You know it's serious when.....

HotToTrot

HotToTrot

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You're the last of the finishers and you're still 14th. Look, I'm just getting my excuses in early, ok? Judge me as you see fit.

"Me-time". They talk about it a lot, "me-time". They talk about it on Facebook groups, at baby classes and on internet forums. "Me-time."

"It's just so important", they'll say, nodding their heads earnestly. "Me-time. Just some time where you do something for you. Have a bath with some scented candles, get your nails done, have a coffee; me-time."

Well, if I wanted me-time, then I was about to damn well get it. It was not going to involve a bath, any scented candles or my nails, but it started at 6 in the morning, it involved a copious amount of mud and, admittedly, a larger flask of industrial strength coffee. (Not what the Starbucks proponents of Coffee at Me-Time really had in mind.)

When South of England cancelled, I, like many competitors in the south (and the rest of the country) started to question my future plans. The cancellation of an event can have far-reaching consequences for a competitor's season; miss a couple of runs, and suddenly, you're left wondering whether you're still on track for the aims you'd had at the start of the season, or whether you need to re-route and take a step back. Next up for me was Hambleden Intermediate. I was excited for Hambleden. It would be a tough track, a good test for us ahead of our planned two-star and what a confidence boost it would be to run well there over the hard Int course that it normally is. Now, though, with South of England and Gatcombe having fallen by the wayside, I'd be going to Hambleden Intermediate on the back of one Novice run. No. Too big an ask. Not for my first Int of the season. In fairly typical Viv style, I'd so far managed to not go to three events that I'd planned to go to, and to go to one event that I hadn't planned to go to. It was time to reassess. Unless I could somehow get another run, I would have to swap down to IN or one-star. Without holding out much hope, I started ringing event organisers. They were unanimous in their responses: "I'm sorry, we'd love to help, but we're totally full." Aston-le-Walls to the rescue. They'd slipped under my radar a bit, as they were running unaffiliated, but they ran up to Novice and that, I thought, might just do the trick.

My husband was confused when I told him. "Unaffiliated?" he asked, in shock. "Aston's an anomaly", I explained, understanding his reaction. "They run a bunch of unaffiliated events too and, because they're set up so comprehensively to do BE, they can basically use the same fences for both. It'll be run over their Novice track. It's a proper thing." He wasn't convinced, though, and he huffed that he was, quite literally, not going to get out of bed for an unaffiliated, so I could go on my own.

I traipsed off with my pony and, despite my reassurances to my husband, I felt that he'd had a point. The UA track was really a bit softer than the BE there would have been. Still, I was immensely grateful to get the run, it reminded me how to ride in the mud, there were a few decent bits and pieces on there and we jumped double clear.

But there was no avoiding the issue. I was going to have to show my hand now, to run at Hambleden Int, or to say I was not ready, and choose not to. Rationally, I knew we could do it. Hell, I knew my horse could do it. I knew we'd done two-star at the end of last season, but still the irrational part of me (yes, I know this will hugely surprise you, since I've never done anything remotely irrational in my life, ever, especially not when it concerns horses, but, there is, I assure you, an irrational part of me) longed for the comfort of South of England, of a track I'd done before, at a place I know well. I wavered, I hesitated, I changed my mind, but eventually, I decided that I would run. I had to get cracking, I told myself firmly. I'd not had the run up I'd hoped for, but I'd got enough under my belt to make me think that we'd stand a chance. Time's not on my side, what with my 14 year old horse and my two small kids. I had to step up to the plate, and I had to set out over the green numbered fences at Hambleden International.

There was speculation as to whether Hambleden, too, would fall prey to the weather and cancel its Sunday classes. It cancelled Saturday's and then, at 4 pm on Saturday, I got the text. Hambleden was running. We were on.

My husband has a new theory about dressage. He says it's just a process that you have to go through before you can jump; a bit like tacking up, or putting studs in. I went off to take part in said formality and then, leaving my husband to practice his new-found knowledge of tacking up, I handed him my horse and I went off to walk the showjumping.

