XC DAY, BITCHES!!! Aka the real reason I came. Aka the only reason Henry tolerates the other two phases.

I was really excited about this course as soon as I walked it. This year brought a new course designer, James Atkinson, and I LOVED the way he used the little bit of terrain that this venue has. In Texas we don’t have a lot of hills, but he took advantage of every single one. I absolutely loved it. The fences were overall a bit smaller than in the fall (that course felt like giant fence after giant fence after giant fence) but this one was maybe a little more technical, asked a wider range of questions, and definitely used more terrain. I’m 110% all about that. The course was also running backwards from how we’ve ever run it before, which really made it feel like a whole new venue. The footing was perfect from the rain a few days before, and the weather when we went was upper 60’s. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Fence 1 was your typical first fence, just a plain log. The first 2/3 of the course was the more open area, with a few long gallop stretches thrown in. I knew that the last part of the course would ride a bit slower, so I wanted to come out of the box thinking forward and get a little bit ahead of time in the first half of the course. This is where it’s important to note that I actually FORGOT MY FRIGGIN WATCH (I had a hard time getting one of Henry’s studs in and was running behind, so forgot it in the rush because I dunno, I’m a hot mess of a person in general?) and didn’t even realize it until I was in the start box. I have a pretty good feel for pace by now though, and I had already carefully plotted out the places where I could save some ground. I just kinda shrugged internally and went “Ok, self, challenge accepted!”. I’ve spent a long time working on honing that internal pace tracker, let’s see how good it really is.

Fence two was a simple step table, which came up nicely

And then over to 3, the little mulch-filled table. We basically made a loop around warmup with those first 3, which had proven a little distracting to the lower level horses the day before. I don’t think Henry even noticed though, he’s so focused on finding the next fence.

We rebalanced a bit before 3, jumped it easily, and headed straight ahead to the first terrain question. Fence 4 was a skinny-ish house with a downhill landing (I should have waited for the deep distance here, but apparently there were ants in my pants. Thank goodness for Henny and his quick feet.),

down a hill, then back up a hill and bending around right to another small house at 5. Yep, I like these little terrain questions.

Fence 6 was a trakehner, which caused it’s fair share of problems. After my mistake of not waiting at 4, I got him a little deep here at the trakehner but that seemed like the better choice. I must not have been that concerned about because I didn’t do my nervous “tap tap” whip thing that seems to be my go-to move when I’m freaked out. Just a little clucking.

After that it was off to another terrain question at 7AB, a rolltop,

down the hill, to a small kind of slopey skinny upbank going back uphill. If you jumped the right side there was less slope and the bank itself was teeny. You could also save more ground that way, so that’s what we did.

It was an easy hop up the right side, then we whipped around quickly to the right to get lined up for the open oxer at 8.

Then we headed to my favorite series of fences on course. We had a long slightly downhill gallop to the big red barn table, then had to hang a fairly quick left to the first water. Interesting question. It would be easy to fly past your line to the water if you came in too hot over the table or weren’t able to get a pretty quick half halt on landing. We jumped the table fine and he came back nicely when I landed and half-halted, so I was able to get him lined up for the water easily and allow him to come forward again.

I was excited about this water, because it was a brush fence jumping into the water,

a little house IN the water (this is the first time we’ve had a jump in the water at Training! Finally!)

and then a bending line out of the water to another small house. I dig the combos, and this one rode really well. It was a super fun line.

Then we had a long gallop back up and around to the ditch wall with a steep downhill landing. Henry got a little distracted before this one, passing a bunch of people on the left and a little covered seating area on the right. You also really cannot see the landing AT ALL since the ground falls away really fast on the landing side, so I really had to put my leg on and ride all the way down to it, but he hopped over it fine. Tellin’ ya, love these terrain questions.

From there you had to roll back up the hill to get to the second water, so it was important to not get sucked too far down the hill and end up wasting time having to gallop all the way back up again. We managed a decently handy turn back up the side of the hill (thank you, hind studs), galloping back up a little bit before rebalancing again for the jump into the water. I took too much of a pull here and jumped weak into the water, but Henny handled it fine. I landed kicking and we jumped out much better. This water was simple (which is probably why I rode it worse, I always do that crap), just a hanging log in

and a slightly angled brush fence out.

Then there was a plain little table

down to the Corral. We had to enter through the “gate” opening with an overhang, make a right, jump a downhill rolltop

keep going down the hill, and hang a left to a corner at the bottom. I asked him to switch to his right lead before we got to the corral, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it as we went in and turned to the rolltop. That one came up great… then around the tree and down the hill we went to the corner. This fence was directly facing the highway beyond, so I thought it might ride a little looky. I definitely felt a tiny bit of distraction when we turned to it, but not enough to pull Henry’s attention away from his job.

From there we went over the creek crossing to the last fence, a table. When you came off the creek crossing there was an Intermediate roll top right there that we had to go around, and for a split second Henry really thought he was supposed to jump it. For that same split second I really thought he was going to. Luckily a little left spur convinced him to go around it instead, and we looped past their fence to hop over our last table and through the finish.

