Fit 360: We Shred CLT & Faith, Fellowship, and Firearms

TRAINING LEAD-UP

Tuesday, June 23:

Rucked around Freedom Park and surrounding neighborhoods with a 30#RPC playing Ingress in work clothes, wearing Ballistic Trainers, to meet some Ingress objectives.

Covered 4.5 mi in 2:05:48.

Wednesday, June 24:

18A "Upper Body Prep" in 29:52, then HDT-KB "Sinful Sixes" 15 min AMRAP with a 35#KB, although I could try more next time. It was a nice one... nothing crazy, but it gets your blood and muscles moving. I added HDT-KB 12.5.3 (arms) in 55:53 afterwards, since it looked like a good one, and I wanted to do arms, but I didn't have enough CNS recovery to do the 18A Push-Up workout. The HDT-KB workout was another really good one!

For dry fire...

6 mags of draw and shoot

first mag slow and inconsistent, second mag with more typical times)
next 2, focusing on clamping my grip from front to back
trying to be target-focused

2 mags of running to a fault line and shooting cardboard

harder to actively tink about clamping in this case
challenging to move and land properly when I'm tiptoe-ing on the second floor of my townhouse to avoid disturbing neighbors with stomping around

2 mags of surprise break from seated

it was tough for my hands to have to grip continuously for this drill, but it's probably good for building strength for the future, anyway
the sight seems to yank up and right on teh trigger squeeze
it felt OK overall

Thursday, June 25:

USNWC Open Flow Yoga with Celeste. Then a 3 mi ruck on South Main in MACV2s with a 30#R plus mat in the V2 rucker afterwards. CY and I stayed for live music afterwards.

WE SHRED CLT

There was a free day of womens' MTB clinics and group rides this weekend, at Col. Francis Beatty Park. Pretty neat! I haven't been to something like this before.

Spots for the clinics were limited, but I was fortunate to get there early enough to partake in the Fundamentals morning clinic and the Pump Track afternoon clinic. Those who didn't get clinic spots could sign up for group rides of different difficulty levels.

For the Fundamentals clinic, the instructor started by explaining bike setup. I didn't realize that the goal was to use one finger on the breaks. I feel like I might use three fingers sometimes, haha. That makes sense that you'd want to put more priority on gripping your actual handlebars, though. I also didn't realize that you want to engage both your front and rear brakes in most situations.

We practiced neutral and "ready" positions and feathering the breaks to get to a rolling stop. We then rode of a supposedly blue but more like green trail as a group for a couple of laps. It was good. There was a variety in skill levels of people who attended, from people who have probably ridden for a while but maybe had never taken an official class before, to those who probably only recently riding.

Other good tips:

- Have your seat about level with your handlebars

- In the ready position, try to have your weight on your legs, not your arms

- Have your hands close to the ends of your handlebars, so that you have good awareness of where they are and reduce the chance of clipping a tree. Some people might even want to chop and shorten their handlebars if they are small and don't need super wide ones.

During the lunch break, there were a couple of food truck options. There was also a bike maintenance clinic. A variety of vendors and charities had tents up. It's also neat seeing what everyone's bike setups are like.

At the pump track clinic, we had a full class.

(Photo Credit: Agota Frink)

We started with just riding in the ready position. Then, we added pumping, in which you drop your weight from your hips to your legs, with no weight on your hands.

You want to pump before and after the crest. We practiced on increasingly large ramps... a large ramp can actually be easier to learn on than a small one, since you actually have time between pumps at the crest.

(Photo Credit: Agota Frink)

Then, we could do as many laps as we wanted to, on the close segment of the pump track, while the instructor gave us individual feedback.

After the clinic time was over, there was still time before the overall event ended, so I ended up going out on a loop around the park, starting with the green trails. They weren't bad, like our first instructor said... there's grade inflation at this park, so blues are more like greens, and greens are more like gravel greenways. The signage wasn't always clear, but I eventually got to where I wanted to be. Generally, the park isn't gigantic, and you're mainly making your way around a big pond, so you won't get too, too lost.

Since it wasn't bad and I still had time, I took another loop around, but this time, trying the blue trail options. One of the blue trails, the Serpentine, did have a very technical downhill that I decided to skip, and it was a legit blue, I feel. The others were manageable. I guess part of it is that on the ones marked as blue, there were sometimes ramps made out of boards or rocks that you could either do or bypass. I didn't do all of them, but maybe some of them are harder, making them and its trail blue-level.

On my second time around, I did end up clipping the tree seen on the right in the photo (coming from the opposite direction), when I was trying to avoid the roots on the left from the big tree. That hurt, since I got tossed into the roots of the tree.

After cooling down from the ride and waiting a bit more, they had raffle giveaways. I got some bike lube.