Sadly, though, his new-found taken expertise seemed to have deserted him once he was left in sole charge of the horse. When I came back to the trailer (having, as I discovered later, accidentally walked the Advanced Intermediate rather than the Intermediate) I saw P(C)arrot cropping away at the grass. I bristled. I've told my husband about this before - he know that P(C)arrot's not to eat with his bit in. Why was he letting him eat like this? I bit my tongue. I need to be grateful to my husband for trying, not critical when he gets things wrong, so I resolved to say nothing. As I got closer to the trailer, though, I could see that I'd misjudged my husband. He'd listened! He wouldn't make a mistake like that, he knew not to let P(C)arrot eat with his bridle on. No, P(C)arrot didn't have a bridle on. Truth be told, he didn't even have a head collar on. He was standing, completely naked, bar his saddle, calmly picking away at the grass beside the trailer. On the other side of the trailer, my husband was fighting with the head collar. "Uh - you don't undo that bit" I said, as he grappled in frustration at the noseband."You do" he snapped, most of his limbs now irretrievably entangled with various assorted pieces of my bridlework. "You do when you're trying to get the bridle off from under the head collar, when both are tied up on his head and and you can't get them off." "Well now he has nothing on his head" I said, sensibly, relieving my husband of the head collar "and he's just wandering aimlessly round the trailer. So, how about I get ready for the showjumping?"

This phase is improving. It is! Really, it is. I have more control now. I no longer soon about seeing long strides quite so much. Sadly, though, the straightness is still something of a hurdle, so when I didn't get him straight for the final fence, a treble, and he ducked left after the first element, I was a bit annoyed, but not terribly despondent. He'll duck left, sometimes, and it's up to me to try to keep him straight.
 
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So, here we were. XC time. Time to warm up, time to be counted down, time to set out over the fixed obstacles and to see what we were made of. The first fence of note was number three. The translation of "of note", in this instance, means utterly ******* massive and totally bliidy petrifying. Enormous. I was convinced we'd be wrong to it, to I sat still, kept my leg on, and kept his front end up. He popped it neatly, if "pop" is an adequate term to describe "somehow jumped over a fence approximately the same size as a small ******* mansion block". Four was a double of trakheners (yes. Double. Of. Trakheners.) Why would you do that, why? And we came to double of arrowheads followed by a steep slope down at 5. As I rattled downwards, I congratulated myself on still actually being alive, rattled round the corner, up the hill, and towards a triple bar fan. The widest end of the fence was on the right. There was also a large hedge on the right. "Aha!" I'd thought, as I'd walked the course. "Aha!n This fence wants to push me left. Well, not me, not my horse, my horse wouldn't run left." So I rattled up the hill and, as the eagle eyed of you will by now have spotted, we've got previous on this, haven't we? What did we do in the showjumping? We ducked left. Couldn't miss that warning sign, could you? Unless, of course, you're me. And I, as we know, could miss a piss-up in a brewery (actually, bad example, I've never been known to miss a piss-up anywhere, in a brewery or otherwise) but the general point is that, owing to a combination of total blondness and general thickness, I rattled gleefully up the hill - and my horse ran left, past fence 6. He's not stupid, my horse, so when I turned him for a second attempt, having already shown him the way out, he ducked left again. I was, at this stage, rather flabbergasted. I was about to be eliminated at a perfectly innocuous little triple bar and, between you and me, I had not the foggiest notion as to what I was going to do about it. In the end, I picked P(C)arrot up by his ears, booted him up to the bridle, and picked him up over the damned fence. But as I rode away, my thoughts were bleak indeed. I'd used up all my lives and boy, if I ever needed lives, it was that day at Hambleden. You know what's coming next, don't you? A corner. Of course. Not just any old corner, no - a left handed corner. And, you can all see this coming, can't you, it's a left-handed corner that I have to angle to the left. Why would it be anything else?

