Yeah Bronc - I like to pretend I'm still a "competitive person," so I still shoot matches and still fight Judo & BJJ, still play video games, heck, I still want to get on bulls every day. There are pro's I shoot against any given weekend which eat, sleep, and breathe rifle competition - that ain't me any more. But I still like to play. I know I won't win, but I still want to play. So maybe that's the way I'd say it to myself - I don't live for competition, I live for a challenge.
But as you mention - it's a great challenge to accelerate a learning curve. I'll offer an anecdote from my recent life to that point:
I don't get on Facebook very often, really only to see my nieces and nephew, and share info about our son and his activities with family - and keep pace with precision rifle matches. About a month ago, Aug 4 to be exact, I noticed a post by an old high school friend whom I had not seen in over 15yrs. He posted a photo of his 6.5 creed Bergara + Vortex rig on a bench, with the caption, "Getting better at 400yrds, working my way out to 1,000 someday." So I sent him a message - said if he wanted to get together at my range back home sometime, we'd have him on target at 1,000yrds within an afternoon. I asked how long he'd had the rifle - a little over a year - and how far he'd tried shooting it - only to 400yrds. The conversation evolved that evening as we discussed timing and location where we'd get together to shoot, and I pointed out I was shooting a match that following weekend not to far from home. I invited him to come along and try it out, knowing 3 things: 1) he'd have a chance to learn a lot more in a single day at a match than he had in months of shooting at home by himself. 2) he'd get a chance to engage targets at 1,000yrds+. And 3) he'd hit a target at 1,000yrds+.
So we had to hurriedly source a couple 10rnd magazines for his rifle, get Strelokpro downloaded for him and established a trued BC, measure his true muzzle velocity, and the hardest part, source 150+ rounds of 147grn ELDm's. But it all came together in those few days, and he came to the match.
Almost as if scripted in a movie, several stages had targets out at 800 to 900 and change, but the only stage of the day with targets past 1,000yrds. Unlike most newbies, he didn't "blank" any stages, and shot very well on several stages. The last stage of the day was a long range troopline, the photo with the "1088yrd" label in my original post above, I was spotting for him, noticed the wind picked up a bit during his run, and I saw both of his impacts hit the righthand, downwind edge of the 984yrd target, the second to last target in the stage. I called for him to hold an extra Minute of wind for the last target, and send it. "Dammit!" He hollered, as he yanked the trigger for the next shot, sending his bullet careening two full target widths off into the grass. "Settle in, breath, and ask this last one a little more nicely."
DING!! "Impact!"
Nothing mystical, nothing magical, trumpets didn't sound and Angels didn't sing from the Heavens, but it sure felt like they had for my hold high school buddy.
Afterwards, I asked him - since your home range only reaches 600yrds, and since it's taken you a year to get to 400yrds, so thinking back 6 days ago, how long did you think it was going to take to get to 1,000yrds? "I don't know, maybe never, really." A full size IPSC might seem like a big target, since it's 18" x 30", but it's equivalent to hitting a golfball at 100yrds, and doing so with a 22-24mph wind call, pushing the bullet the full width of the target.
Making the shots wasn't the part that really astounded him, it was the fact it really was that simple, just being given the appropriate tools and instruction. Just a matter of making the opportunity, and taking it.