First a HUGE THANK YOU to you my sponsors for making the past month and a half possible. Without your support, I would not be able to train full time, and I would not be making the progress I am making. I appreciate all the emails, letters, and phone calls. I am up to $11,706 and much of it has come in the past 6 weeks. Please continue to tell your friends about me and continue to forward this newsletter to people you think might be interested in my story. With your continued support, I will make this dream a reality.
The Weather Report:
Which would you rather hear first? That the hottest day was a sizzling 87 degrees or that the coldest day was a mere 50 degrees? I doubt you actually care if you live one bit North or West of the great state of Florida. I promise you though, I watched the East Coast weather report a couple of times just to make sure I appreciated my tan.
January/February Recap:
As you might have guessed, January was a great month for me to be in Florida soaking up the sun… just kidding! I meant to say a great month for me to train my heart out. I had a total of 49 practices, 70% of which was dedicated to shooting a total of 3,838 arrows. Twenty-three percent of my time was focused on weights and running, leaving the remaining 7% of my time to be used to recover.
In January, I rarely shot the indoor distance of 18 meters because I was mostly focused on trying to make some progress with the Olympic distance. My goal for January was to push my average up another 10 points, getting that much closer to the scores I will need to make the Olympic team. I accomplished that goal and then some by shooting an average of 284 for the month. By the end of the month, I was consistently in the mid to high 290s pushing for that 300 mark.
February proved to be an even more successful month for me. On February 9th, after being inspired by the movie Miracle a few days before, I performed a little miracle of my own – I shot a 321 at 70 meters out of 360 points. To give you an idea of what this means, let me simply say the US record is a 329. Ok, ok and only a few American women shot that high in competition last year… not one of them consistently.
My New Personal Best Score:
Here is what happened, I stepped to the line and it was amazingly calm, eerily nice out. The sun was just about to set and I told myself that I wanted to shoot 6 consecutive ends at or above 50 points to break 300. I had only done it once before and I was determined to do it again. I shot the first end, 56. Wow, great start I thought. I stepped up to the line again, 55. Sweet continuation. The third time I stepped to the line I just told myself to keep shooting the way I had been shooting, to try and remember what a great shot felt like. I shot 6 more arrows for a score of 54. On my fourth end, I had my first mini battle with my head. You might relate to this experience, even if you aren’t an archer - when you start doing something really well, better than you expect, you may naturally start questioning yourself and your ability to keep it up.
Here I was, I had just finished shooting a 165, 15 points off a perfect 18 arrow score and naturally a thought popped up in my head, “If I keep shooting like this, I just might break the national record in practice!” Within seconds of that statement I shot a 5. Oye Vey, to put it politely. I had to regroup, refocus, and conquer the doubts. If I wanted to shoot the rest of this game well, I had to forget about the National Record, I had to forget about what I was doing and just do it. My next three arrows were 10, 10, 10 – dead center. An 8 and a 7 would secure my 4th end at 50. On to the last two ends, I again re-found that feeling I was looking for and shot the arrows the way I knew I could and finished it off with a 53, 53 for a total of 321.
Tournaments:
Some people have been emailing asking how I was doing in various local tournaments in January. I continued my winning streak, going undefeated in 7 straight tournaments since October. Although none of these tournaments have included women on USAT (United States Archery Team), the competition has been good and has forced me to deal with pre-competition butterflies, pressure situations, etc. As far as specific results go, most notably, I won the Florida State Indoor Championship. I shot the entire thing in one evening, meaning I shot 120 arrows instead of 60 arrows and I didn’t sit down for a whole four hours. It was a great experience and taught me more about how to deal with unexpected surprises; such as flat light so bad you could not see the arrows in the target.
The Hog:
I promised you all riveting stories about the Fort Lauderdale Archer’s new mascot… Broadview. Broadview a.k.a Stinky a.k.a. Blackie was at first just a myth, a good story, a silly little house pig let loose to roam the wild. As days past and sightings increased, he turned into a 400lb, 4 foot tall monster that would chase grown men around the range, forcing them jump on benches to save their souls. Needless to say, having not seen the mysterious “thing,” the slightest rustle in the leaves or snap of a stick made me jump. I write my spookiness off to good practice for the Olympics when I will have to handle people yelling and sneezing as I am about to take my medal winning shot.
When we finally did catch up with the illusive Mr. Broadview, he was about as much fun to hang out with as a swarm of mosquitoes – he never left you alone and he always showed up right as you were about to start a game. Nonetheless, he was hardly the monster some had claimed; the final survey said he was only about 150lbs and sadly half the propagated size. Oddly some of the archers actually like him, I will admit he had kind of a cute nozzle. However, it didn’t take long for them to wake up and finally smell him. The bad news, for a short period of time, although I am hardly sympathetic to the beast, we all thought bulldogs had killed him when he disappeared mysteriously off the range. The good news, he actually just escaped and set off down route 441 in search of a new home, which he found when Wild Life Rescue picked him up and taxied him to the nearest sanctuary.
The Everglades:
One other note on January adventures, Vic and I spent a couple of days in the Everglades I’ve included the pictures from this trip on the website. Swamp Bill was our guide appropriately named for his knowledge of the Florida swamp. The pictures also include an airboat trip that we had with Mark and Jan Beggs. It was one of the coolest experiences ever – imagine you are floating across water at the speed of a racing boat without the wake. If I can get my video streamlined into the website, I’ll be sure to include a link in the next E-newsletter.
Stay tuned for the next E-Newsletter where I will cover upcoming events such as the World Indoor Archery Festival in Las Vegas as well as the Indoor Nationals in Andover, MA. I’ll also share some professional pictures that Giovanni Laudicina took for Vic and me to help us with publicizing our quest.
Thanks again!!! Keep your eye on the prize!
Joy
Mark 10:27
