Centered in the Saddle

Well this week got away from me and I’m sure you’ve all been waiting in suspense to hear whether I qualified for our Area Championships.

Going into stadium, I had moved up to second. I was really feeling the pressure. I knew if we had a clear round, we had a good shot of winning. If we didn’t, we could fall quickly in the ranks. The top 5 or 6 were clustered close together. So it was self-inflicted pressure, but I was pretty nervous. I tried to use it as a time to practice mental toughness. I decided we were going to have a clear round.

One rail down but I learned from it. Duke was (gently) spooking away from the announcer’s pagoda and I took my eye off the jump. I should’ve kept my eye on it and picked a new line instead of trying so hard to push Duke back to the line we walked.

I was a bit bummed – especially as I thought we had fallen to fifth and thus missed out on qualification by one placing. However I was also very proud of how I rode there rest of the course. We didn’t have the first fence down, which was one that had been falling a lot all day. I rode actively through each line and made good decisions.

And we ended up fourth! Yay! Qualified for the Area Championships at Novice! I’m so excited to get to have that experience this year. It’s going to be a blast!