New Year Resolutions

By that I mean goals for the year. Cycling, running, and, most importantly, shooting should all come along nicely this year, now that I'm settled a little bit in Germany. With that in mind, it's time to work out what I want to hit at some point in the year.

Piecing it all together in one giant calendar is actually kinda fun. I was originally thinking of splitting it all apart, having one calendar each for shooting, cycling and running, but I think this is better. Also, it should help me to not schedule things on top of each other.

After a pitiful year of shooting, it's time to make this priority one again. Unfortunately, there aren't a huge number of goals in late summer/early autumn time that I can aim for. The European smallbore championships are on at a really nice time, but they require qualification. I need a 587 in prone, or 1135 in 3p to make it there. Now, both of these are eminently doable, given good quality training. at 1033 in my last 3x40 match 2.5 years ago, I think this is where I could make up some good ground. Standing alone has the potential to raise about 15 points a string, if I get a decent set up. So that's 1100, with the balance to be made up with prone and kneeling. Doable, but not easy. The prone, OTOH, could either be reasonably handy, or incredibly difficult.

I've done some playing around with a pretend prone position at home, trying different right arm positions, and I think I've found something decent. It should allow good shoulder pressure as well as tucking the rifle in close to me. This will all be greatly facilitated by having the air rifle at home for training. Imitating my prone set up on that will allow training to be done at any time at home, which will be totally cool :)

For running, I'm going to attempt a marathon. I said I'd do it last year, and I just failed. I have two options later in the year, which is what I want. There's the Munich Marathon, on the 9th of October, and the Dublin City Marathon, on the 31st of October. There's nothing much in the way of shooting or cycling around these times, so that works out rather well. I'll probably enter one or the other pretty soon, so I have the time set in stone and I can update my calendar around that.

In the case of cycling, I have Operation M to worry about. This is a one- or two-week tour, planning to take in at least one epic climb. At the moment I'm leaning towards a one week tour, starting in central France in July. From there, head south and then loop into Switzerland, taking in the Col d'Isaren along the way. This is a 33 km monster of a climb, which will require much training. To the Alps!

I have a lot of plans for the summer, so I'm going to be looking for some things to round off the year towards the end. I've already said that I would like to do some time trialling, so I may have a look at that once the tour is over; change the road bike set up to a more aerodynamic position, with tri bars. Or I may be bold and look at building something up from scratch, depending on how serious I want to go with it. Ideally, I'd want to look at racing for that kind of investment.

Those are the rough plans for 2011. I'll be updating as I go, with only a few things that are set in stone. As I said, shooting is taking priority from now on, which means time and money. It may come to pass that nothing really comes of this year, but it should give me an excellent base for the following year in any case :)

Back on the line

I have finally, after a year of arsing about, joined a rifle club over here. My German has improved to the point that I can get by on the range and a little bit in the more social settings, so it should be all good :)

Now, due to this, I have decided to be an idiot and sent in my Expression of Interest in three disciplines over two matches; air, prone and 3p in Munich, and prone and 3p in Belgrade for the European Championships. The enormity of the task has not bypassed me; I am well aware that I have to get back to previous levels and well surpass them in all disciplines. I think the most ground can be easily made up in air rifle (and also standing in 3p), but there's a lot of room for improvement in prone as well.

So, opportunities and challenges.
Challenge; I've been a lazy git and not trained properly in a year. This doesn't seem to have massively affected my scores, but it's a year of no training and hence no progression.
Opportunity; Air rifles require no license in Germany; I should be able to keep one in a locked case in my wardrobe (which would probably make it one of the more secure airguns in the country...). This allows almost daily dry firing at home, mainly in standing, but prone and kneeling should also be well doable. I need to check transportation issues, however.
Challenge; I need to up my pb by 10 points in prone, 35 in air rifle and a whopping 100 in 3p. Now, the latter is based on my one 3x40 match from a few years ago, so it may not be that bad any more.
Opportunity; I have a fair bit of wiggle room in prone. My scores were on the up before I started messing with stuff at the end of last year. I'm hoping I can pick up from there.
Air rifle has always been my weak point. For whatever reason, consistency was a big issue for me. This was, however, starting to recede towards the end of last year with some excellent training scores. The issue with non standard target heights should not exist here.
In the case of 3p, it could be very hit and miss. There's massive room for improvement in the standing, which should be helped along by air rifle. My kneeling is naturally pretty decent, so a little work there should up the scores a nice bit.

