It was 5:30AM on Tuesday morning, and I had just been woken up by the soft sound of my smart alarm clock telling me it was time for another day of earning a living. I rolled out of bed, turned off the alarm, and grabbed my phone to do a quick overview of the day’s events. While perusing Facebook, I noticed that a 6PM slot at the USPSA match had opened up literally minutes earlier. I posted that I wanted it, then politely asked my wife if I could shoot it. This is perhaps the wrong order of operations for a happy marriage, but, fortunately, she acquiesced.

That is the story of how I wound up shooting this USPSA match. You want to know how it went? Keep reading.

My RMR is still in the shop, so, like the previous IDPA match, I ran this one with my Glock 17 topped with a Brownells slide and Fastfire3 8MOA. Ammo was my own reloads. I had a few cycling issues during the match that I believe were related to the gun being dirty and not adequately lubed. I know Glocks are supposed to run forever even while dirty, but I guess there are limits.

I had to run stage 1 twice. As you can see from the video, when I say “run”, that is not an exaggeration – there was a 20yd sprint you had to do twice. I had a couple of stovepipes – I think my gun was running a little dirty at this juncture. I cleared them fast, but anything hurts. This is the first time I’ve ever had to do a sprint like this at a USPSA match, and I don’t think I did it badly, just slow (because I’m fat and out of shape). I could work on being ready to fire a little more quickly coming out of the run, but I’ve done much worse. I was 16/32 overall on this stage, and 4/8 in my division.

Stage 2 was fun, but I was slower than I should have been due to a failure to stage plan – my initial position should have been further to the left. I did steal a move from Cesar and deliberately move forward to the right when I transitioned to the other side of the first shooting area.

I also think I could have tightened up my transitions on the second set of targets and sped things up with my shooting. I watched a guy in my squad pull a couple misses on the head shots when they got too aggressive, and this perhaps made me overly careful. I was 21/36 overall, and 4/8 in my division.

I don’t have video of stage 3. You can basically see it on the right side of the stage 2 video – just a simple shoot 4, reload on the run, shoot 4 stage. I think I had another cycling failure during this one, which hurt given the stage’s short duration. I was 21/36 overall, and 4/8 in my division.

Stage 4 was the 13-04 classifier (“The Roscoe Rattle”). I re-lubed my gun before this stage, which resolved my cycling issues. I scored a 62% on it, which makes it my first B-level classifier. Just gotta shoot five more of those to graduate from mediocrity to average! I am trying to decide if I needed to be more aggressive on that first string. Also seemed like my reload could have been a touch quicker. I was 15/36 overall, and 2/8 in my division. (This was apparently the right time for me to step up my game!)

In terms of final match performance, I was 16/36 overall and 2/8 in my division, and managed to make progress towards B-class. I could have improved both those numbers if my gun hadn’t had cycling issues, but any match where I’m in the top half isn’t a bad match for me. I am slowly working my way towards my goal of hitting the top 10 consistently (and among people shooting pistols, I was top 10 in this match).