So last week in Turkey it got to around 20-25 degrees in the sunshine every day for 8 days in a row. I know this because I was there; on a last minute opportunity to attend an invitational tournament and training camp with the Turkish national squad.
Now, while I'll admit the hotel was nice and I took advantage of the buffet style meals three times a day, this was no jolly. As well as myself, three of GBs finest up and coming recurve ladies (Rebekah Tipping, Sarah Bettles and Jaspreet Sagoo) were here to compete at the Karaman Bagotia Spring Arrows tournament, before spending four days training at maximum capacity. The competition was contested by ~500 Turkish club archers, as well as members of the Estonian, Georgian, and German national squads.
After a spot of late night kit repair we had an official practice session on the Thursday afternoon. This is standard practice for international competitions; there is usually one defined session the day before qualification where athletes are able to practice on the main competition field, get used to the conditions and have their equipment inspected by the judges. Often there are more practice days available but they don't necessarily have to be in the same field or even the same side of town! During this there is also a team managers meeting where the organisers impart any useful updates to be passed on to the squads... As the unofficial team operations manager I went to this, but my poor* (complete lack of) Turkish meant I left none the wiser.
On the Friday it was time for business. Recurve Men were in the morning session, and after a few days of being teased about the early start and predicted thunderstorms I rocked up to glorious sunshine and a slightly tricky breeze. The round was a little up and down, but a final result of 641 was not bad for the first score of the season and crucially the promise of an earlier lunch break meant I dragged myself up from 9th at halfway to 6th place to earn a top 8 bye and avoid the 1/48 round that took place straight after.
The girls on the other hand... they didn't get so lucky with the weather.
[gallery ids="897,898,899" type="slideshow"]
The less said about that the better, though anyone who's ever competed at a BUCS outdoors will have an idea of the kind of conditions we experienced that afternoon.
The next day had individual eliminations in the morning. I was on coaching duty with Sarah for the first couple of matches as well as trying to time my own warm up for the 1/16 rounds which started in the third pass of matches, a tricky balance to strike and it showed as I struggled to get going in my first round match and lost the opening set. Stung into action I produced a 28, 30, 26, 28 to come through 6-4 to the good, and in a weird twist of fate that turned out be my toughest match of the day! I opened the taps in the second, dropping 28, 28, 30 with seven tens in nine arrows, and settled back to an average 109/120 in the quarter final which gave me a comfortable 7-1 win. Again the wind was moderate but changeable and this week was rapidly becoming a crash course in learning how to read and adjust for it.
After scoffing a packed lunch from the hotel on the field we had a little time to practice for the mixed team round. Unlike the individual matches, we were split into separate brackets for club and national teams. I linked up with Jaspreet for the mixed team and we took on Georgia in the first round. Perhaps it was a hint that we hadn't had much chance to practice the team format together but the first set was eventful, with two yellow cards, a third arrow fumbled and thrown back behind the line and me launching the final shot at around 100 milliseconds before the buzzer... It was a beautiful 39/40.
Unfortunately that was to be our peak for the day, we won that first match comfortably enough but lost the next pair of matches against Turkey and Germany which were quite winnable and finished in 4th place.
Come Sunday morning it was time for the ladies team matches. I had been down to form a scratch team with the two German men present but the other countries weren't cool with that so I got to stand in the coaches box for team GB instead. That turned out to be just as well, as their semi final against Georgia got heated! After going 4-0 down, there was a moment of confusion with the Georgians calling to the judge as Sarah went to the line to shoot her first arrow. The yellow card flashed for a second but the judge decided nothing was wrong, and the GB girls smashed in a 55 to stay alive. Now 4-2 down, there were even more complaints with loud cries of "JUDGE, JUDGE" and I had to try and keep the teams apart as Sarah came off the line shouting "What is your issue!"... It seemed they had beef with her holding a hand onto the arrow while stepping on, but once again the judge was correct, nothing was wrong and the girls edged a scrappy set by one point to stay alive for a shoot off. Adrenaline was high at this point and unfortunately it didn't go their way, so it was on to a bronze medal match against Estonia.
[caption id="attachment_1019" align="alignnone" width="960"]
Team GB in action![/caption]
Here it took a while to get sighted in, and once again the GB team was 4-0 down at halfway, but in a display of sheer willpower they brought it back, finishing the fourth set with a powerful 57 end and earning another shoot off! I made a point to shout "TEN" as loudly as possible on every shot they nailed, and this time they buried the shoot off, scoring 27 points and winning the bronze medal!
Straight after this I now had my individual semi finals. My shot was not working at the start of the match, although they felt powerful something felt strange about the follow through and my group was moving around for reasons I couldn't understand. Normally I can predict roughly where an arrow will go based on how the shot feels but something in the technique was breaking down. Sarah and Becky clued me in, my right elbow was creeping forwards just before release and dropping vertically down instead of pulling back around behind me. Knowing what to fix let me fight back from 4-0 down with a pair of 29s and take it to a last set showdown. The Turks were getting into this match, and my opponent was shooting a fair bit faster than me, so when I was battling through the clicker in my last set they kept shouting 'ON' (ten in Turkish) for each of his shots. Thinking I was already down with X,9 I overtried, ran the countdown clock down and sent the last shot wide. It turns out he had only scored 28, and a nine would have been enough for the tie and shoot off. Lesson learned.