A few clips my trainer got:

 

And HELMET CAM! At least I remembered this, even if I forgot my watch. Maybe next time I’ll clean the lens.

 

There were a couple fences where I definitely rode like a monkey, but Henry was great the whole way around. He really is such a fun cross country horse, it makes the other two mediocre phases 100% worth it. I don’t care about ribbons, I care about learning to ride. He’s teaching me a lot, and he’s super safe, so it’s just such a blast.

When we crossed the finish I felt 90% confident that we were good on time. I thought I’d kept my average speed pretty darn close to the designated 450mpm, and I followed the exact track I had planned out to save myself enough ground to where I thought I had some breathing room. Not gonna lie, I was pretty damn proud of myself when they posted scores and I ended up being 7 seconds under Optimum Time. Not bad for no watch! Double clear!

Henry wasn’t even breathing hard by the time we were done (I sure was, so much damn pollen in the air I can’t even breathe out of both nostrils) and wasn’t sweaty enough to warrant a rinse. By that I mean he wasn’t sweaty at all. He was looking around like “that’s it?”. So, the horse is plenty fit, too.

Overall I was pretty happy with the run. I think I sat up and rode in the places where he needed some support, and as usual I think he stepped up and covered for me in the places where I goofed. Teamwork… it really does make the dream work.

I mean, no offense to dressage or showjumping, y’all are great sports in your own right, but literally no eventer in the world is like OMG THAT DRESSAGE TEST WAS THE MOST FUN FIVE MINUTES I’VE EVER HAD. Especially not this eventer. Let’s be clear, we’re here for cross country, these other two phases are formalities.

First of all, I about died on Thursday night before the show even started. It was already dark out, I had parked my truck a little ways from the barn and was almost done setting up my tent. I saw a trailer pull in down at the barn and was so preoccupied by straining to see if it was a friend that I stepped backwards off the tailgate, missed my step, and WHAM slammed into the ground under a bush. My entire spine popped upon landing and all the air went right out of my lungs. Not gonna lie, I laid under that bush for a solid two minutes before I got up. Do not recommend falling backwards off a tailgate. That was worse than falling off a horse.

probably wishes he could have seen that, he would have enjoyed it

My Friday morning dressage was at 9:18 so I got on around 8:45. Henry was pretty good in the insanity warm up, more relaxed than when we were there in November. I was happy to see that we got ring 4, which was off to the side by itself, instead of ring 2 or 3 like last time which are right to each other in the same arena at the top of a hill. That was a little too much stimulus for Henry. The first person in our division was a no show at her ride time, so we ended up going a little early. Henry was on high alert as soon as he stepped foot in the ring (I dunno why we gotta pretend to be spooky about the judge EVERY TIME), but he was mostly obedient.

A couple times he tried to sneak peeks at the horses that were hacking up the hill (I think he was trying to figure out if they were getting to go XC while he was being tortured) and the canter lengthenings on a circle were, as usual, pretty non-existent. Training Test A has them both directions, so that’s not particularly helpful to us at all. He was still tense, he is a tense horse, tension is what he does best, but overall it was fine. That’s really the best word for it. Not great, not tragic, just fine. Our division was full of pretty nice horses (one of these days I will remember to STOP ENTERING Senior Training Rider, omg it is always the most competitive division), so we certainly didn’t impress anyone, but for Henry it was a decent test. Our score of 37.7 was totally fair. Once again I forgot to pick up my test but I’m confident it looks like pretty much every other test we’ve ever done. Consistently mediocre… that’s our specialty! It was definitely an improvement from last fall’s test at Texas Rose (where I legit could not even touch him with my leg because he kept threatening to turn into a coked out dolphin), so I’m cool with that.

Then we had a few hours to cool our jets before stadium. By this point I had already walked XC and was pretty pumped about the course, so I was like “Ok, for the love of god, let’s just not get eliminated in stadium because I really want to run XC tomorrow”. Priorities, y’all.

The showjumping course was super legit. It was long, it had a lot of good questions, and it was proving to be difficult. I sat there through all of the Intermediate and most of the Prelim and rails were falling left and right. Jump 1 in particular, a single oxer near the middle of the ring, was getting a lot of people. I made a pretty exacting plan for how I wanted to approach that one to give us the best chance to get it right.

We went in, picked up the canter, and I was like “alright self, keep your leg on, keep a rhythm, sit up, and don’t die. Oh and breathe every once in a while.”. All good goals, ya know? We swept around the turn to the first oxer, I saw the distance come up easily, we cantered down to the base right out of stride, and… wham. Henry hit the crap out of that thing. First rail, in the dirt, for no particular reason at all. I was like what the actual F, man. Even Trainer agreed there was zero reason for that to have come down. Considering how often I watched it fall all day, I wonder if there was something the horses just weren’t reading about the fence. Whatever though, we still had 11 more to jump.

The rest of the course was fine. The rhythm was better, but I was having a hard time getting him rebalanced quickly enough in the lines. That made them all ride a little tight, which finally bit us in one line when we just got too deep and flat to the out. That rail I will definitely take as my fault. My horse is not careful, so if I give him a good reason to have a rail down, he certainly will. We really gotta jump more long courses, my 4 fences at home aren’t particularly fair preparation for either of us with a course like this one. I see some jumper shows in our future.

