We've literally just come back from shooting the team round. We were ranked 3rd / 9 teams. We had a bye to start. Our 2nd round was against Turkey. We started off level, but by the 3rd end we were 3 points down. In the last end we blasted in a 59 end (the judge called the 6th one narrowly out) and won the match by 1 point!

This put us against the Russians who were ranked above us in 2nd place. We knew it would be tough. We started 1 up on them, the 2nd end we were 2 up, and by the 3rd end we were just 1 up. After the last end we had tied 230-230 (i got 79/80). We went into a 1 arrow shoot off and Rikki, Lucy and I all put in awesome 10s, and the Russians put in 10, 9, 9. We are in the Gold medal match tomorrow!!!

Having not shot a very good qualification round, I was ranked 16th. This put me against Gladys Willems whom I have a long history of H2Hs with - including knocking her out in Dover 07 and stopping her making the World Cup finals!

She blasted in 10s during practice, but during the round didnt shoot as well - i narrowly beat her 113-112.

This then put me against the 1st seed, and the first women in the world to shoot a 1400! I was in a great place, everything was working - we tied 30-30, then 60-60, then 90-90!!! Some of the USA team came and stood behind us. I shot 10, 9, 9. Mary continued the relentless 10s to complete a 120! I was out on a 118 pass! So overall thats put me 9th :-S

Feeling really good going into this tournament. The qualifying round was yesterday. It was a bit up and down. After the 1st and 2nd end I was leading the field. I then tailed off. But the 4th doz I put in a 118 and felt really happy. 3rd from last end, my target companion shot on my face, so I had to wait and shoot after everyone else in front of the 50 targets and audience which I have to admit affected me and I shot a rubbish last doz. I finished with 572, about 10 points down and in 16th place.

H2Hs tomorrow!

I was feeling pretty good coming into this tournament. The qualification round went fairly well, average doz + 1 not good, gave me a 575 and ranked me joint first with Nichola Simpson.

We then went into the H2H matches and I started well in these 116, 115, 116. This took me into the semi finals where I was against Victoria Eaton (who qualified for Dover in 07 but was unable to shoot). I didnt shoot well in this match and we tied 113-113. 1st arrow shoot off 9-9, 2nd arrow 9-9, 3rd arrow i finally hit the 10!!! 10-9.

I went through to the final against Nichola Simpson. Neither of us shot well 113-112 - I won. Its the 1st time Ive been Indoor National Champion. Its unlikely I will be able to defend it next year as 20-30 of the best archers in the county will be in Vegas over the same weekend - really is a shame.

During this squad we were able to practice our team round for the World Champs - Lucy, Rikki and me. We've decided to shoot a single arrow and run through twice (6 arrows within 2 mins). This format has to be done in the finals anyway.

Its the first time Ive gone out to Vegas. Work has always stopped me going due to limited amounts of leave! My new employer however is really supportive :-)

Of course this was the week of horrific snow! Our flight was on the Monday - which we were going to drive down to in the morning, but ended up going Sunday night. We crawled down all the roads - jack-knifed lorries on the sides of the road - very scary!

We arrived on time for the flight and checked in, went through security, had breakfast. Then they called us and told us the flight was cancelled due to 'weather conditions'. However the airport was open, all other fights left (nothing to do with the 1/2 full plane both today and tomorrow!). We were lucky to find a hotel.

The next day the flight was delayed another 4 hours, but we all loaded up. The captain said "apologies for the delay, we are now just removing...can you believe it, some bows and arrows which got loaded onto our plane!" We all stood up - there ours!! Thank goodness he made the joke otherwise we would have been bow-less!

Anyway, finally we got there. The first day we went sight seeing at the Grand Canyon which was pretty amazing.

In the competition we shoot on the big recurve 10, just 30 arrows per day, for 3 days. Its a different mentality because you dont want to drop any points!

The 1st day of competition didnt go great, I cleaned the first end, but overall i dropped 4 points. In the 2nd day I dropped 3 points - down in 17th place. On the last day I finally got it together and cleaned it 300/300, which helped a lot and brought me back into 12th place - getting nearly all of my entry fee back in return.

