| Thank you to all who helped run the match and to those who joined us to shoot.
The heat was freakin' unbelievable for so early in the season when we're not acclimated to it. Sunday was the coolest day at 94 deg. F. Saturday was hotter, and Friday (the day the match staff shot) was the hottest and dustiest. It had to be close to 100 deg F.
I shot even more poorly than Ryan's assessment of his performance (I think he did better than he thinks, especially for his first big match). After stage 3 or so, I was "done" physically. One of the ROs only shot one stage and another didn't finish the last three because of the heat. We had some competitors go down from the heat on Saturday.
Aside from the weather, it was an awesome match. With one exception (the bowling ball stage), they were some of the best stages I've seen since I've been playing this game. Had I been able to shoot a few each day or done it in cooler weather, it would have been a lot of fun. As it was, very challenging courses of fire became more a survival situation to me, so I just did what I could to finish. And of course my little expression of fun on stage 10. Heh.
The crew who set-up and ran the match deserve a huge amount of praise and gratitude. They put together and ran one of the best section matches in the history of the sport. It also happens to have been one of the biggest (if not the biggest) section matches ever, with about 260 shooters. |