This is a pretty busy span of shooting for me. Four matches and a class in 12 days, with another class on day 14, toss in some live fire practice as well, and I have a lot of ammo going down range. Add dry fire, and there has not been a day where I am not doing something to improve.
This is the home stretch, including last night, I make it 9 possible classifier's until the completion of "Plan B". There have been times where I was getting discouraged, and felt like there was no way I could make it, or that we should just start buying Les ammo, but with 9 runs to go, this really has become do or die time, where each classifier matters. I need 6 runs of 60% or better. This is not an unreasonable expectation, although I hear the classifier for this weekend is El Strong And Weak Pres which is not going to be something I'm comfortable doing, and is going to be something I'll struggle with. That does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Match Scores
Stage 1 Holdup:
I started off pretty cold, 3 misses, low points, and kind of slow. In watching the video, I'm seeing some occasional flinch, and I think that is starting to become a problem for me, so I'll have to address that again in practice. It's strange how it comes and goes, but the only thing to do is deal with it. The stage build did not go quite as planned, as I ran past the 2nd position into the 3rd position and was able to clean the 2nd position targets. In general, I think I just had issues seeing my front sights.
Stage 2 Do The Math:
Another poor run, 4 mikes, and you can see some flinch, and very slow plan. At this point I was really struggling to see my front sight. No excuses, but I picked up my front sight much better at Pine Tree, the range there seems brighter than at Alpha. Since I've picked up my front sight at Alpha before, I know I can do it, but I probably need more prep time before the match. This was the first time I had to run people as an R.O. before I shot. I had a lot going on in my head when I ran.
Stage 3: CM 06-03 Can You Count:
With everything that had gone on earlier, I could have completely cracked, and shot this poorly. That's been my history. To me, it was obvious that I did not clear my head between the first two stages, and I was still judging myself, and not keeping clear to just shoot the second stage. I've been begging to run this classifier for a couple of months, so this was my big chance. Les made the comment that "If you want your B card, you don't want to run this." I'm not sure what convinced him to go with this stage, but I suspect Terry had something to do with it. At the short distance, it's all about a fast draw, fast reload, and fast shots, all while being 100% accurate. I got the accurate part down, 20 shots, 20 Alpha. My speed 9.36 seconds was just good enough, and my hit factor of 10.68 according to Classifer Calc is good enough for about a 64%, or "B" run! Challenge conquered! This stage was 4th in Production, and 7th Overall. What the video does not show, is that I almost DQ'd on the stage, between strings, I started to holster with the hammer down, and the RO stopped me, and I de-cocked. Had he not stopped me, instant DQ. Lesson here is safety is the most important thing, and even though I'm shooting, my head was not in the "right" place. That one won't happen ever again.
Stage 4: One Way Or The Other
This ended up being my best longer course of the night. Slower than I would have liked, some extra shots, but no mikes, and no flinches. This is how I should be running more often than not, and the idea is not to make those mistakes in early stages again. After I shot, I grabbed the timer, and ran the rest of the squad to get some more experience on the R.O. side of the game. This is actually the way I'd like to R.O., after I shoot.
Summary:
I think my continued early struggles simply means I need to prep better at home before the match. Get in my 30-40 minutes of dry fire before I leave for the match, get my head wrapped around my sights, know what I'm looking at, and go from there. This is not something new for me, and one of the things that has had me saying that I need to shoot a complete match, and start off well. After The WIIT, I know I am capable of doing just that, but I also know what I did before I left to shoot, and the dry fire practice I put in, so when I got there, I knew exactly what I wanted to see.
I can feel the rounding off of my game I need to do, clean up just a couple of little things and it'll help both my overall accuracy and speed. I need to keep working, no off days for right now, and matches are not practice. This means Sunday will be a match, and 30 minutes of dry fire later in the day. I've got two 60% classifier's on the books, and that does not include the lost 82% run from The WIIT. Problem is one will fall off, so I need to start stringing together more of these. This goal of hitting "B" by the April USPSA classification run is very possible, but now it's entirely up to me.
Challenge accepted.
Full Match Video:
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