Team Diary

For many, our first training weekend at the end of March was the first day shooting of the season. Having returned from the winter break with varying degrees of winter training under our belts, the first shoot was to be a proverbial clearing of the cobwebs – But not before a healthy dose of team admin on the Saturday morning.

Having all the team in one place, and unable to file their emails in the “Must do later” folder of procrastination, our captain, vice, and adjutant gave the team a reminder of the task ahead of us, and a reminder of the daunting task of team fundraising.

Since then, we have practised as a team over all distances, although there has been a particular emphasis on 900 and 1000 yards as we have been training alongside the Palma team trialists, who are set to take on Camp Perry in 2015. This was a good opportunity to expose the non-Palma trialists in the team to some very high calibre training.

The first weekend was spent on team bonding, admin and range practice. Subsequent weekends have mainly been spent on the range completing coached shoots, string shoots and an extremely useful speed session on the 300m range. We have also had a series of indoor sessions focusing on how to maximise individual performance and we’ve even had some rather unforgiving Scatt sessions with Jon Underwood!

The final training weekend, which was combined with a Palma trial, culminated in an America style match (15 shots to count at 300, 600, 900 and 1000 yards) against the (absent) Vice Captain’s team and the Perry recce squad. This provided valuable match practice, especially as we had to get through five shooters per target compared to the other teams, who had four, resulting in the last detail seriously taxing the coaches. Whilst we didn’t win this we did identify some areas to improve and it was a great opportunity for target teams to spend a whole day together, learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

When not worrying about all things fundraising, medical declarations and wind changes, the team have also met together in the North London Rifle Club and Surrey Rifle Association for formal evening dinners, which are always good for team bonding.

All in all, the training weekends have gone quite smoothly. We are finding fewer and fewer cobwebs in our barrels and hopefully this will reflect when we reach Borden, Perry and Connaught this August!

Bring on North America (although there is the little matter of the Imperial meeting to do first)…