Utter disaster.
Seeing this on your screen after weeks of effort is not a comforting sight, in case you were wondering….
So what went wrong? I’m not entirely sure. My mental focus was not the best on the day. I didn’t get 20-odd minutes to stand there in kit with rifle off to one side to warm up, but I don’t think that would have made a huge difference. The position felt loose, though I was able to get into it reasonably well. The shot routine was far too slow and I wound up dropping chunks of it in the last two strings. The left elbow placement was constantly fiddly and felt like it was adding to motion during the shot routine (which adds to the sway) rather than taking it away. And the quality of the hold was not the best at all, but that’s been the case all the time of late because of the jacket – this time it felt worse, but only slightly so. Not 30-points-off-my-average worse by any means.
Looking at it another way, I’ve learnt that my core strength is like a little girl’s, my mental training needs beefing up, I’ve found the dross cluttering up my shot routine, and I’ve shown I *can* get off ten decent shots in six minutes (that last string) without significant disasters, even if the hold’s a bit loose. So that’s not a horrible silver lining, even if the match itself was classed as “character building”.
Spoke with Matt afterwards and we went through what worked and what didn’t; and we have the guts of a plan to go after what didn’t, though he’s warned that until the weight goes down and the new jacket gets here, some things just aren’t going to get any better. So there may be more character building in the future 🙁 Which sucks, because the Nationals are in a fortnight.
Gah.