Gazchap can run the archery session next time

When does your course start?

Good question. They said it was due to start in February and that they'd be back in touch closer to the time, but I've not heard anything yet.

Time for a follow-up. I'd completely forgotten about it.

Did my first record status competition at the weekend, and just signed up for the county competition. I'm so not good enough, but it's amusing
Came 9th out of 11 in my category

Hey, at least you didn't finish 11th! Nice work.

Just had an email about the archery course… it starts at the end of February… on Saturday afternoons, or Monday evenings as a catch up.

I can’t do it thanks to other commitments, so they’re putting me into May’s course which has the lessons on a Tuesday evening instead. This means I’ll have to skip TKD for those evenings but it’s only 6 weeks.

6 weeks to start with, and then it builds...
I have my 4th bow being delivered today. We should probably start an archery thread.

Yeah, I figure that after the 6 weeks beginner sessions on the Tuesdays that they probably move to a more flexible arrangement of having multiple meets per month or something like that, need to ask about that on the course I suppose!

Done! And it all went fantastically... Couldn't have gone better.

Brilliant thread name!

Cheers TheVision!

My bow didn't get delivered today, and it's being returned back to sender without even attempting delivery, for absolutely no reason as far as me or the seller can fathom.

Ah well! Later in the week then I guess

My handicap journey so far...

Archer 1-3 class is club level, Bowman 1-3 class is competition level, then it's Master, Grandmaster and Elite Master, which are all olympic level

Also, there are worse places to spend a Sunday morning...

/
Hello

This seems like awesome progression, and quick too? How is it quantified, out of interest?

Expected progression is to get to archer 3rd class in your first year, so I'm doing pretty good so far!

Each club will have a records officer who you submit your scores to, and each round type and distance has a handicap table associated with each score you get.
The handicap is calculated to be the average of your last 3 scores.

There are a few apps out there that you can record your scores in and it calculates your handicap for you. I use archery scoresheets

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... eryandroid

Which does this sort of stuff.

I did some archery as a kid, and really enjoyed it. But I mean, I was really young (6-8?) and haven’t done any since, apart from one time…

I was on a work day out, the sort of enforced jollity I don’t like very much, and there were all these activities we’re supposed to take part in (clay pigeon shooting, some other stuff, and archery).

As we were all shepherded over to the archery area everyone lined up to take their go. There was one particular ‘gym boi’ who was winning by some margin, but when I took my go I beat his score by a big way. The guy who ran the archery school was making all sorts of praise noises, which was funny, but Gym Boi was pissed.

After we all finished and were ready to move to the next activity, he demanded another go. Worse than before. So he wanted another. Sensing that he was getting very angry, some of the women on my work team start led loudly calling me ‘Girl On Fire’, which I think is a Hunger Games thing, which wound him up more. The angrier he got, the less he could hold his aim.

I was bored of his toxic masculinity and so said it was a fluke and made to move on, when he pretty much ordered me to try again. I did, because honestly it was better to let him win so we could all just get on with the day without this testosterone-laced ridiculousness hanging over everything. So I was handed the bow, took my go and beat my previous score. Cue some hilarity. He got roundly teased and even I had a chuckle then.

There is a lot of bravado in certain elements of the archery community, particularly around the draw weight of your first bow. It uses very different muscles than most things you ordinarily do or train, so if you tell a gym bro who can bench 300lbs that they should start off with a 20lb bow, they will ignore you and suffer.

Same with being out shot by a girl, this is a manly sport for manly men, how dare you be better

This is a brilliant story, Meems! Seeing as less is more, you just need to invent negative practice and you'd accidentally win the olympics with new records, probably.

New bow day, well new second hand bow day!
All stealthy carbon and shit

Almost looks like a weird futuristic musical instrument with that stand.

How much did that run you, if I can ask?

£500.

To buy what you see in the picture new would be about £1500. The is an entry level carbon riser which is aorund £300, the limbs are top tier though, and are £700 by themselves.

I currently shoot 30lb limbs, but that will top out at about 50m with my current setup. If I want to reach 70m then I need to move up and these limbs are 38lb. It's a bigger jump than I wanted to take really, as you are supposed to move up 4lbs at a time, but the deal was too good to miss. I was actually only looking for heavier limbs really... but...

My old bow i'll keep as an indoor/winter bow and set it up accordingly, and this one will be my outdoor and summer bow once I can pull the weight properly.

Triple tournament on Sunday, which is three rounds in a single day. Going to be interesting, it's double the amount of arrows I have ever shot in a day!