Another fantastic tournament. Nichola Simpson went 899 to take 1st place for the 2nd year running, and the mens compound final was probably the best in history. 18 men cleaned it, and the shoot off was a record number of head to heads - aprrox 13 in total, but Reo Wilde managed to scoop it!

The usual mob travelled down to Nimes on the train on the Friday. Up at the crack of dawn (no, actually before!) to take the 7-8 hour journey down to the South of France. We managed to get straight to the practice hall that evening!

We shot a Fita 18 on the Sat. This went pretty well for me, finishing with 579 (I was robbed of a line cutter so ill think of it as my 580! lol!).

This placed me in 4th, and we shoot the 1st match the same evening. The ranking round started at 15.45, and we waited for the scores before starting the 1st round at 20.50! I was unfortunately drawn against a fellow Brit - Kay Smith who i beat by just a point.

All the remaining head to heads were on the Sunday. By now, i had managed to bend most of my arrows as we were shooting at strammet boards (yes, they still make them!), so i had a less favourable set for the H2Hs. I came up against Gladys Willems. It was pretty tight, but she got me by 1 point! Gladys was then knocked out by the eventual winner Anastasia Anastasio. I finished 14th overall.

7 ladies compounds qualified for the World Champs this year. 6 competed at Lilleshall for one of 3 places. We shot an 18m fita - which i have to say none of us did very well! I shot dissapointing 568, only 3 points behind the best on the day. In the afternoon we then shot H2H matches against each other.

I won 3 of my 5 H2H matches, but on the way I put in a 120 12 arrow pass - a national record! Fantastic to shoot one which will stand forever (at least until they have us shooting at a 5p size 10!).

Over the weekend, we used Peters scoring system. Every arrow shot adds to your overall score. Also, there are bonus scores - if you reach a good set score, theres a percentage added, but also there are minus scores if minimum scores are not obtained.

It was very close between us, Rikki Bingham won by 1.5 points over myself and Lucy Holderness came 3rd 3.5 points behind me. Nichola Simpson was 4 points behind that. Peter decided not to change the 3rd place, so Rikki, myself and Lucy will be at the World Champs in March

We flew out to Holland on Thurs. F2F is a very different format than any other international event. Usually we would shoot a qualification round (indoors = fita 18m), from which we would be ranked and then go into a sudden death head to head stage. The problem with this format is that 12 arrows is a very small amount, and at international level, sometimes the 'best' archer is knocked out. So at F2F you are pooled into a group of 6 archers. You then shoot a 12 arrow H2H against each person in the group. You get 2 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for lossing. The top 2 archers on this point system within th group go through, and also a number of the highest loosers overall (those 5 H2H matches add up into a Fita 18m).

In my first group there were only 4 of us due to slightly smaller numbers of competitors. I lost just one match, and therefore went into the next round.

Within this group I shot pretty well, winning 3 matches, drew 1, lost one. This was enough to put me through to the last group phase - the last 12 archers. My first match was difficult against Gladys Willems but I took her to a tie 116-116. I then lost to Nichola Simpson, won my 3rd match convincingly 116-111, but then trailed off to loose the last 2 matches. I finished 11th overall.

This was the first time I have competed in this tournament (its bi-annual). I have to say it was a really good format, and I really enjoyed it. It really does allow the best archer to proceed which is the way it should be- not just 12 lucky arrows!

The finals themselves are in a set format. Each 3 arrows = 1 set. Best of 7 sets. Again, this means if an archer has 1 bad arrow, the whole thing is not over. It makes it much more interesting. To enter this tournament you need to be a member of a national team or pro team. I would recommend it - fantastic international experience!

We had a EAF (England Archery Fed) squad in November at Lilleshall. This was a pretty interestig squad as we had use of 'Slow Mo' - a company with high speed filming. Ive got video of my arrow clearance at 10,000 frames per second (I wish I could post it on here!). Very cool, and a few tweaks to equipment.