Shot USPSA today. I followed my rules to the T – I did not run, I sketched out the stages before hand, and I enjoyed myself. I tried to picture where each and every shot landed and did pretty good for the targets I could see well enough (even took extra shots to ensure A hits). The end result?
39th out of 48. Not last, and I’ll take that.
Takeaways – Slow is fine for now. Look at my times and you’ll see I was going at a snail’s pace. I consistently was one of the slower shooters. Stage 6 was extra slow as I experiences one of those jams that wouldn’t even let me release the magazine, but still I focused on taking my time. Take stage 3 – I scored 98 points, 0 penalties, but shot it in nearly 40 seconds. The top shooter did 98 points in 14.47 seconds. I’m cool with that for now.
I need to practice at distances. Most of my misses (and the bulk of my penalties) were far away targets. On the first stage, I had too many misses that were simply because I wasn’t ‘seeing’ where the shot landed. I corrected that and immediately started doing better.
Stop shooting the white targets. Doesn’t matter that the $#&*( deserved it, it counts against you! Oh, and if I do manage to shoot one, take another shot for Pete’s sake and make it an A hit. That way it doesn’t sting as bad.
Speaking of penalties, I need to pay attention and mark down which were misses, No-Shoots, and procedurals (of which I did not get any today). I need to try to remember what the stage was so I can replay it in my head as to my error. I really want a hat-cam so I can watch each stage over and focus on where I went wrong on what parts, but that ain’t in the budget for now.
Oh, I am totally in love with the M&P 40.
Need to do more dry fire practice, figure out someplace I can get some range time that doesn’t involve just plinking at targets while staring down a lane, and make the calendar go faster so I can run next month’s match!
I find pistol competitions to be more about gaming the stages than about learning real skills.