_Rach_
Well-Known Member
Eventing in the middle of the week is something that I dont do that much of, and this event happened to be during a busy time at work and I wasnt overly sure if I was going to be able to go. As I left work on Tuesday night my boss said see you tomorrow afternoon, so I knew then that I was allowed to go. So a bath for Twizzy and trailer prep on Tuesday night, and a quick clean of my tack, meant I was up at 5am on Wednesday morning to go for my 8.06 dressage start time at Shelford, which thankfully for me, is only 30mins down the road.
We arrived at Shelford around 6.30 and set off to walk the cross country course, the time wasnt displayed at the start box just the length of the course. So I attempted to use my Math Skills and work it out myself..... M divided by M/M cant be that hard, I got 4m18secs and later found out that the time was 4mins12sec so not a bad guess even if I did use the calculator on my phone... So off we set to walk the Novice course. The course was lovely; there were a lot of the same fences that we had jumped at Belton, so I was really excited to get my teeth stuck in and have a good fun round. There was, of course a couple of trickier lines that were there to catch people out. A corner attached to a telegraph pole. Offset roll tops, hedge to skinny brush 4 forward left hand curving strides to a triple brush, offset hedges and lots of lovely full up tables and shinnies dotted about the place.
After walking the course we headed off to the dressage warm up. Twizzy was still sporting her green tinged neck from the night before were she used poo to keep her warm, Mum said it wasnt that bad, but I could see it. Green on grey is very much THERE!
Twizzy warmed up a little bit stuffy, she was doing what I told her when I told her, just didnt feel like there was as much WOW as there has been in our lessons. I moved to a different bit of the dressage warm up which had more grass covering and she was much better. We set off to do our test and there was a couple of moments of our test which in my opinion were pants, and other bits which I thought were rather good, my extended walk was the best we have ever done it, as we normally end up trotting.
I told Mum that I didnt want to know my dressage score, as when we were at Buckminster I didnt know what it was and I it think it made me ride better with not knowing. So off we went to the Show Jumping warm up, and I was 5th in, so a few pops and it was our turn. Now back in June I had time faults in the show jumping here, so had to make sure I kept Twizzy going forward and the aim was to try and land on the right leg after the fence. Well it worked; she jumped a fab clear and got so high over some of them, she nearly jumped me clean out the saddle, so smiles all round.
We headed back to get changed for cross country and they were shouting for people to come forward, so we headed back over as soon as we were ready. It seemed like everybody had done the same as us, as there was a lot of horses in the warm up. Which meant Mum got very bored waiting for me to do anything but walk round on a long rein talking, so off she wondered to have a look at the scores and came back looking like she could burst at any time, thumbs up, jumping up and down like a little kid......hmmm.....suspect, she is never going to be able to contain that score. So I asked her what I got and it turns out she saw the following on the score sheet....
!!!!29!!!!:D
So as normal Mum got very excited and overly competitive
You have to go as fast as you can, get kicking Rach, come on Twizzy After about another 20mins of wondering around it was our turn to go to the start box, the starter had wondered off, and on his way back started counting me down, at which point I was so far away from the start box I had about 3 seconds to get in it and gone. We were off Twizzy was flying, I was a little big down on the clock as I was jumping fence 5 and my watch was going, so I kicked her on and she flew over the next lot of fences, over the corner without even wobbling, and all the tricky combinations that we on course, she flew into the water and out over the skinny hedge, over the offset double of hedges, and I kicked on home, I knew I was going to be down on the clock, but we had jumped EVERY SINGLE fence, in the right order and CLEAR which meant our first shiny BE Point, I was about 20 seconds over the time, which turned into 8.4 time faults, which still meant we had our best ever Novice finish. 
