Why you should shoot away from your home range

Since moving to New Zealand at the end of 2014, I have come to appreciate the weakness of my windreading ability as an issue I need to do something about. While my first visit to Trentham back in 2015 was welcomed with gentle winds and moderate conditions (and a podium place for me), the wind during past the past two years' national championships have demonstrated why it's renowned as one of the hardest (if not the hardest) ranges around. I feel the need to rise to that challenge with the 2018 Commonwealth Games and 2019 World Long Range Championships approaching fast.

I'm approaching this in a variety of different ways: I'll be refreshing my knowledge of the theory of windreading (and will probably write a couple of posts about it over the next few weeks), trying to shoot a decent amount of long range for obvious reasons, and making an effort to shoot on a variety of different ranges. On this last point, I've not made that much of an effort to get out there and experience a wider variety of ranges since I moved to NZ, but I did at the weekend and it was well worth the effort for a variety of reasons, not all of which were wind-related.

Over the Auckland anniversary weekend - that's the last weekend in January for non-JAFAs - I traveled up to Kauri Mountain Range to shoot in the Northland Championships. The range itself is set on farmland outside of Whangerei three hours north of Auckland and has space for four targets, with electronics having been recently installed.

Kauri Mountain Range. It's a range which backs on to a mountain covered in Kauri trees.

Being very near to the sea, the weekend's shooting fulfilled my desire to experience a wide range of wind conditions. While it was millpond calm shortly after dawn, the wind soon picked up and started by blowing off the land out to sea before reversing as the land heated up. While the wind could be steady in either condition, the transition between the two took a while and produced a very finicky, tricky wind with significant changes sometimes required between subsequent shots. I coped acceptably with the wind for four of the six ranges, but really should have done better at the other two.

Quite apart from hitting my goal of shooting in some interesting winds, the welcome from the members of the Whangerei Rifle Club was great. We shot in an informal atmosphere but with some good competition. We did something that can sometimes be forgotten in the chase for good technique and possibles: we had fun on the range in good company and glorious weather.

Day 2. Beautiful weather with a great bunch of folk

Unfortunately there is a fly in the ointment. The land on which the range is situated has recently been sold from one farmer to another, and while the original owner has been unstinting in his support for the club, the new owner has given them immediate notice. The club has other irons in the fire and are hoping not to be homeless for long, but it's still sad to see an established range go. It was great to feel like I was supporting them and their club by turning up to shoot on their range, but even so I hear of other ranges here in NZ and back in the UK being shut down or closed for civilian use. Coupled with increasing costs and a lack of interest from the younger generation, it's another threat to our sport.

Get out there and shoot away from Bisley, Trentham or your home range. It'll make you a better windreader, a more rounded shooter and hopefully give some much-need support to a smaller club or range under threat.

Touring Tips 1 - Jet Lag

While living in New Zealand has numerous advantages - A decent number of rifle ranges, good beer, fine wine, mostly superb coffee*, a great landscape for trail running, easy access to excellent fishing and therefore seafood - it does has the disadvantage of being bloody miles from anywhere. As a result of this key factor plus the need to travel for work and shooting, I've managed to become deeply intimate with jet lag. As it's likely that I'll be doing a bit of traveling for fun and profit over the next 18 months, it seemed opportune to think about jet lag.

Jetlag is a mismatch between your current actual timezone and the various chemical processes in your brain and body which regulate the daily rhythm of your body's activities. Fortunately for international travellers, these processes will adjust themselves over time. Unfortuately for international travellers, there's a maximum rate at which they can adjust and there are plenty of things that people do to disrupt this process. Depending on how you react to jetlag, you can feel pretty grotty during the adjustment process, which is not going to be conducive to top sporting performance.

I am in no way an expert on the science of diurnal rhythms and their management, but I've worked out a routine and a few tricks which seem to allow me to help make the adjustment as quickly as possible:

Rule #1 - Your body will only adjust at about 1 hour per day of time difference maximum. Some people may be faster and others slower.

Rule #2 - You cannot speed up adaptation beyond that limit, but you can slow it down by doing the wrong things.

Rule #3 - The sooner you move your sleep patterns to your destination once you have arrived, the closer you will get to the maximum recovery rate.