What do I need;
Regular training. I can do two days a week of air rifle with no issues, but the prone requires me to be at the range early. This is a problem as it's at least 90 mins from desk to range, and I normally have to work til 6 or so. Prone stops at 20.30, and it's hard to get a spot unless one is there early.
To get my head well into the game.
Kitwise; pants and boots, of which I currently have neither and it's wrecking my back. Maybe also frames (the old ones don't work with my facial geometry). Stand for air rifle and 3p.
I think I may also need rifles. Yes, plural. I'm not sure, but this is my reasoning; At the moment, I have exclusive use of an air rifle. It is, however, tiny. Too short, not high enough, not a long enough sightbase, not heavy enough. Having my own would solve these problems. Also see point above regarding licensing, or lack thereof. In the case of prone, the club has one old Supermatch. If I am serious about getting to some internationals in the next two years, my own is going to be more or less necessary, for consistency in training if nothing else. Something to mull over.

Physically, I'm in pretty decent shape. A bit porky at the moment from not getting out due to shit weather and actually being rather busy for the past while, but that's only two kilos that can easily be burned off. My endurance has increased a lot over the last year, so I suspect the length of an air rifle match or a 3x40 won't be much of a problem. I'm also stronger, which can only help. I need to work on some core fitness and strength, but that's small stuff for daily doing. When I get around to it. But that end of things is not an issue.

So, as it turns out, I've more or less put the introduction to my training plan up there. I need to work out some specific goals to lead up to a potential qualification match, or matches. And I mean potential. I have no intention of flying back to Ireland with a rifle or two and a kitbag unless I know I'm capable of hitting those scores, even if it's only on a good day.

All comments and suggestions are more than welcome. This is gonna be a hell of a task, and I have no idea how it's gonna go. It should be a decent base for the year after, but I'd like it to be more. As I am fond of saying, it should be interesting :)

Where we stand

Right, so the training plan is up and coming at the moment. I've been working on it for the past three days and generated five pages of ramblings. It covers the four stages that seem to be an essential part of a training plan and inserts what I should do, and plan to do in each section.

Included in this I've come up with a list of goals, which has my current standing in each of my disciplines/sports and what to do about getting to the goal standard. So here we go.

Prone

Current: ~ 580(576-582) at 50m

Need: 582 by June (World Uni. Champs)

Want: ~587 by June (Olympic MQS)

This equates, roughly, to a 7 point increase in 6 or so months, which is doable, but difficult.

Areas to focus on: butt of rifle: length; and place in shoulder; eyesight: may need new frames (left the old ones in Ireland in any case...); otherwise need to be more careful when aiming; match planning; taking breaks every 20 shots or so, mainly to check the sling on my upper arm.

Air Rifle

Current: ~545 (542-546)

Need: I'm not sure as data is hard to come by, but I'm going to go with an MQS of 570

This is a totally different kettle of fish, being a 25 point increase, which will not be easy. However, I feel that the points are there, I just need to be careful in how I go about putting that through paper. If I hit this, I'll be very happy with myself. My air rifle has, historically, seen a lot of setbacks, notably a severe sprain two years ago that kept me off the line for three months and ruined a lot of hard work prior to that. The unfocused off-time also generated a lot of bad habits that dragged me back for a year. At least I've tried to keep my head in the game this time round.

Areas to focus on: zero point; balance; relaxation: shoulders; arms; neck; head position; cheekpiece; faster rhythm.

Cycling

Current: I have little idea, as it's been a while since I was on a bike. The few short commuting spins before Christmas felt good, though, so I have hope that my level here hasn't fallen off too much.

Want: 200-300 km sportive at approximately 30 km/hr average by September.

If I follow a solid 12 week plan I should get the kilometerage up to around 165 by simply increasing an endurance spin by 10% each week, which would be good. Now, that's most likely not going to work out, but the goal is there.

Also, my speed is going to have to improve, and I think I have some interval suggestions somewhere that could work well.

Also, I'd like to compete in a cyclocross race, but only if I get reasonably good at both cycling and running. And lose whatever sanity I have left.

Running

Current: Atrocious. Nuff said.

Want: Half marathon (20 km) at two hour pace (10 km/hr) by September.

The plan for this is to run a set distance three or four times per week, working in intervals as well. By increasing the distance by one km a week (which shouldn't be too bad, right?) that should bring me up to what I want, when I want it.

I do have some interval sessions here for this, which will help a lot.

So there you have it, my wildly outlandish targets for the next six to nine months. There are some competition goals for rifle later in the season, in keeping with a full training plan; the ones here are preliminary and will serve to test the validity of my longer term plan.

There's about a one in a million chance that I'll actually hit any of these goals, but, hey, one in a million chances crop up nine times out of ten, right?