And so I (and a fair few others) have my goal for the next five months or so. The match is from Febuary 16 to 19, and Wilkinstown is already putting a team together as they usually do. Accomodation and flights are booked and almost paid for, and Geoff’s getting in a set of variable raiser blocks this week for me so that Matt and I can try to rebuild my position to give a more upright stance while dropping the shoulder contact point lower down my shoulder where the rifle is more stable. The new ISSF rules on the maximum distance from the boreline to the centre of the sights doesn’t look like much on paper – only a 2cm increase from 40 to 60mm – but the effects are disproportionate in that it allows you to get a much more comfortable position if you’re not a total shortarse 😀
My current average is around the 560 level – I was shooting 569, 567 in the Welsh postal match prior to changing the rifle configuration, and then I added two fixed raiser blocks and brought the sights up by a centimetre or so, and the score fell back to 555ish. It’s come back to 560 for the Nationals, but that’s after a 200 mile round trip drive and a smallbore match the previous day, so for a single match, properly rested, add four or five points on; but then there’s the question of how you cope with the mental game as well.
At any rate, more training will be needed than I’m getting at the moment. However, my transport arrangements are about to get much more flexible – more on that in a future post perhaps. Plus, with the enforced travel into DURC to help with coaching and range officering, I’ll have even less excuse not to train. It helps when the lady nags you to train as well 😀
Anyway, the first step in all of this is to get out to Wilkinstown in the next week or so once the raiser blocks get in, and spend a few hours on the range with Matt breaking it all down and rebuilding it all, then photographing the position from all four sides (and more if possible), and using those photos to train with at home for dryfiring for the next few weeks to get used to the new position. I suspect that most people who don’t actually shoot would be surprised by the amount of time we spend not shooting in order to be able to shoot better afterwards 😀 I distinctly remember explaining to a friend once about dry-firing and getting a very odd look and the question “So you’re standing there pretending to shoot then?”…