I had to go back to work, so the lovely Laura Keeley was keeping me informed with how the results were going, and after 15 results were up I was still in the lead. After a few hours at work it was clear that I had come 6th!!!! I could not have been happier, Twizzy was a true star and showed absolute class at Shelford, I cant wait for our next Novice run, but before that we are doing the BE100open at Keysoe as a fun run as we cant get there on Saturday when the Novice is being run.
for pictures follow this link, Work has blocked photobucket
Also saw some lovely HHO but cant remeber their names so *WAVE*
http://www.rhpeventing.com/1/post/2012/08/shelford-be-novice.html
We arrived at Shelford around 6.30 and set off to walk the cross country course, the time wasnt displayed at the start box just the length of the course. So I attempted to use my Math Skills and work it out myself..... M divided by M/M cant be that hard, I got 4m18secs and later found out that the time was 4mins12sec so not a bad guess even if I did use the calculator on my phone... So off we set to walk the Novice course. The course was lovely; there were a lot of the same fences that we had jumped at Belton, so I was really excited to get my teeth stuck in and have a good fun round. There was, of course a couple of trickier lines that were there to catch people out. A corner attached to a telegraph pole. Offset roll tops, hedge to skinny brush 4 forward left hand curving strides to a triple brush, offset hedges and lots of lovely full up tables and shinnies dotted about the place.
After walking the course we headed off to the dressage warm up. Twizzy was still sporting her green tinged neck from the night before were she used poo to keep her warm, Mum said it wasnt that bad, but I could see it. Green on grey is very much THERE!
Twizzy warmed up a little bit stuffy, she was doing what I told her when I told her, just didnt feel like there was as much WOW as there has been in our lessons. I moved to a different bit of the dressage warm up which had more grass covering and she was much better. We set off to do our test and there was a couple of moments of our test which in my opinion were pants, and other bits which I thought were rather good, my extended walk was the best we have ever done it, as we normally end up trotting.
I told Mum that I didnt want to know my dressage score, as when we were at Buckminster I didnt know what it was and I it think it made me ride better with not knowing. So off we went to the Show Jumping warm up, and I was 5th in, so a few pops and it was our turn. Now back in June I had time faults in the show jumping here, so had to make sure I kept Twizzy going forward and the aim was to try and land on the right leg after the fence. Well it worked; she jumped a fab clear and got so high over some of them, she nearly jumped me clean out the saddle, so smiles all round.
We headed back to get changed for cross country and they were shouting for people to come forward, so we headed back over as soon as we were ready. It seemed like everybody had done the same as us, as there was a lot of horses in the warm up. Which meant Mum got very bored waiting for me to do anything but walk round on a long rein talking, so off she wondered to have a look at the scores and came back looking like she could burst at any time, thumbs up, jumping up and down like a little kid......hmmm.....suspect, she is never going to be able to contain that score. So I asked her what I got and it turns out she saw the following on the score sheet....
!!!!29!!!!:DSo as normal Mum got very excited and overly competitive
You have to go as fast as you can, get kicking Rach, come on Twizzy After about another 20mins of wondering around it was our turn to go to the start box, the starter had wondered off, and on his way back started counting me down, at which point I was so far away from the start box I had about 3 seconds to get in it and gone. We were off Twizzy was flying, I was a little big down on the clock as I was jumping fence 5 and my watch was going, so I kicked her on and she flew over the next lot of fences, over the corner without even wobbling, and all the tricky combinations that we on course, she flew into the water and out over the skinny hedge, over the offset double of hedges, and I kicked on home, I knew I was going to be down on the clock, but we had jumped EVERY SINGLE fence, in the right order and CLEAR which meant our first shiny BE Point, I was about 20 seconds over the time, which turned into 8.4 time faults, which still meant we had our best ever Novice finish. I had to go back to work, so the lovely Laura Keeley was keeping me informed with how the results were going, and after 15 results were up I was still in the lead. After a few hours at work it was clear that I had come 6th!!!! I could not have been happier, Twizzy was a true star and showed absolute class at Shelford, I cant wait for our next Novice run, but before that we are doing the BE100open at Keysoe as a fun run as we cant get there on Saturday when the Novice is being run.
for pictures follow this link, Work has blocked photobucket
Also saw some lovely HHO but cant remeber their names so *WAVE*
http://www.rhpeventing.com/1/post/2012/08/shelford-be-novice.html
