Firstly I want to start by saying sorry to my blog readers for not writing an update over the last couple of days. As you may know I was away at the British Shooting training camp and whilst the hotel did have internet it was extremely slow and so it was difficult to post updates. Well I am back home now and time to give you a full update on the last few days.
Monday started with an early morning start to travel down to Stoke Mandeville. Dispite the early start, we hit some traffic on the road which meant we arrived a bit later than originally planned. After being introduced to who was there, it was time to start doing some training. We decided that may be start with what I know and do some standing so that everyone else could see how my aiming equipment works. One of the coaches commented on a few things I could look at changing, so I focussed only on the standing on the Monday leaving the prone until Tuesday.
So Tuesday arrived and after my early morning go on the rowing machine in the gymn, it was time to get on with doing some prone shooting. We had watched some of the other shooters in wheelchairs doing prone from a table and had some ideas of what may be I could try doing. However whatever I did I just always seemed to be in significant pain and I was getting very close to giving up. However we tried changing the glove I was using and things seemed much, much better and I did a bit more until the end of the shooting time. Now things seemed comfortable in prone, or at least manageable, we said that Wednesday would be time for me to do a trial match in prone.
Wednesday started in a similar way, the early morning go on the rowing machine for 12km before breakfast and then onto the shooting. A quick few shots to check that I had found my prone position again. After a short wait for the electronic targets to sort themselves out, it was time to start my 60 shot match. All started good and after about 35 shots my assistant asked me if I wanted a break. I was feeling reasonably OK and wanted to see how far I could go until the break was necessary, so I decided to continue without taking a break. A short time later I had finished my 60 shots and it was time to review how it had gone. When looking at the scores you could see that I probably should have taken a break as there was a significant dip around shot 35 and with the score returning for the last ten shots. Overall it scored 601.2, which for a first prone match is reasonable. There are things I need to work on and I need to learn when to take a break, but it has made me more confident that I will be able to compete without trouble in Hanover and that I should be able to qualify to do prone at the World Championships.
After doing the prone, it was a return to standing. After making a small adjustment to the rifle, it seemed to be sitting better in my shoulder than it previously had been. After all this shooting which is more than I normally do, it was time to start packing up and heading for home. I think we have learned a good amount over the last few days and it possibly has turned my prone around to a point where I am at least prepared to continue with it for now.
Tomorrow I will be going to my local club for a normal shooting evening. However after so much hard training, it will be time to just go and shoot and try and let it happen as naturally as I can and enjoy what I am doing without the concern of trying to do everything perfect.
