A week ago I participated in my first outdoor match. I was very scared to try it but deep down I knew it was time to get out of my comfort zone. If I want to start shooting at a more serious level I must get used to shooting outside. It is more difficult than indoor shooting for many reasons: First of all the stages are more difficult, there are more targets, there are various types of targets and bigger distances. Secondly it is extremely hard to move and be stable on the gravel and dirt. Weather conditions affect your shooting too, you have to spend all day outside waiting for your turn to shoot. It becomes a torture when it’s too hot. Moreover direct aggressive sun made my red dot so tiny, I could barely see it and multiple times I completely lost it and it ruined my shooting time. The lesson learned: now I shoot fully occluded with a black tape. Those are not excuses though, I still went there and did it, and I did surprisingly well: I am 12th out of 29 people in carry optics division, with 74% (out of winner’s 100%) which is a very decent performance. I shot 5 stages with one classifier. I failed the classifier but it did not upset me, I’ll do better next time.