Tied my PR at the 2014 CAGP!

I'm back from Toronto where I was competing at the 2014 Canadian Airgun Grand Prix and pretty happy with how I've started 2014.

Normally I'd fly into this event on Thursday to give myself a full day before competing but with a busy work schedule and everything I cut my trip down by a day. I literally got off the plane and went straight to the venue and got in some pre-event training.

I had a tough time getting to sleep at a decent time thanks to the 3 hr time zone change. I think all in all I got maybe 4 hrs of sleep before shooting at 8am (5am to what I'm used to). My first of two matches went really well with my 60 shot series going 94, 94, 94, 95, 97, and ending with a 97 for a personal record tie of 571/600 -- which was the highest 10m men's score shot over the weekend! I shot a 571 in 2011 when I was here at the same event.

Team BC took 1st place and I took the Gold in the Master class

After shooting my 571 I spent the rest of the day in a High Performance Rifle and Pistol Clinic which was really useful and packed with lots of information. The main takeaways for me were from Dr. Kristine Dalton and her team from the The University of Waterloo School of Optometry and Vision Science. Vision in shooting sports are crucial and she covered topics such as ocular dominance, tear film quality, and vernier acuity. Awesome. Other great sessions were Dr. Demetry Assimakopoulos and Dr. Ceara Higgins on injury prevention and athletic performance (with Olympian Avianna Chao), Olympian Sharon Bowes on training at your best, Lou Pino talking about mindfulness training and the InteraXon Muse, and Steve Hunt, on developing consistency in performance.

My second day score was 558 which put me in first place after the two qualification matches. I ran into issues during the Finals which I should have prepared better for. Lesson here is to make sure you're current on rule amendments and find out from the officials if they're going to be following them. Important!

Our BC Team, consisting of Thomas Logan, John Berta, and me took 1st place!

Next up in the month of March is the BC Championships, City of Calgary Championships, and then the first stop on the 2014 ISSF World Cup tour in Fort Benning!

Looking forward to 2014

It's been awhile since I've posted an update here and I figured with 2014 off to a great start, I better get some news on here. If all goes to plan I'll have a busy year of travelling to various shooting competitions all over the place. Awesome!

First up... some events in Canada:

• Feb 14-16: 2014 Canadian Airgun Grand Prix - Toronto, ON
• Mar 7-9: BC Airgun Championships - Richmond, BC
• Mar 14-16: City of Calgary Airgun Championships - Calgary, AB

Then as a member of the National Development Team representing Canada on the 2014 ISSF World Cup Tour. The first stop will be held on March 26-April 3 at Fort Benning, USA - more information can be found on the ISSF website calendar.

The ranges they have at Fort Benning for ISSF competitions are excellent, definitely some of the best I've been to in North America. I've competed there twice in the past already (2011 USA Fall Selection & 2013 USA Nationals) so that will be an advantage going into that competition.

After that ISSF World Cup, I've got limited travel planned until June when I'm hoping to get to the back to back World Cup events happening in Munich and Maribor. Not many details are up online for those two events yet though.

Next post will have details on the three 'local' shooting clubs I train at!

For more frequent (and often tech or sports related) updates follow me on Twitter at @alharding.