Been a bit of a long weekend really. Friday was a fundraising barbecue in Wilkinstown. Not a bad turnout, and we raised over a thousand euro for the team, so we’re starting back towards having some money in the bank for the club again after we put a lot of it into sending the Irish team to the World Championships in Zagreb. ‘Twas a good evening, but it was a bit of a haul to get out there after a long day’s work. Worth it though.
And now today, swimming again. Managed to swim for a little over 90 minutes without any form of paddling board or other assistance, so I’m making progress. Next dip in the pool is probably on Wednesday. I can’t see any huge weight losses so far, but I do feel a bit better, and I’m not tracking the weight on a daily basis at the moment, so who knows whether it’s going up or down. At any rate, it’s exercise and I don’t feel like someone’s hit my knees with a hammer at the end so that’s a good thing.
Not gone shooting yet though. Tonight I’ll get the air pistol out and do some dry-firing for a little while, and check the cylinder of my air tank on the rifle as there’s a recall gone out for anschutz air cylinders. Not sure if mine’s affected. Hope not, it’d be a bit akward as I’m trying to get training going again to have to send off bits of the rifle!
And sent off the motions for the NTSAs AGM to the NTSA as well. It’s a bit ridiculous really, having to send in over seventy motions purely because the people in head office think that working behind closed doors and ignoring suggestions and ignoring problems is acceptable. Fecks sake, we could be using the time and energy to train and get better, but instead we have to do this, because we know if we don’t, then things will just get worse. And frankly, there’s not that far down for the sport to go in this country. Every shooter that ever shot in the Olympics has walked away from the NTSA at this point. Their only international shooters come out of our club, trained by us, equipped by us, supported by us. The scores in the National Championships fall year by year since this ridiculous new format was introduced over the explicit, formal objections of several people (myself included), including the air rifle coordinator at the time, but every year, despite the match being a shambles with no manpower to run it and shooters exhausted from travel, it’s hailed as a success by head office. We haven’t won a medal internationally in a decade (at least not in any Irish team), and yet we don’t change anything to do with coaching or training. We have no coaches, but we turn down applications from volunteers to go to ISSF coaching courses, even when they volunteer to pay their own way. We’re great at planning – we can draft paper plans up to beat the band – but ever actually getting anything done? Forget it. And then the NTSA decides to treat us like we’re the problem with target shooting in Ireland today? It’s disgusting. And frankly, there is a significant lack of people who are willing to accept such incompetent, substandard, unprofessional conduct from them at this point.