The shooting started for me on the 11th March along with a tickle I my throat, my first competition being the Free Pistol pairs. Free Pistol is a .22 competition shot over a range of 50 metres, outdoors, and consists of 60 shots fired over a 2-hour period. As with the Commonwealth Games the first event is a team event, the team consisting of 2 shooters from each country, the combined score giving their final placing. My teammate for this event was Russell Young. The weather for the first match was fie but had turned a little chilly in the low 20's and as luck would have it it was the first competition of the day and started at 0900 hrs, which meant we had to be up at 0530 for breakfast and a 30-minute trip to the range from the Hotel. All this on top of being jet lagged. It was the first time in several months that I had actually had my free pistol out for a match event and I was feeling a little nervous. My match went quite well and I finished with a total score of 554 out of 600. A world class score being in the region of 560 out of 600. My teammate shot a disappointing 528, this gave a combined team score of 1082. This was enough to give us a team Silver. Australia taking the Gold with a team score of 1097 and India took Bronze with 1065. so come along to the NRA shooting range and i will give you a little tutition on how to shoot