Good, bad, and ugly, I had some of it all. If you have followed the blog the past few months you know how little trigger time I have gotten, and how little practice I have had before really getting committed and starting again here in February. I was fully expecting the FLOP to be a major disaster for me. Most blogs I would hammer down on all the things that went wrong, and I'm not going to deny that things did, oh did they ever! However I saw improvement in quite a few things, and even if my score is going to be about the same as the last 2 majors I shot (Ohio and Bluegrass last year) I'm way ahead of the game, and I can "buff out" some of the errors I had.
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| L to R: Kozy, Me, David, Roy, Drew, Ryan, Les, Ralph, David, Raimondas |
This match was both the hardest, and most enjoyable match I have ever shot. There was distance, swingers with partials, fast swingers, and some pretty tight shots. There were a couple of stages that were pretty straight forward. I had a great squad to shoot with, and this was the first time since the move that I have seen Les and Kozy. Adding to the squad was Limited GM Roy Steadman (and my travel partner for the match) so I had some excellent shooters to watch, and to work with on plans. Aside from the friendship part, great squad, great people to learn from. (2 GM's and 2 Master Class shooters....if you pay attention, and listen, you stand to learn.)
My biggest improvement was attitude. Last year when I'd have a bad stage and melt down, I would never recover from it, at Bluegrass I had a meltdown, and let it fester and carried it for 5 more stages before I righted the ship. In Ohio I had a bad stage and let it carry for 4 stages. You just can't do that. In Florida I shot 11 mini-matches. I had one train wreck of my own making, and I was unhappy, but it was completely forgotten when I got to the next stage, and built a plan based on shooting to slide lock, confidence right after a disaster. That's a baseball closer, or a football defensive back, gotta have a short memory for bad things. When it's all said and done, I'm really happy with this improvement, it's the single biggest thing I could have improved on, and I need to keep it together, remember how it felt, and carry it forward.
So what went wrong? 25 Mikes, and 31 Delta's. That alone tells me I was not focused on my sights because those are remarkably poor hits. Add in 214 Alpha and 81 Charlie, I did not have the A/C ratio I need, and expect. To compare it, Les had 277 Alpha, 64 Charlie, 6 Delta, and 4 Mike, and he felt the D/M were too high. That's a lot of points he had on me, and granted he will likely win the Production Division, that level of points is where I want to be. I need to be more accurate.
Accuracy Breakdown:
Why did I struggle? The most obvious reason is that I did not see my sights. The truth is there were some stages I felt like I had the front sight, the others I was looking beyond the front sight to the target, and I never saw the sights rise, or settle. That's an embarrassing admission, but when I breakdown my video, I remember what I saw, so I'm going to try to notate it, and see what is in common.
Swingers. I cant tell you the last time I practiced them. I had some luck, but I had a ton of struggles with the speed, and the fact that many were obscured, so there were very brief points where you could see them and hit. I had an awful lot of mikes on swingers.
Distance. There was some serious distance here, on Stage 6, where I started I had to run the stage twice. Second shooter, I had some mag issues, but I took some time and respect 2 half low targets in the sun, and had A/C and A/C on my first run. Thankfully there was a re-shoot because of no pasting, and I saved about 25 seconds on the reshoot, but I did not respect those same targets and ended up with 4 mikes. That's a huge swing, but in my haste to go fast, I never saw my sights, and I remember never seeing my sights come back down. I looked past the sight to the target.
Fixable:
I think my accuracy issue is totally fixable. It's not just going to go away, but dry fire, and live trigger time, with a focus on fundamentals, and it will fix itself. One of my goals was to shoot 90% points in a major match this year, in Florida I shot 76% points before penalty, and only 60% after. That's pretty awful. Last spring, early summer, when I was at my best, I was shooting 85%-90% points in a few club matches, so I know I can get back to that level of accuracy thru practice. Now it's just a matter of doing that, dry fire focusing on my sights and trigger control, shooting groups in live fire, and getting used to the recoil of my gun again.
Marksmanship is something I've worked on before, so I'm confident in my ability to get it back up to shape, I've done it, I know what and how to do it again. Now it's just a matter of my living up to my commitment and actually doing it.
Overall:
I made a comment that my passion for the sport was renewed because of the people I shot with. Seeing Les and Kozy brought all that back again. I had so much fun. If I was shooting with those guys still, I would never have wanted to try 3-Gun this year. That's how much fun it was, and how much I don't want to suck next time. I'm not saying I feel obligated to do well, but those guys invested an awful lot of time into working with me, and I did not show much for that investment this weekend. Next time out I want to show 'em that their investment was worth it. No, that's not the main reason, I want to do it for me, but every little bit of motivation helps.
A few months until I see 'em again, and we're shooting several major's together this year, I won't go as long without seeing 'em again. I really need to stay on self-motivation, and of course shooting with Linda helps too. It's early in the game, really just two weeks since I affirmed my commitment, and got back on the horse. That's a good start, and FLOP was a good way for me to see how far my overall performance has degraded, and give me a place to start working.
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| L to R: Myself, Roy, Kozy, & Les, post match, leaving Frostproof. |
I'm going to get busy working on it, and go. I'm so excited to be practicing again, and it's fun again, I don't see it as work. I'm doing it because I love it.
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