This is actually secretly an advantage in my opinion. If you dry fire your perfect simulation of the stages and get used to the times you can usually run it in, you build up an expectation in your mind. But when things don't go exactly as expected on match day, then you'll start to doubt your training and your skill and the bad performance will be a negative feedback loop.
What I've found works for me is to not even establish any kind of expectation like that. I shoot USPSA primarily, so there I set up challenges that are representative of what I'll see at a match or on a classifier, but haven't ever exactly replicated a classifier to try to practice it. Any expectation I set of what I could do in practice would invariably not happen on match day, so even having the idea in my head that I could shoot a certain score on a certain classifier is more likely to cause harm than good.
So set up stages that are representative of the type of challenges you see at Steel Challenge. Set them up harder than you'll see in a match. Set them up easier. Set the up mirror reversed. Make up your own stages that are a hybrid between two standard stages. Practice everything so that when you step up to a particular stage, you're not simply confident that you can shoot that particular stage well. You're confident that you can shoot anything put in front of you well.
This is an excellent strategy for NSSF Rimfire. Which is getting new ownership and will become the Rimfire Challenge (or somesuch thing that for some reason I can't recall).
The key to Steel Challenge, as best I can tell, is repetition. You set up one of the 8 stages and you shoot it until you become physically ill and throw up. Then you shoot it some more. Then you set up another stage and repeat the process.
Quite frankly this is not super appealing to me. However, it is a discipline in which I get to shoot Rimfire race guns really fast. For that reason alone, I'm in. Eventually I will shoot PCC and other things. The upside of Steel Challenge is that major matches are prevalent. I can shoot state championships in many neighboring states.
NSSF Rimfire is different. Instead of having the same 8 stages at every match, you never really know what you're going to get. It might be 5 plates. Or 7. Or 6. Or maybe 3 but you have to double tap two of them. One never knows.
I've said this often to my buddies over the past year: Steel Challenge measures how well you shoot 8 very specific stages. NSSF Rimfire measures how well you shoot steel.
The randomness appeals to me. But I think in order to really get good at Steel Challenge one must embrace the consistency of what you'll be shooting.
This drives some people crazy. It is likely that I eventually get tired of shooting the same thing over and over again too. And then will join the ranks of the people who just can't stand it anymore. Who knows?
For me, the questions are as follows:
1. Is my goal to win matches or actually become a better shooter?
2. If I want to be a better shooter what does that entail? In other words, what specific disciplines am I trying to get better at?
I think it is entirely possible that a fellow could end up dominating one small aspect of a given discipline and never see even the tiniest improvement shooting his carry gun. I used to think that trigger time was trigger time and every hour spent on the range helps. But once you get super specialized, like I am now, I'm not sure that is the case.
Thanks for the insight and advice.