https://youtu.be/wsZmqhdIyXM
I had a little time to recover before the bronze medal match and was surprised but pleased to find out it would be against the top seed Mete Gazoz, European silver medallist. Excellent! We started the match off with the crowd even more enthusiastic, with loud cheers of 'ON' and 'BRAVO' after each of his shots. Becky had wised to their game though, checking his arrows in the scope and following up with a cutting 'no its not!' after each of them. We got to the targets and surely enough Mete had three wide nines on either side, while I had drifted way to the right. A change of wind, or just weakness from me? Perhaps both. Determined to make up for wasting a soft set from my opponent I brought the heat in the second set, working every shot to the maximum and dropping in X 10 10 on the right hand edge, and despite anything the crowd said it was once again all nines from my opponent. 2-all. The third set was tight, 10 10 8 from me vs 10 10 9 with one just barely scraping the line for Mete meant I was 4-2 down, and the effort was just too much by the end, as I dropped out low and lost the match.
Gutted. But then again, I saw weakness from one of the best in the world as well. I'll have him next time.
The day ended with the gold medal matches on the finals field, and then the medal ceremony. I was challenged to get a podium selfie for the ladies, which I thought went pretty well, and straight after getting back we hit the gym. With the competition done we no longer had to worry about keeping energy in reserve, it was time for four days of maximum effort and improvement.
For the first day of the training camp it was just us and Estonia. The targets had been pushed right to the back of the field, about 150 metres away from the parasols we had been using for the competition. Not wanting to be fried to death, we ended up picking up a few targets and carrying them all the way up to our sunshade, and spent a happy morning ploughing away at blank boss, analysing each others technique with video and getting to work on improving. For myself I had a twitchy bow hand thumb, a slight tilt of the bow to the right (it should be vertical) and the same collapsing elbow that plagued me in my matches the day before. 270 arrows later and it was all starting to feel a lot better.
[caption id="attachment_997" align="alignnone" width="960"]
When you have the whole field to yourself...[/caption]
The second day was much the same except this time the Turkish turned up. They sellotaped some small umbrellas to metal stakes halfway up the field and we shot with the bosses where they were supposed to be, this time mainly at 70m blank boss still working on form. My posture was the hot point today, we had noticed an exaggerated arch in the lower back that indicated weakness in the core and increased my chest contact with the string. However, trying to flatten my spine generally resulted in either my knees bending, my butt sticking out or both, much to the hilarity of the girls who can all do this easily... Not one to be beaten I stuck at it most of the day and started to get the hang by the end, feeling the subtle differences between moving the sternum down and just sucking the belly in, starting to understand the feelings in my thighs and glutes that told me if my legs were in line or not. Believe it or not, propiroception** (knowledge of where your body is in space) and coordination are not my strong suits.
[caption id="attachment_media-12" align="alignnone" width="2306"]
I'm very proud of the anatomical sketches in here...[/caption]
The final two days were spent shooting some simulation competitions with the Turkish and Estonian squads. In the mornings we shot a 720 ranking round at military pace, with the coach blowing the whistle generally waiting till the last person was only about 5 metres away from the shooting line before starting the next end. I was put on target 1 with Mete, and here I found myself locked in a three way battle against him, dehydration and my own shot timing. Even by my standards two arrows in the last thirty seconds is stressful. Still I held on, executed the technique changes I had made in the past 48 hours and produced a massive pair of 58s at the last to close out a personal best score of 662. Round robin head to heads in the afternoon were fun but relatively uneventful... with no competition for motivation or knockout bracket to provoke the survival instincts it can be hard to focus and I got a little annoyed with myself towards the end.
[caption id="attachment_1005" align="alignnone" width="4160"]
Now this is a fun way to start the day...[/caption]
The final day was tough. I woke up very sore and unable to turn my head to the side, which is not a good starting point for archery. A combination of my Errea compression top, some aggressive massage and a lot of gradual warming up got it just about working in time for another round. Going into this one I knew my body was not going to survive another punishing session of "Tom Holds". It was time to change something, and so in practice I went for maximum speed through the clicker, getting my six arrows off in about 155 seconds each time. Hey, this is a lot easier! And so the round began, often with the first arrow off centre as I tried to force the good timing but the rest was solid enough. After forcing a weak shot away instead of coming down to make sure I finished in under three minutes I decided I may have been over doing it a little, and so slowed down to about 210 seconds for the six on the last couple of ends, allowing time to wait for the wind to die down as well. Another strong finish (57, 57, 55) left me very happy on 650, beating Mete by two tens (finally!).
We finished our final day with a mixed mixed team head to head bracket, combining the top 12 men with the top 12 women regardless of country. As second seed I was paired up with Bessi Kasak from Estonia, who I found out has been on a break from international archery for longer than I've been shooting! We had a great time taking turns to carry each other in the matches, scraping through some close sets and just narrowly missing out on others. The brackets kept going even when you lost a match, so although we gave it our all in what might be the only 9th-10th playoff I'll ever take part in, it was not to be.
[caption id="attachment_993" align="alignnone" width="2048"]
Game face vs happy face... thanks Bessi![/caption]
Well its been an epic post but it was also an epic trip! I feel like I've had ten weeks of outdoor season experience crammed into ten days, had a fantastic time with Becky, Sarah and Jess and will definitely look to come back another year!
Some extra pictures that wouldn't fit anywhere else...
[gallery ids="1023,1024,1025,1026,1027,1028,1029,1032,1033,1034" type="slideshow"]