IoM - 3rd and 4th April 2010

Operation NotMakeTitofSelf was a comprehensive failure. My rifle was borked, and would only fire about one time in three. This is extremely debilitating, as you effectively have to shoot three matches to get one in paper. In fact, I only got fifty match shots on paper on sunday. It really was a disaster. I spent monday on the range though, and the rifle is fixed. Shot a match to confirm, and in very tricky winds, and with not much concentration and shooting quickly, I managed a 567. I fluffed a good few shots there, so it should have been a good few points better, and that ammo cost me some points as well (I hate using Eley outdoors. It has never performed for me in such a way that I didn't think it cost me points unnecessarily. Lapua and RWS all the way from now on), so in retrospect I was very disappointed with the weekend's results. I suppose focus was the big killer, since I could have happily focused for the duration of a match, but couldn't have done so for three matches a day. The first day was very, very easy, and I don't understand how that wasn't a mid 570s score (I wasn't that comfortable, but it should still have made a decent score, really wasn't a tough day at all). The second day was an unmitigated disaster and there's nothing useful to be drawn from it beyond making sure the rifle works flawlessly before travelling abroad with it. Not the first and not the last time this will happen to someone though, so it's a learning experience. Given the lack of training days available, I'd have been happy to post two scores in the 570s, and monday's training tells me that was only too easy to have done, with a better score possible on the saturday, but now I just have to go home and train and train to hopefully make a better show of myself next time. Since the exams look like falling around the time of the Easter shoot for the next year or two, I may be finished college before I make it back. I'll then be shooting the 3x40 and possibly the air rifle matches as well if that's the case, and making a damn sight better show of myself at the same time. Next week in ECSC should be child's play after the weekend in Sinclair. Now to see whether that turns out to be true...