RachelFerd
Well-Known Member
Well, in terms of a more comprehensive write up.... here's a longer account. And my favourite photo from the whole thing too - always helps when the photographer is at the fence you saw a perfect shot to!
WEDNESDAY
Houghton was a five hour drive away - lorry absolutely packed to the gills as I also decided to bring the 5yo and all of his stuff along. We arrived just in time to join the queue of people rushing to get horses through the initial vet passport check and into their stables in time for the competitors briefing.
Then on to the first nerve wracking part of the week - scrubbing myself and the horse up ready for the first horse inspection. This was a 15 minute walk away in front of the hall itself - lovely buzzy setting and a sigh of relief when we made it through to be accepted into the competition. He's not a horse with a big trot - he scuttles across the ground and is the sort that you always squint at a bit so relieved to get this out of the way.
Then a nice chilled evening of exercising both horses in the park in the sunshine, and then hopping on the bikes for a tasty dinner at the Kings Head Country Hotel which was only about 2 miles away in Great Bircham. A couple of tables down we spotted Leslie Law and the US nations cup team having dinner too!
THURSDAY
Started with a spin around the British Novice in the BS classes for the 5yo - went a bit green and rolled a few poles, but all good experience. Then took a first look at the XC course - considerably more technical than it has been in the past few runnings with a refreshed stronger water jump. Gulp.
Had a late afternoon dressage time, so spent a while warming up - felt a bit rigid in the hand in quite a bit of the warm up. Thought I'd got him to a better place in the last ten minutes, but then went into the arena and rode like an idiot with my reins about 6 inches too long. Managed to scrape a 36.7 by virtue of not doing anything absolutely horrendous, but still annoyed that I didn't ride him anywhere near to the best of our abilities. [Not that our abilities in the dressage are high - he trots like a crab and his bum is about 4 inches higher than his withers, so we can only do variations of downhill....!]
FRIDAY
Started with another BN BS spin for the 5yo - this time less poles down, but a stupid stop where I was experimenting with sitting quietly to keep things soft... that didn't work. Back to the drawing board there!
Had a horrendous headache and felt totally knackered - had been getting over a nasty bout of flu/cold from the weekend anyway, so think it had all caught up with me. Climbed onto the luton and slept for 2 hours which seemed to be a cure!
Got up and walked the XC twice over - viewable here - and tried to come up with definite plans for how I was going to ride it. In parts stole advice from Piggy March and Simon Grieve whilst they were walking combinations too. Think it is now quite interesting to walk courses where we're at the stage that the questions and answers aren't always super obvious. That individual ways of going need a lot of thought. Although there was nothing HUGE, there was plenty of accuracy questions - testing ability to turn left or right to a corner fence, hold a line over angles and curve both ways through 3-part combinations. Plus be bold enough to jump a good sized drop into water and be bold to big open trakehners and angled rails over ditches.
This was Simon's non competing day, so we rode over to the jumping warm up arena in the afternoon for the stewarded jumping practice session and popped a handful of jumps - mainly for my benefit so I could feel like I had my eye in. All was well, so hacked about for a bit before putting him away for the night. After 2 days of dressage we were in a rather unspectacular 99th place!!
SATURDAY
We were on fairly early for XC which was good as less time to worry about it all. Packed buckets, cold boots and ice and took it down to the XC start area with us so we could cool him down quickly afterwards. He set out like he meant business, but still had a decent spook coming into the trakehner at 4. Got our act together over the next few - weaved through the bending angles line downhill at 6 and then was really good and bold jumping into the water at 9. Unfortunately at 12 and 13ab (all related on bending 4 stride turns) I cocked up the second part, asked him to turn too sharply and got there on too short a half stride, so we popped out to the side. Absolutely kicking myself to have made a silly rider line error again - and he's too sensible to jump from an idiotic place. Circled round, popped through and made a good job of the rest of the course - including the big drop into the quarry right at the end and the hard left turn to an open corner going away from home. So thrilled with him. Not so much with me. Had possibly found him a bit wooden and un-bendy to ride in general so definitely need to do some work on agility, rideability and fluidity to avoid these silly mistakes. Still finished within the time - and pleased with how he kept galloping to the line all the way around a 9 minute track - much further than he's ever gone before.
Cooled him down quickly and vets checked his heart rate - they were pleased with a very quick recovery, so at least we know we got the fitness work right.
After a long period of walking him and then hand grazing him, we popped him away and got the 5yo back out for some arena eventing - which he enjoyed a lot more than the pure SJ - he just LOVES a cross country fence!
Spent a good chunk of the afternoon hand grazing them both and making sure that Simon didn't stiffen up before Sunday's vet check. Silly horse did manage to make a bid for freedom later in the evening though to try and turn himself out onto the hand grazing field - which I renamed 'field of dreams' for how much they loved grazing it. At least he looked like he was moving well as he sailed across the field without a human attached to him.... caught quickly and put away for the night after that embarrassing performance!
SUNDAY
OMG no-one warned me how early the trot up would be scheduled for!! A 7.30am trot-up necessitated a pre-6am get up time to do all the prep and make sure Simon was sufficiently loosened up and ready to go. Even more nerve wracking than the first one was! A horse a couple before me was sent to the holding box, which got my stress levels up! We made it through without a hesitation from the jury though - so we were passed to continue on to SJ.
Having not troubled the leaders we were very early to jump in the reverse order SJ. Warm-up was initially quite crowded and stressy and I kept seeing horrible tight little spots to the warm up fences. Gave myself a talking to and remembered how to ride.... he felt probably a bit quieter and tighter than he normally does for ODE SJ in the warm-up, having galloped 9 minutes day before. But when he went into the ring he perked up and did a pretty decent job of jumping around. He managed to have the smallest upright on the course at f2 down, but the rest stayed up (despite a bit of tappy toe tapping) to just add 4f to our score. And we nipped round a tight corner to avoid the time penalties that most of the early horses were picking up too. Very glad to cross the finishing line for a score on the board and a completion.
No, finishing in 85th place is not very spectacular. But we got the job done and I've learned a lot in the process. We were in a section packed to the rafters with top names on their very smart young horses - just watching them ride and their management of the horses on site has been educational it itself.
It has definitely left me wanting to have another go - learn from this first experience and try and improve on where we are. I've got a couple of training issues to iron out on XC rideability before we enter any intermediates. And Simon's got a couple of week's well earned downtime in the field too before we get going again too.
Not too keen on coming back to reality and being back to doing my day job again! Loved being part of the travelling circus of eventing for 5 days.
Also just wanted to reiterate what is so great about this sport - it is a competition about TRAINING not raw talent. Average riders with very average horses like mine can come and rub shoulders with some of the best in the country and get to learn from them and compete against them. It's a great feeling. And with better training and putting more work in, we'll continue to improve. Eventing is one infinite learning experience.
