
Nice blog.
Being torn between the Primes & Petron must leave you in limb-o :duh:
Sorry, couldn't resist!

Richo Arena this year?

V
 

Des

Supporter
Supporter
Hi Vagabond.

Yep, i've sent me entry in for the early session so intending to make it this year!

Based on how the shoot went yesterday, the Primes could be soon 'EX's' haha. But i'm not sure yet!

Des
 
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