(Photo Credit: Agota Frink)

I don't naturally seek out womens-specific events, since the open coed ones seem to satisfy everything I want, but this was different. Maybe it's because I don't have as much confidence on bike, so that's probably where the appeal of women-specific events is for people. You feel OK being vulnerable and seeking out help in this environment. It was cool to see women from all kinds of backgrounds and ages coming together to learn how to get better. And thanks for the guys who were out manning booths or setting up ramps for people to practice skills on.

This was a great event, and I'd definitely do another!

(Photo Credit: Agota Frink)

FAITH, FELLOWSHIP, AND FIREARMS

This was my second time attending one of the events. I really enjoyed my first one and if anything, wished that the sermon part had been longer. Based on my schedule, I wasn't able to make it out to another one until now.

The message was great, and the speaker used analogies to share about faith, like asking if we get as excited about sharing the gospel, as we are about talking about all the coolest new shooting gear, and how just like it takes focused practice to improve shooting skills, it takes effort to put yourself out there and share the gospel.

After sharing prayer requests and prayer time, we went out to the range. I stopped at the zero range to shoot 5, adjust up 0.2, go back down 0.1, slip the turret, and shoot 1 more to confirm.

The organizer had 4 mini-stages prepped. There was a 2 min par time, but this was informal, so if you wanted to finish off a COF for practice purposes, you could..

Stage 1:

From the left, top, right, and top concrete cylinders, shoot 2 rounds at a 540yd c-zone

Learnings/Outcomes: 3/8

- I used 15x power, which was fine

- I held center, since the wind was straight on

- I pre-dialed 2.4 and remembered to set parallax

- I hit at first, and it felt good, but I missed the rest. I don't know what ended up changing.

- There was more wobbble than expected

- The modified standing on the top cylinder felt more stable

- The gun did feel tilted back, balance-wise, with lots of pressure (and therefore wobble) coming from my shoulder. I may need to try to balance the gun better on the bag for barricade-style shooting

- I still did better than many others, though they might've been shooting 5.56

Stage 2:

From the tires, alternate left flat tire, right diagonal tire, left flat tire, right diagonal tire, each time, shooting the diamond and the circle at 630yd

Learnings/Outcomes: 7/8?

- I added 0.1 to my dope based on the previous stage's RO saying afterwards that I was low earlier. So maybe I really did need to slip 0.2 up instead of 0.1 up during zeroing.

- I therefore dialed 3.5 instead of just 3.4 for this distance. The RO said I hit waterline on this one.

- I held straight for wind, since the wind had turned a bit towards being from the target's direction

- I did pacman up for the flat tire and pacman down for the diagonal tire, picking a level that was good for me height-wise

- I took more time on this stage making sure my rifle was balaanced on the bag, to reduce the amount of shoulder pressure

- I couldn't tell if I was hitting, but the RO was calling impacts

- The RO was apparently a top tier shooter, who seemed to be familiar with Oklahoma's top tier shooters' best practices... he said that if he were to shoot this stage again, he'd do bipod front, tripod rear for stability on the shaky tires... the Okey boys always look for tripod rear opportunities

Stage 3:

From the center, left, center, right, center barrels, shoot the dear head at 550yd.

If you hit the first shot from the spot, you can move on to the next spot immediately. If you miss, you have one more try from that spot, for a max of 2 tries per spot iteration.

Learnings/Outcomes: 3/5

- The RO told me after my first shot and hit that I hit him on the "ear balls", which was funny... so I ehdld low for the rest, shooting 7 rounds to get my 3 hits from 5 positions

- I timed out, but continued with my last 2 shots or so

Stage 4:

Shoot at a 480 (or 507yd... it was debated) C-zone target from any 6 lattice positions. If you hit, move on to the next spot. If you miss, try again for a max of 2 tries/spot.

Learnings/Outcomes: 5/5

- Since a few of the participants had a shorter range than what the RO had ranged, I split the differeence and dialed 2.2 instead of 2.1 (on top of 2.0 + 0.1)

- I held center

- It took a lot of time to remove my gun and change the bag location and replace the gun each time, since the gun was so long and heavy

- I timed out but was allowed to finish

- I used the corners of the grids for stability

- I had initially considered using the second-to-lowest set of grids, but I'm glad that I didn't, since it would've required even more movement with the heavy and long gun to get into those positions, vs moving from standing

Afterwards, a few of us messed around until about 12:30 (I just watched others shoot at other targets)

I then went to practice pistol...

- 6 mags of doubles... tending high right, so I'm not waiting long enough for the dot to drop back to the target. I might also not be watching the exact spot on the target that I want and may be watching the sight and just seeing brown behind it and shooting, vs picking a specific spot on the target and focusing on it

- I practiced entries and exits by doing shuttle runs and shooting pairs at each stop

- I practiced throttle control for shooting speed by starting far, moving forward and shooting another pair, then running forward again to start vertical walk and shoot