And no Easter in China... only chocolate eggs we saw were the ones were brought ourselves. Miss B gave us hand painted ceramic eggs from Croatia and marzipan for the Danes and I brought Easter Bilbies (of course). There was also a Hagen Daz across the road from the hotel and a coffee establishment of some description so there were frequent coffee/ice cream dates after shooting was done. And of course the must see bargaining at Xiang Yang the underground market. However cheap you got your bargain, it was always cheaper the next store over.
First day on the field (unofficial practice) and we almost lost our recurver due to locking her room key in and missing the first bus. Good thing they have more than one bus... I locked my key in the room first day too :) And general consensus was that the Supreme Towers Hotel was much better for food, plumbing and location than the main hotel the Minya.
Ranking for my honorary team was rough all round. Martin shot a dodgy first round with a 342 and then changed stabilisers in the break for a 353 (went with a short stab for the wind) which dragged him up from 25th to 15th. Louise was perhaps tired from an already long trip away from home having shot the Coup des miss and a training camp in Korea before she arrived and her ranking round was not pretty, placing her in 81st and well below expected. Conditions were tricky for the week with the flags showing the wind in one direction and arrow flight suggesting the opposite.
Matchplay was shot in similar conditions. Louise had a rough start and rallied at the end but not enough to beat the girl from Ukraine 6-2 set points.
Martin cruised through the first 3 matches (including a bye) including a rematch against Aussie Mike Brosnan who gave him a tough match in Shanghai last year. Martin lost to Titscher in the 1/8 in a close match 146-145. And then as we say everyone was officially a tourist..so back to the training field.
In and around scheduled training times we managed some time for me to shoot. Martin brought me some new strings and cables in BCY 8190 to try and also some new wraps for my bow limbs and arrows. I think we're trying for the ultimate in colour matching... :)
Because my bow is 60lb and I've been shooting it at 50lb, there's a 1/2 inch difference in draw (due to the limbs being wound out massively) which I had compensated for by adjusting string and cable twists as needed. So the initial set up with the new strings was out by a half inch right off the bat and took a little tweaking to get right. And then we did a re-tune with the help of Pagni's high speed camera...I need me one of those!! And got the bow shooting pretty for the remainder of the week. And put a half turn on the limbs which while being slightly heavier, improved the tune/feel immensely.
Finally home again if only for a few days and missing my 'team'. Shot 210 arrows today with a 674 for the last 72 arrows... not great unless you realise by this stage my shoulder was burning and fingers were aching. So progress in the making with my new set up all pimped in pink and my new vocab - how to say 'damn cold' in Danish :)
