Making the most of the situation

I am sure you all are aware of the COVID19 virus situation and how many sports events are being cancelled. With my first two international competitions of the year being cancelled and I have my doubts whether any of my international competitions will happen, I am thinking how best I can use my time now I don't have the pressure of competitions coming up.

In a way it probably is a good timing for me as I really have not been happy with my standing shooting over the last year and I feel part of the problem has been putting too much pressure on myself. So this break from competition will be a good opportunity for me to lower the pressure and may be even have a break from standing if I feel that is needed for a couple of months.

There is something else I want to get done, that is to put my IBSA shooting committee chairman hat on and produce some information on vision impaired shooting. The sort of things I want to include are details of how the sport is done, the different disciplines, some tips for coaches, etc. Ideally I would like to get some videos made, but that does require the help of others. Again with the pressure of competition being removed for a few months, now may be that opportunity to get on with it with minimal impact upon my shooting.

So whilst turning on the radio seems to bring doom and gloom news, I intend to make the most of the next few months and have some good come out of it.

What is to come in 2020

Happy new year to all readers of my blog. Time to start looking forward to what 2020 has for me. It looks like it could be a busy first half of the year with three vision impaired international competitions to go to. Starting in March with the World Cup in Al Ain, UAE, followed by the International Shooting Competition of Hanover in May and the 10m European Championships in June. Then there are the national competitions against sighted shooters to consider, with the British Open Airgun Championships in February and the ESSU championships in May. These are just the shoulder-to-shoulder competitions, there are the various league competitions to be shot at my local club as well. At this point I don't know if there will be any shoulder-to-shoulder competitions in the latter part of the year, however it may present a chance to have a bit of a break or opportunity to experiment in my training. So plenty to look forward to, keep tuned for further updates as the year goes on.

In Australia for the World Championships

As the World Championships gets closer, now less than a week away, I thought it was time to write another blog post. Last week saw me take the longest flight I have taken up to now as I flew out to Australia. This is also the first time I have been outside Europe for shooting, so many new things for me. I had decided to fly out early so that I would have time to acclimatise.

The first couple of days were not shooting related, time to be a tourist and find where things are in Sydney. However by Sunday it was back to work at the shooting centre doing some training and to take my first shots on another continent. First up was training standing It was good to get going again and find out that everything had survied the flight and was working correctly.

After a break for some lunch and it was into training the prone. May be I started too soon after lunch as things weren't quite feeling right and I was feeling a bit sleepy. After a short walk around to wake me up a bit, back into the prone shooting and everything was back to normal again.

So all seems to be going to plan and I am feeling positive for the upcoming championships. So today I was back being a tourist, going on one of the access tours of the Sydney Opera House and then to the maratime museum. Both were very interesting and had things I could appreciate, well worth doing if you are in Sydney.

I plan to have a couple more training sessions before the championships begins. My first competition is prone on Tuesday 15 October. Keep watching here on my blog, my FaceBook page or my Twitter page for updates.

Time for plan B

Next week will be the International Shooting Competition of Hanover. Unfortunately I needed to make a last minute change of plans as due to some unforeseen delays in preparations I was not able to get everything ready in time.

The problem related to the fact that World Shooting ParaSport only approved vision impaired shooting as an official discipline in their programme back at the end of February this year. Whilst the competition had been announced for some time prior to that, there were certain things which could not be started until WSPS had officially accepted VI shooting. It was always going to be tight and unfortunately I encountered some unexpected delays. So as everything was not going to be ready I made the decision I would have to withdraw from the competition.

This change of plan should not cause any problems in the grand scheme of things for the year as I still have the World Cup at the end of July which I can use for qualification for going to the World Championships. The few extra months should be sufficient time to get everything ready. In fact this had always been the plan B.

One advantage is that this will give me more time to get settled with my prone shooting before going to a qualification competition. Whilst based upon what I am shooting in prone, achieving the qualification score should not be a problem, but may be by the time of the World Cup I will actually be competing to be in the final. That would probably have been a bit of an ambitious goal for Hanover.

Pre-competition thoughts about the ESSU

Tomorrow I will be shooting in the ESSU competition down at Bisley. Again another competition shooting against sighted shooters. This will be my fourth competition against sighted shooters since my first of these about six months ago. Contrast this with VI specific competitions where I have only done two in the last year. It is this relatively low number of VI competitions which lead to me starting to shoot against sighted shooters so that I could gain much more competition experience. As I noted before, I think I put myself under greater pressure at these sighted competitions than the VI competitions, so hopefully it will be doing some good in preparing me for high pressure competitions in the future. The only thing these are not giving me is experience of shooting in a final, unfortunately VI shooting scores are that much lower that there is little chance of me making a final when competing with sighted shooters.

Another competition in the calendar

This week I have got my entry into the ESSU Championships confirmed. With these championships coming about a week before I go to Hanover, it should be a good training competition to prepare me for the first international of the year. I am not sure which I prefer, whether to have competitions coming up close together like this in clusters, or if I would prefer them to be spread out a bit more evenly throughout the year. I am sure when I get back from Hanover I will be trying to catch up with other parts of my life. Why not give your view in the comments.

First competition of 2019: British Open Airgun Championships

This weekend will see my first competition of 2019, the British Open Airgun Championships. This is going to be a big competition for me, it is the highest level competition to date shooting alongside sighted shooters and I believe the first time a vision impaired shooter has competed in this championships. Also this will be the first competition for me with my new shooting suit. I admit I am feeling a bit excited and nervous about this competition. It is strange how I seem to get more nervous about national level competitions against sighted shooters than I do at some international vision impaired shooting competitions.

I would encourage anyone who is at the competition to come and speak with me or my assistant if you want to know more about me or how vision impaired shooting is done. I will be there both Saturday and Sunday, so I should have plenty of time when I am not shooting to have discussions.

If you cannot make it to the competition, then you will be able to follow my progress as I intend to post updates on both my twitter account and also on my FaceBook page. Additionally at the end of the weekend I will write a follow-up post here on my blog.