Rule #4 - Do not have afternoon naps or any extra sleep outside of your normal nightly sleep routine.

Rule #5 - A couple of glasses of wine is fine, but don't hit the booze to try and force sleep, as this will generally result in a very poor quality of sleep which may be counter-productive.

So far, so good; however it may not be entirely obvious how to apply this to your trip so let's work our way through the trip from NZ to the UK:

Before the flight: Try and get plenty of rest and keep well hydrated. If you can start to move your bedtimes forward or backwards to closer match your destination timezone, so much the better.

Flight Plan:

NZ Time	LA Time	London Time
23:10	02:10	10:10	Flight departs AKL. Watch some films, do some work, but stay awake for the majority of the flight
09:10	12:10	20:10	Try and get a little sleep before landing at LAX
11:10	14:10	22:10	Flight lands at LAX
13:10	16:10	00:10	Flight departs LAX. Snooze if you can.
14:30	17:30	01:30	Meal served. Eat properly to ensure you don't wake up because I'm too hungry to sleep and have two glasses of wine. Then go to sleep and get as much sleep as possible.
23:40	02:40	10:40	Flight lands at LHR.

After the Flight: No matter how hard it is, try to stay awake until at least 20:00 on the day of arrival in your destination. Get as much daylight as possible once you arrive at your destination, as this will help**, as can strenuous exercise***. Don't drink lots of alcohol on the evening of arrival, as you'll come out of deep sleep when the booze wears off. You'll also be dehydrated and feeling rubbish.

A final thought: Touring is expensive. A little preparation and thought can stop you wasting a lot of money. Save the boozing and late nights for after you've won the matches. It's OK to be knackered at work when you get back to your home country.

* With the exception of ground coffee for cafetieres. For some reason, it's frequently miserable over here.

** Forbes-Robertson, S., Dudley, E., Vadgama, P. et al. Circadian Disruption and Remedial Interventions: Effects and Interventions for Jet Lag for Athletic Peak Performance. Sports Med (2012) 42: 185. doi:10.2165/11596850-000000000-00000

***  Waterhouse, J., Reilly, T.,  Atkinson, G., Edwards, B. Jet lag: trends and coping strategies. The Lancet. Volume 369, No. 9567, p1117–1129, 31 March 2007.

Welcome to Season 3 of Gun & Run!

It has been a while; and it has been great to have a break; but after three months off, it's time to saddle up and get training and shooting again.

I have already talked about the importance of taking a break in Training Cycle 4 - Rest and Recovery but taking a little time away from shooting (although this is largely enforced by the winter weather we get here in Waitakere) gives me time to get out on the roads and get fit for the start of the shooting and trail running seasons. It also gives me the opportunity to post a little less for a while, and refresh the creative juices a little. I try hard to write thoughtful and interesting pieces on shooting, but I need inspiration to do this and not a little cognitive space. A busy schedule of work and travel for shooting last year wrung me out a little, but what a season it was.

The 2016/2017 season is looking like it's going to be a big one: I've got work trips to North America on the cards, as well as at least one trip (probably two) to the UK planned, as well as at least one (possibly as many as three) trips over the ditch to New Zealand's West Island* in the coming 18 months.

The handloading bench is going to get a lot of use in the next couple of months. The hammer is purely for emergency use.

Having taken three months off sport-specific training and live fire, I'm going to have to get off my backside and prepare for the coming season ahead. In no particular order, I have to:

• Give my rifle a thorough check over and clean;
• Load a shitload of ammunition for training and competition;
• Dig out the SCATT and do some training;
• Sort through my kit to see if I need to replace anything;
• Think about what aspects of my position and technique I'm going to need to work on; and
• Get out on the range and do some live fire.

 All of this renewed and reinvigorated interest in shooting, competing and qualifying for the most exclusive club shoot in the world is going to stimulate me to do a bit more writing too, I hope. I've already had a few ideas and started to mull over them while running. Future topics are likely to include: Wind reading, electronic targets, handloading, rule making and its consequences, volume versus quality in training, performance enhancing drugs in shooting (and sport in general), and possibly a book review or two.

I'm looking forward to it. I hope you are too.

* Also known to some people as "Australia".