I though that was a suitable title for this post as the sun made an appearance so rarely last year!
So after Oasby I was hoping for a confident run with in the BE90. Conditions probably couldn’t be much more different between the two events if they tried, from the mud bath at Oasby to Eden’s firm ground making us choose spiked studs over our preferred domed studs.
I was also coming off a night shift for the first time this season so I was interested to see how my body would cope with lack of sleep.
We tried a new regime of giving H a shot of Optimax an hour before being worked. And bar from leaping off the lorry he appeared much calmer, only spooking at one horse in the warm up- rather unheard of from the scaredy cat pony!
We went in and performed our test. The arena was not ideal being situated right next to the entrance where lorries were coming in, however, I felt it was a nice enough test and when heading back to the lorry I even said I’d be disappointed if that wasn’t a better score than at Oasby. Que my disappointment when we scored exactly the same. Luckily the Twitter Eventing gang have cheered us up and agreed we were marked harshly. We also discovered that H had lost a shoe during the test, which could have had an impact on scoring. Luckily we were parked right next to the farrier so we didn’t have far to go, plus it turned out we knew a lot of the same folk- its true the horsey world is a small place indeed!
So after Oasby I was hoping for a confident run with in the BE90. Conditions probably couldn’t be much more different between the two events if they tried, from the mud bath at Oasby to Eden’s firm ground making us choose spiked studs over our preferred domed studs.
I was also coming off a night shift for the first time this season so I was interested to see how my body would cope with lack of sleep.
We tried a new regime of giving H a shot of Optimax an hour before being worked. And bar from leaping off the lorry he appeared much calmer, only spooking at one horse in the warm up- rather unheard of from the scaredy cat pony!
We went in and performed our test. The arena was not ideal being situated right next to the entrance where lorries were coming in, however, I felt it was a nice enough test and when heading back to the lorry I even said I’d be disappointed if that wasn’t a better score than at Oasby. Que my disappointment when we scored exactly the same. Luckily the Twitter Eventing gang have cheered us up and agreed we were marked harshly. We also discovered that H had lost a shoe during the test, which could have had an impact on scoring. Luckily we were parked right next to the farrier so we didn’t have far to go, plus it turned out we knew a lot of the same folk- its true the horsey world is a small place indeed!
Show jumping at Eden is in an arena. I must congratulate the organizers and volunteers particularly in this phase for their management as it really did run smoothly.
The round its self was probably the best SJ round H has ever done. Sadly though he lost a little bit of concentration going past the warm up and just tipped fence 2 for 4 faults.
We had a quick turn around, popped a few warm up jumps before setting off for the course. I felt the course asked the right number of questions whilst still being fair for an early season run. Videos that I took of the courses at Eden can be viewed shortly on eventing course walks for those interested.
Luckily our Oasby antics were not present and H had his XC head on again and stormed around easily to be 25 seconds inside the time. The only blip to his fluent round was chipping in a stride at fence 8 which was a double, this just meant I push a little on landing but H’s long legs had no problem making up the ground! Other than that he was fantastic!
We also made it home in time to watch the Grand National (sadly we didn’t pick the winner) but it was nice to see all horses make it home safe. I then managed a few hours sleep before heading back to work for my second nightshift!
The next morning I returned home to do the horses before heading back to Eden to watch Lisa from The Horse Wardrobe tackle her first BE event in the BE80T.I’m so proud of both Lisa and Clover and its great to see my supporters enjoying eventing too!
The round its self was probably the best SJ round H has ever done. Sadly though he lost a little bit of concentration going past the warm up and just tipped fence 2 for 4 faults.
We had a quick turn around, popped a few warm up jumps before setting off for the course. I felt the course asked the right number of questions whilst still being fair for an early season run. Videos that I took of the courses at Eden can be viewed shortly on eventing course walks for those interested.
Luckily our Oasby antics were not present and H had his XC head on again and stormed around easily to be 25 seconds inside the time. The only blip to his fluent round was chipping in a stride at fence 8 which was a double, this just meant I push a little on landing but H’s long legs had no problem making up the ground! Other than that he was fantastic!
We also made it home in time to watch the Grand National (sadly we didn’t pick the winner) but it was nice to see all horses make it home safe. I then managed a few hours sleep before heading back to work for my second nightshift!
The next morning I returned home to do the horses before heading back to Eden to watch Lisa from The Horse Wardrobe tackle her first BE event in the BE80T.I’m so proud of both Lisa and Clover and its great to see my supporters enjoying eventing too!
Lisa and Clover
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