Gold! (Some of the time)

After another week of archery, I have finished the beginner's course and am now able to go along and work on shooting at the same time as the other members of the club.

I am pretty sure the beginner's course was mainly to check we are safe to be around bows and arrows, as it is very clear I have a long way to go.  Frankly, given how hard I find it to go somewhere I don't feel is mine, or to speak to new people, I feel I have succeeded simply by turning up to the club three times since the course finished last Sunday.

On Friday, we went along and ended up getting advice from the main coach at the club.  We did not realise it would just be him and us there, but it was fantastic.  He started off by saying he would train us 'as though we wanted to be Olympic champions in five years' (not sure which Olympics that will be - a winter one?), and we could tell him if we didn't want to worry about improving and would rather just shoot for fun.

He then broke down the way we were holding the bow and raising it to draw, including how to pull back with the back muscles rather than the ones in the arm.  That is all we worked on.  It made a real difference.  We spent two hours essentially getting private tuition.  For 50p each.  Bargain.

I love breaking things down and working on them before building them back up.  As the only thing which comes naturally to me is the written word, and I still love breaking that down, I also need such assistance with anything remotely sporty.  Karate was a case of learning which muscles to move and where to position myself, just to stay upright.  I managed it to the point where one of my Uni flatmates was convinced I had excellent natural balance.  How I laughed.  I can fall over on the flat surface.

With archery, I am just beginning to see how many little things there may be to alter.  By 'see', I mean I have a sense of a giant pit opening before me, down which I must tumble.  At the moment, I am standing on the edge.  I think it is going to be a case of inching slowly down the slope rather than jumping in, so now I just need to keep working on making a few inches of progress at a time.

I did get above 252 on the nearest target today, which is significantly higher than I managed last time.  Hell, two weeks ago I was barely getting 100.  252 is the number you have to get to earn a badge on that target, so I am quietly pleased.

Next time, we will go up to the next target, at a whole 30 feet away.  This is excellent news.  It means I will have a whole extra 10 feet of range when the Zombie apocalypse happens.