MIL wrote: ↑Wed Aug 07, 2024 5:39 am
Well, you have choices to make Trev. The good news is that they are your choices and the success/failure of those choices lie solely in your hands. You have the option of doing nothing with regards to your setup next year, and if you don't it''s not unreasonable to expect the same thing next year. Only you can determine if you're satisfied with that.
I will address a couple of things (for clarity sake if nothing else)
1. Don't worry about the wind direction. You can't control it or influence it. There's nothing you can do about it; so you have to work with it, not against it.
2. I would say (in my opinion) that your YB are under-trained (especially compared to those boys who are fighting it out at the top of the sheet each week).
Your YB are giving you their best, based on what you are giving them. They have the capabiity of coming on a good line each time that they go in the basket, but this "drilling" has not been instilled in them. As such they are learnng on the job. The ones that have any sense will sort it out sooner than the ones that are idiots - and we all have some of those. In the meantime however, mistakes are being made, "dead miles" are being flown and time is being lost.
3. You've said that it's the longer races that are yuor interest. I can appreciate and respect that. I was brought up in a house where my Dad's No.1 priority was to win the Longest Race of the Year. He had a family of pigeons (Van Hee) that excelled in that discipline and he prepared the pigeons in a way to ensure that his pigeons were in "super form" for the last month of the season.
4. You're fortunate in that you have Alan Still in your club.
He offers you clarity on the way forward. It's very simple, if you were wanting to match him (and ideally beat him on a regular basis) then you have to match his attention to detail, his workrate and the type of pigeon that he works with. He's a good sprint flier with fundamentally fast pigeons. If he were racing against multi-National winners in your Club then I would bet every penny I had that 9/10 in races up to around 150 miles or so he'd pull their pants down every week. He has to - common sense dictates it National winners tend to be Middle-Long distance men. Stick those pigeons against a good sprinter in races up to 150 miles and it's men against boys. I know because I've done it myself.
5. Points Number 3 and 4 above basically feed into No.5. There's a decent enough chance that this more "relaxed" approach with the YB (open hole and feeding as much as they like etc) will reap its reward in the 216 ml race in a few weeks time. This is for several reasons. Hopefully the YB will be a bit more clued up by then - and this race has the potential to call upon a bit more stamina than they've been called on for before. We also need to respect that your biggest danger (Alan) I would say will be unlikely to send his entire team to that race. I certainly wouldn't feel the need to. It's 6 weeks into the season and by then I'm looking at my team and thinking "You, You, You, You, You, You and You - you're for next year - these others can contend the last races"
6. Potentially a bit more provocative this one. Some pigeons have come into the breeding team who are more suited to the faster/shorter races.
I think this is a mistake. You've said yourself it's the Distance races you're interested in. It's one thing to house a faster sprint based pigeon, but if you don't work it like a good sprinter then the bloke down the road will, guess what? Yep, he'll pull your pants down every week in these races - because his focus and desire is these races. So me, If I were Distance minded I'd be saying to him
"You can have these shorter races, I can't compete with you on these. But you see these longer races. They're MINE" and I'd make myself bloody hard to beat in those races. Better to be Master of one trade than Jack of none.
Good luck with your choices
all the best.
and I've no doubt that if I'd put in some hard yards they may well have just done that 
