Back In The Saddle

Back In The Saddle


Day 1 back on the diet, and I'm in the game again. I made the call to use My Fitness Pal to log again, (ldsundevil827) and I'm off and running. Putting things in perspective, right now, I'm allotted 2170 calories a day, with three exercise days a week. That puts me dropping my first 10 pounds by March 9th, should be easy enough, just need to stay on things, and eat right. I've got this, one day at a time, one meal at a time.

Today is also day 2 of getting ready to shoot again. I hemmed and hawed all January long about a shooting partner, and after some long discussions, Linda and I are going to partner up to shoot and work together. The biggest downside is that it's easy to skip practice, for us to say "let's watch TV" or something like that, and that she is not pushing me. I got a great benefit from working with Dave, because he was an equal, and with Les and Kozy because they were infinitely better than I was, so I had to push myself harder.

The honest truth is that Linda has a lot more potential than I do in USPSA, she's quicker, faster, and has good instincts, so while she may not be where I am today, I think she can rapidly catch up, and surpass me as long as she is committed to working at it. By our teaming to work in 2015, I think that she'll move in that direction, and she'll definitely have me nagging her to go practice. This has meant a deeper investment, a second timer, more targets, and double the ammo. Right now we are committed to a live fire practice 200-250 rounds once a week, and 6 dry fire practices a week, 15-30 minutes per session. We're going to try to work 2 local matches a month, weather permitting, My goal is to earn my "A" card, and get competitive within that division, I'm going to give Linda access to the blog, so she can write as well, and she can put her goals, and track her progress.

Yesterday we worked fundamental skills in dry fire in order to brush the rust off.  Trigger control at Speed was the starter, I was about 1.6 second in my first run thru, by my 3rd set, I was able to hit the par time of 1.2 seconds with pushing it, it was not comfortable, bu that's a good thing. We worked Transition Component Drills, with a 1.6 second par time, and that was a struggle for me, I was in the 1.9 area pushing myself, I know that needs some work, and today at the range I saw it in person. Finally we worked Reload Components, we ran a set of reloads with a 1.6 second par time, and struggled, I think we were around 1.8 seconds. We broke it down to the micro drills, and after a few runs, I had the Burkett Load to the .6 second par time with relative ease, then we ran two sets of the follow up, seat mag, extend and sight picture, and again after a few, I was comfortable with that part at .6 seconds. Then we came put it all back together, and my reloads were around 1.4 seconds, which was a .4 second improvement after starting that way cold. I need more work here, I had to go "robotic" to make sure the cant was right, the mag was out, and everything was right. More repetition here will smooth that out.

Today at the range, we shot some groups at 10 yards, 15 yards, and 25 yards. We worked on some medium transitions, from 10-15, and vice versa with about a 10' spread between them, and we closed out with some Bill Drills.  My 10 yard groups were excellent, my 15 yard groups were decent, and my 25 yard groups took a while to tighten up, I'm going to have to get some video, because I sense a flinch, I ran a good group, but all in the "C" zone left (metric target). On the transition drills, my draw was in the 1.4-1.6 range, with .5 transitions, and that's slow, last spring I was running .38 transitions on those types of distances. Splits were in the .21-.22 range.

Bill Drill was slow, I think I started at 2.79, but the last ones I closed at were in the 2.08 area, with all Alpha's. Draw was the slowest part, and I never got my transitions below .20, which means work, again, last spring/summer my splits were consistently in the .17- .19 area. Again, not perfect, but considering how little work I've done in the last 60-90 days, I saw some progress, I just see 30 days of working the rust out to get back where I was at, and before I can really start pushing hard forward.

Tonight we're going to work some Core USPSA skills, and I'm going to dry fire El Prez, a Plate Rack Drill, Partials, and 5 minutes on One Handed Shooting, before closing with a few more minutes on the Bill Drill. One of Linda's biggest area's of need is picking up the speed, and pulling the trigger faster, for her, some extra focus on things like a Bill Drill should really pay off, for me, they all help, but a little focus on strong and weak hand shooting should be a good thing.