I'm lucky. I've had access to some fantastic training and I've practiced over fences that emulate many of the questions you'd expect to find on an Intermediate XC course. When I walked fence 8, a mound to a corner, I knew right away what my options were. I could come off to the left of the mound, shorten the canter, put in a turn, and jump the corner straight on four strides. Or I could come off the middle of the mound, ride straight, and angle the corner on three. Every fibre of my being had screamed at me that I had to get straight to the corner, that I had to turn him, collect him and put in four. But I know my horse. I know how he ticks. And I know that attempting to collect, or to turn, will be harder than holding him straight. No, I had to go on three and I had to have the balls and the conviction to angle that corner off the mound. He seized at the reins as we approached the step up onto the mound. It was second nature, now, not to slip my reins as we came off it, to hold onto his head, to look for my line and hold him bang on course. He hopped over it and then we turned to the water. The exit fence was utterly huge and he had a look as we approached, but he picked up and we cantered on. Ahead of us lay a skinny. No. This wasn't a ******* skinny. This was a ******* anorexic. This made Kate Moss look obese. This was one screwed up little hedge with more eating disorders than the inmates of Cheltenham Ladies' College and it was so ******* narrow that you could barely see the thing without a microscope. Before that, though, we had to go over a whacking great picnic table, just to open them up a bit and get them thinking properly forward before we then came down to the size-zero anorexic hedge, where the gap between the flags was so narrow that I was sceptical I could even fit my little finger through it, let alone a charging great Irish Sports Horse with a mouth made of steel. Oh, and yes. A strategically placed tree just before it was there to make him drift..... Left. Of course. I really got him back. "You can come right to the bottom of this, my friend", I told him, but you will not go past it. We popped through, jumped into the water and over the skinny (actually skinny, at least size four, jutting collar bones, but not downright skeletal). Once through that, we had - oh, you know, don't you. We had a left-handed corner. Well, why on earth not? P(C)arrot engaged the turbo charge, took it on and I turned him towards one of the easiest fences on the course. This was the let up fence, here it is; the one I didn't worry about when I walked the course:

http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/V...18066743873169_o_zpsbyqnon0f.jpg.html?filters[user]=136295434&filters[recent]=1&sort=1&o=0

After this, of course, we had to drop into space, negotiate another left handed angled thing on a slope and then come home over a punchy enough coffin.

Hello, Hambleden. If I wanted tough, then tough I got. My father, helpfully supportive as ever, emailed the following day after he'd checked the BE results page. I'd got 166 penalties, he cheerfully pointed out. Was it possible to get more than that, he enquired? Was there a maximum number allowed and was 166 pretty close to it. Yes, dad, it's perfectly possible. It's called E, or R, and if you'd seen how many of those that track caused, then you'd take your 166 penalties, and your last place, and have done with it.
 
Awesome. Just awesome! You are a bloody legend! Oh, and you do yourself a disservice - I saw the pics... If I had a lower leg half like yours I'd be happy :)
 
Well, you may have come last but I will be ******* if the winner could have done a more entertaining report.

So sorry, but shrieked with mirth at last para!

Huge well done's for completing and looking forward to next one. How's Vito doing?
 
I love your posts, you must be an inspiration to many riders who juggle a dozen balls at any one time and still enjoy competing.

Well done and good luck for the rest of the season.
 
Brilliant. And that fence is ******* massive! I managed 216pens or something like that first year at Badminton and came last of all the finishers but considering a third of the class didn't get home at all I was well chuffed. Coming last of the finishers is definitely better than not coming home at all. Fab report as always!
 
Another fantastic report from you HTT, thank you. I'm in awe of you just riding around a course lie that, let alone having the mental strength to keep it together at the left-handed fences when you know you've got one life left, and for finishing. Brilliant stuff.
 
Well done on the double clear.
Good to hear the sj is coming together as well. Love your description of the xc fences, it's what I think when I walk around a 90.
 
Thank you. I just beam reading your reports and thank all that's Holy it's not me in the plate. :)
 
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Well done for surviving Viv! That jump makes me feel a bit dizzy rather you than me!
He might not be very brave around the dog community of east London but he can certainly brave a monster fence ;)
 
an absolutely brilliant report :) I organise the event and my husband designs & build the XC. As far as I am concerned the whole point is to create a course that people feel a sense of accomplishment when they complete. I was asked this year if I was going to make the Int "easier" and the answer was a resounding "no"! If we just have courses that get easier and easier people are not going to progress and then they are in for a really rude shock when they go up a level.

You forgot to mention that the monster fence after the scary water that comes after the bank & left-handed corner, also has water cascading down the front of it and is maximum dimensions........... I hope you feel REALLY proud for getting round a testing track in difficult conditions!
 
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