Sarah's Blog - What a Day and What a Horse
Hurrah, it's eventing report time again!
After a long five weeks since our last event at Alnwick Ford, my excitement levels were high this week. I spend a beautiful Friday evening bathing, plaiting and cleaning tack in the sunshine before setting a very reasonable 5.45am alarm (this time is only classed as reasonable by the equine community, no wonder the rest of the planet thinks we are bonkers). One final check of the weather forecast before bed and it hadn't changed - torrential rain ALL DAY.
I woke before my alarm, cat snoozing away on the bed - my NHOH was dog sitting for his mum so it was just me and the tiny ball of fluff but somehow I still had less than half the bed - to the sounds of silence outside. Could it be... dry?? It was dry, but not for long. The heavens opened about 6am and soon after I received a text from a friend who was on-site at Burgham to say it has rained all night and the ground was soaking - there was a chance of cancellation.
So I faffed about, not wanting to get ready in case we got the dreaded abandonment text, I also only had one pair of contact lenses left and didn't want to waste them by putting them in my eyes only for me not to get to compete! Stingy but true. However, I held off as long as I could but eventually shoved them in my eyes and headed for the stables to roll my plaits and load up.
Mum and Dad arrived - even less enthusiastic than me - and we hit the road. The wet, flooded, horrific road. I don't know how many times I said "see, it's brighter up ahead" (it wasn't) but we made it in one piece, just, having narrowly avoided a major collision with a 4x4 going to fast and two cyclists that probably needed to change their underpants afterwards.
I collected my number and by the time I got back to the lorry the number, Woody's passport, the programme and I were all sodden. Positive thoughts: I love eventing, I love eventing, I love eventing. I began to tack up for Dressage - thank goodness for a lorry and the luxury of tacking up indoors - and by some miracle, the waterworks were switched off and the sun came out by the time I was ready to mount. Thank you!!
He warmed up for Dressage well and when it was my turn to head over I trotted over then did a few collections into Medium trot around the outside of the arena to make sure his backend was working which seemed to set us off well. He was much more into my contact than he has been and he didn't go dead to the leg after the free walk so I came out chuffed with the test we had produced. As so I should have been - we scored a 31.8 and sitting in 5th after the dressage.
SJ next (still dry) and the ground was holding up surprisingly well. It was a surreal feeling warming up around Harry Meade who had stolen our cross jump to do some trotting poles with - however, a steward did promptly march over to reclaim sed poles - and the BE100s were back in business. Woods jumped a lovely round, just knocking the planks, but I was super pleased as he was listening, careful and adjustable which is all I want.
Onto the XC and the Intermediates were running a bit behind so we had to hang around a bit but Woods is as cool as they come and just wandered around on a loose rein making new friends - me being the chatterbox that I am! When it finally was our turn he picked up effortlessly and trotted over to the start box.
Countdown from five and we were off!
The first part of the course was quite twisty-turny and I got close to numbers two and three but by fence four we had found our rhythm and he jumped every fence from there to the end absolutely spot on. They must have measured the turns fairly tight and I was quite a bit down on my first and second minute markers which is very unlike us. However, I got over the hay truck at number seven, which was the last of the turns and put my foot on the accelerator - boy, did he answer!! He came through the hedge line like a bat out of hell and flew the next which was an open oxer. I managed to get him back to jump neatly through the rail, ditch, rail then pressed on again to fly up around a skinny at 11 then a big spread to a corner at 12ab. 13 was a rider scarer - a big hedge with a ditch in front - but it had a good gallop after it so I was keen not to waste one second and pressed for a long stride on the angle, landed straight and flew up the hill to the water then over the last few and home inside the time - one of only five in my section to do so.
I'm so proud of that round and riding at a faster speed gave me SUCH a thrill. It really proved to me (like I didn't already know?!) how incredible Woody is; he's accurate, manoeuvrable, bold and he listens to me and gives me his all. Plus, he loves it as much as I do and that's the key to our partnership. He makes my heart melt and burst with pride at the same time!
We had to be towed out the bog we were parked in for the very first time ever - much to Farmer Johnstone's annoyance that even HE couldn't get the Apt mobile out the mud - but came home surprisingly dry, very muddy and absolutely buzzing with another brilliant day and a gorgeous 6th place rosette.
What a day and what a horse.
Sarah & SuperCob x