Well, that was fun! Up at 7, there at 8... on a sunday...
Started shooting at 9am and finished shooting at 4:30pm. Total arrows shot : 197
That's a long day of shooting. Yesterday evening was just general exhaustion and aching feet, I can feel it in my shoulders this morning though. To put it into context the mass weight of the bow is around 7-8lbs, which you hold outstretched for around 5-10 seconds for each shot, while you pull back on the string, which requires 30lb of force to reach the anchor point on your face. Now do that 200 times

Didn't win any medals and the final results are due in the next few days, I'm expecting to be last or very close to last as everyone else there was better than me by some margin in my category. One guy had to have his target replaced halfway through a round as he had shot out the gold

I did win a Trooper jigsaw and a Mercedes F1 hat in the raffle though (and an easter egg) so it could have been worse.
Also 1 new personal best, 1 matching a previous personal best (which was shot in practice not a competition, so i'm taking that as a new PB), and the other round I was 1 miss away from a PB, so i'm a happy guy. Can't complain at that really!

Some photos:

That looks ace, those photos are reminiscent of the 10 metre air rifle competitions I used to shoot in

Does that netting at the back really stop the arrows if it's needed? It doesn't look like it would!

And it doesn't matter if you come last or not, I was never particularly high up the scoreboards at my 10m compos -- I used to do it just to say I had, and because it was a decent day out! That said, air rifle isn't anywhere near as troublesome on one's arms and shoulders as archery by the sounds of it, so who knows if I'd have felt the same if I was doing that instead

The netting won't stop an arrow shot from a compound bow, but they have magnified scopes and release aids etc... so they shouldn't really miss.
It'll stop a recurve bow arrow usually, but not always. It's more to stop the arrows getting destroyed on the brick wall behind.

Lost loads of points due to not having fat arrows (cutting a line gives you the higher score), so today i'm tuning my bow to work with my cheaper fatter arrows for indoors

Sounds like a fun day Trooper!
Great photos!

Those photos are brilliant, and you look like you are having excellent fun.

Forgot to add, this is what happens as you get tired, lose form, and your arm guard has slipped out of place...

You get bitten by a really short vampire?

Nah, that's where his super-strict instructor whacks him with a stick for being sloppy. *whack* Elbow up! Shoulders back! *whack*

Arm update!



Also, I have gone from this:



To this:



Which i'm sure you will agree is the perfect activity for valentine's night...
I have lots of orange foam to clean up in the morning though.

Looks good to me. Much better than my plan for Valentine's night to try and end up with a bruise on my wrist.

Added 43 points to my PB tonight, so yeah... That worked...

Worse than mid noughties Chelsea, you

Best round ever of 58/60

Portsmouth is a 60cm face, shot from 18m, the 10 zone is 6cm diameter, the x is 3cm diameter (but still only counts as 10 points, you use the x count for tiebreakers)

527 ex 600 is pretty fuckin' good! Nice one.

Has anyone tried launching a 20cm diameter arrow? That would be effective. And turn some heads.

Surprisingly enough, there are regulations for how thick your arrows can be.
Largest allowed is 23/64th of an inch, mine are 20/64th


That's the largest arrow made back in the day, which led to regulations being introduced. 5/8ths of an inch

Very girthy!

It would make your eyes water as it went in.

County championship on Sunday, if I can shoot my best I should be solid mid table...

527 is my PB on this size and distance, and I got 517 tonight

508, so not awful, I was hoping for 520 though!
Consistency was all over the shop, lost about 25 points on 3 crap ends

I assume it's like 10m air rifle comps where you're timed? Not for each shot (except in the case of Olympic-style finals in air rifle) but like, you have 120 minutes to take 60 shots, that kinda thing?

I always found when I was doing air rifle that I started to get fatigued around halfway through, so I used to sit down and take a 5 minute break before getting up to carry on, and I'd still have plenty of time to finish the detail.

I can only assume that the fatigue is worse with archery too as it's obviously more involved physically. Did you feel like you were tiring a bit around the halfway mark?

More relentless than that.

Shooting in 2 details, 4 people to a target, a/b and c/d.
A/b shoot 3 arrows in 2 minutes, c/d then shoot 3 arrows in 2 minutes.
Go collect your arrows, write down your score, which takes a few mins, then back to the line and the details swap, so it's c/d then a/b and the cycle continues.

You can't stop for a break until your 60 arrows are done, which takes about 2 hours in total.

I imagine it's more physically taxing than air rifles, due to the mass of the bow and weight of the draw, but you quickly build up endurance for that. It's the mental focus that is harder.

Shooting in competition is a lot slower than in practice, I'd get my 60 shots done in 40 mins or so in a practice session, which you can feel fatigue wise, but if you can handle that you can easily handle competition pace

Wow, yeah, that does sound pretty full-on. It's far more relaxed at air rifle comps, unless you're lucky enough to finish in the top 10 and end up in the aforementioned Olympic-style final.

not a complete embarrassment, 10/13 in my category!

Of course the county champion has got Bow in his name