Centered in the Saddle

After dressage, we had a good chunk of time to walk cross country, clean tack, prep studs, and eat lunch. Or so I thought. Honestly it was like a black hole warped the space-time continuum or something because one moment I had like two hours to go and the next Trainer B was running down the stall row looking panicked as I was trying to finish tacking up.

I literally do not know what happened.

Anyway. I trotted up to warmup, jumped a few fences and went into the ring for stadium. It was quite windy and I couldn’t hear anything so I circled and asked if they’d blown the whistle – they had. So off I went, feeling a little manic about being pressed for time.

I tried to remember Canter, Corner. Contact, Lead, from my last lesson along with the order of jumps. I actually forgot about the ‘lead’ part of the equation until about jump three. Overall, I felt we were quite fast and had mostly good distances with maybe two longer distances. A pretty good round – and double clear!

Watching it back doesn’t look as manic as it felt, so that’s good. One of my clearest memories was the turn from 5 to the 6A-B combination, when I thought to myself that it was a distinct possibility that I might just throw up afterwards. (I did not.) I think I was just hot, stressed and probably slightly dehydrated.

Because they’d made the show a one-day, we walked directly over to cross country from stadium. As I was heading over, another competitor thanked me for going before her in stadium. Apparently I was not the only one running late. Didn’t know I did that! But it all worked out in the end.

On to cross country! Which I’m going to make you wait for until tomorrow. Muahaha.