I was so tired, but Allie was a little pooped so I knew I had to warm her up in front of my leg and wake her up a bit - while waiting to go into the warm up she was almost falling asleep with a hind leg resting while the 95cm cross country was running literally right in front of us. Poor mare, we weren't really fit enough to be eventing, but luckily it's a short course, optimum time was 3 min 45 sec.
The warm up at Silver Hills is weird. It's a long straight line with two likes of jumps with space in the middle to ride up the far end, then you turn around, gallop back over fences, then try not to gallop straight over the gate steward. The right hand side is the smaller warm up jumps and the left is the larger. This year, we actually jumped the larger warm up jumps, two of which are a good 95cm! She certainly woke up after that, haha.
It was the same course as last year, and I knew we could jump everything in it. After the water (obstacle 3), my ankles, especially my right, started to feel very damn weak. I could barely get up off her back to let her gallop, they were that bad. I never lost my stirrups though, thanks to my fancy new Freejumps, but honestly I thought I wasn't going to make it around, I was riding that poorly.
We came to the downhill ski jump, which I wasn't worried about, except I couldn't actually get my leg on her and sit up, so she stopped. I was so cranky with myself, and she hadn't got her mojo on yet by that point. We quickly circled and she flew over it the second time with a few whacks of the whip, and then she just kinda took over - we have run this cross country course about 4 times now, and she just took a sharp turn to the next jump almost by herself, the funny girl. I even said out loud "you know where you are going, don't you?".
The rest of the jumps, she absolutely flew over. She was a total packer and she really really looked after me. She galloped so fast that even with the stop, we were 1 second below optimum time! We have never been under optimum time! I was bloody stoked with that.
The last three logs I was just hanging on wishing it were all over. My ankles and lower legs were in agony, and I was not enjoying it, which sucked big time. She galloped over the finish line and I pulled her up and took my feet out of the stirrups and let them dangle. I have no idea why they were so bad, but my body really let me down. I probably should have jumped in the two weeks leading up to the show, I guess.
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| You have seen us jump this before. She's not wasting energy over this anymore! |
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| Pathetic little brush jump. It looks so sad, haha. |
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| The stupid ski jump. It looks so tiny with all the long grass. |
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| I love the way this jumps. There's a dip on the landing side and I like the way the horse drops into it. |
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| Look at this saint of a mare! This is the scary trakehner with the rather deep ditch in front. She launched herself over it and really looked after me because I was useless by this stage. |
So we had 20 jump faults, no time faults, and we were in 20th place. Next up, showjumping! Will my ankles give way? Or will my stupid limbs stand up to the challenge?
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