TheMule
Well-Known Member
It's been a long old while since I did one of these! Yesterday we headed off to out first BE100 of the season.
So, dramatic ginger has been working really well at home through lockdown and I've been very lucky to have the use of facilities where I work to keep up her jump training. She's fit and well so I bit the bullet and entered an event 1 week after lockdown restrictions lifted. And then spent a long time stressing about not being prepared enough!
Anyway, said mare is now coming 8, has done lots of training but not a huge amount of eventing so is still a bit lacking in match practice and she has a habit of leaving her brain cell in the warm up and totally downing tools on me when she can’t cope with something (a judge's box, a filler she has seen 10 times before, a daffodil, that kind of thing)
Onto yesterday and our section list read like The Who’s who of eventing. Which is what I love about eventing, but also what makes us seriously outclassed in the dressage. She did her best test to date and got one of her worst scores. 37.5. Plenty to build on, the walk was conducted at snail's pace but there were no big mistakes anywhere, she just isn’t up together and consistent enough to gain the higher marks.
SJ was very bright and spooky which is not normally conducive to a nice round for her, but she warmed up well, went in, had a complete freak out at the arena crew, I touched her with the stick which offended her greatly and then we were off. No spooky horrible jumps, really keen and taking me. Clear!
XC walked like such a lovely track. She only did 1 event last year and she was a bit spooky and went quite green on me so we didn’t find our flow, but this time she came out the start box and clicked into it straight away. Dramatic mid-air spook at a geranium over fence 1 and again over the corner at fence 6 (a whole pot of the damn things ?) which did give us a fairly hairy flag moment and I did have to circle to double check with the fence judge that we were clear, but then she was super straight and on it around the rest. Crawled through the water which was a rather uninviting boggy puddle and then galloped on well to finish clear with 1.2 time.
So a great building block for the rest of the season. Next event is on Sunday, then nothing for a while. I think we'll aim to step up to Novice in the Summer if all stays positive.
So, dramatic ginger has been working really well at home through lockdown and I've been very lucky to have the use of facilities where I work to keep up her jump training. She's fit and well so I bit the bullet and entered an event 1 week after lockdown restrictions lifted. And then spent a long time stressing about not being prepared enough!
Anyway, said mare is now coming 8, has done lots of training but not a huge amount of eventing so is still a bit lacking in match practice and she has a habit of leaving her brain cell in the warm up and totally downing tools on me when she can’t cope with something (a judge's box, a filler she has seen 10 times before, a daffodil, that kind of thing)
Onto yesterday and our section list read like The Who’s who of eventing. Which is what I love about eventing, but also what makes us seriously outclassed in the dressage. She did her best test to date and got one of her worst scores. 37.5. Plenty to build on, the walk was conducted at snail's pace but there were no big mistakes anywhere, she just isn’t up together and consistent enough to gain the higher marks.
SJ was very bright and spooky which is not normally conducive to a nice round for her, but she warmed up well, went in, had a complete freak out at the arena crew, I touched her with the stick which offended her greatly and then we were off. No spooky horrible jumps, really keen and taking me. Clear!
XC walked like such a lovely track. She only did 1 event last year and she was a bit spooky and went quite green on me so we didn’t find our flow, but this time she came out the start box and clicked into it straight away. Dramatic mid-air spook at a geranium over fence 1 and again over the corner at fence 6 (a whole pot of the damn things ?) which did give us a fairly hairy flag moment and I did have to circle to double check with the fence judge that we were clear, but then she was super straight and on it around the rest. Crawled through the water which was a rather uninviting boggy puddle and then galloped on well to finish clear with 1.2 time.
So a great building block for the rest of the season. Next event is on Sunday, then nothing for a while. I think we'll aim to step up to Novice in the Summer if all stays positive.