But there were no spectacular crashes or fails… so like… that’s something I guess? Aim high, kids. Mostly I was just happy to be done with those two phases so that we could finally switch to XC mode and focus on that part. Tomorrow, THE FUN STUFF.

I’m busy trying to get the rest of my stuff packed for the show and then get on the road, so I just have a few little things today.

First, my Seaver girth sleeve came! The instruction manual is not the greatest, but I did eventually get it all figured out. Electrodes, wireless charger, and a bunch of straps be damned. Of course since we’re leaving for a show today I probably won’t have time to do all of Henry’s measurements (they want you to measure a few specific places on the horse so that the data is as accurate as possible) and actually use it until next week. But hey, it’s here! Hopefully by the end of next week I can at least give you some initial thoughts on it.

Second, if you haven’t seen Luxe EQ’s clearance sale, make sure to check it out! There are great prices on some high end stuff, especially breeches and show shirts and belts, but there are some casual summery clothes in there too.

And last but not least, more pics of Mari! Because every day is a good day for foal pictures.

See you next week, when Presto is HOME!

It has been a weirdly dry winter/early spring in Texas. We had a couple of rain events pass through the area in the last month, but both of them managed to completely miss the barn. It’s been really dry, which means the ground has been really hard. And since I do 100% of my riding (unless I trailer out for a lesson) outside of the arena, this can be a problem. Henry has spent much of the last couple weeks wearing Magic Cushion, but he still felt a little too delicate in his steps for my taste. When I talked to the farrier about it he suggested we put a rim pad on him, to help give him a little extra clearance from the ground. He’s not a fan of going to a full pad unless absolutely necessary, and I’m totally with him on that. So yesterday he got a little rim pad under his new shoes, and last night it promptly rained 2.5″.

If I’d known that all it took to get some rain was a $10 set of rim pads, I’d have added them last cycle. Really though we need small amounts of rain on a regular basis, not a major deluge once a month. That doesn’t really help the ground, it mostly just puts it in a constant cycle of mud/concrete. But this is Texas… that’s how things work. He did feel better last night with the rim pad, so no regrets there.

We head to Texas Rose tomorrow, so I also cleaned up Henry’s weird goat hairs on his jaw, re-did his “eventer tail”, chopped off some mane, and clipped the longest of the winter straggler hairs off his legs. There’s not much I can do about the fact that he’s currently in a super disgusting phase of growing out his summer coat through his clipped winter coat. Kinda looks like a mangy mottled buckskin.

So that’s pretty. I also intended to dye his tail but completely forgot until this morning, and I won’t have time today. We’re gonna be looking kinda ghetto. I’ve honestly been so busy lately, and my mind has been pulled so many directions, I just feel kind of scattered. This show has crept up on me and I’ve not done a lot of the prep stuff that I normally do a week or so out. I did at least learn and run through the dressage test at my lesson last week, so that’s something. The test felt fine, I guess… it’s mercifully short, which is kind of nice, but it also felt like there wasn’t much flow, or like everything was just kind of crammed in there. The canters are really short, with a lengthening on a circle (my least favorite movement in the entire world) taking up half of the canter time. You canter quite early in the test, too, which is a disadvantage to my horse. Getting Mr. Tension to settle at any point during that whole thing will be a challenge. But, hey, at least it’s over with quickly? I prefer the Prelim test for him, to be honest. All the trotting and lateral work at the beginning is much better for his brain.

Even now I’m still having trouble concentrating on the show, because I’m thinking more about the logistics of getting Presto home, and everything that I need to get ready for him. We’re basically going from here to Texas Rose, then from Texas Rose to Abilene to pick him up, and then back home on Sunday. It’s a big damn triangle of driving, but still less than if I made a whole extra trip to Midland and back. Since we’re going straight from the show to pick him up, I have to remember to pack everything that I’ll need for him, too, and everything that needs to get done at home has to happen before we leave. My brain is totally sidetracked by that at the moment.

I’ve been driving so much lately that I’ve run out of high speed data for the month from listening to so many podcasts. Last night I got online and bought some audiobooks to download while I was still on WiFi… The Heart of a Woman (the last Maya Angelou book that I didn’t already have on Audible), West Cork, and The Hate U Give. Plus I still have the last of the German ones that I downloaded (Part 3 or 4? I’ve literally done like 15 hours of Car German at this point) a while back. I should be good for this road trip, unless I get really really really horribly lost and end up in Canada or something. That would be a hell of a wrong turn.

The weather forecast looks great though, both for horse showing and for hauling horses all over the state of Texas. It looks perfect, really, the temps are ideal Henry Weather. And the lows are good too, since I’ll be camping. They’re getting lots of rain up there right now, so the footing should be softened up a bit. AND I have zero complaints about my ride times – Friday is 9:18 dressage, 1:47 stadium (oh yeah hey, I won’t be posting here on Friday), and Saturday is 8:54 XC. I’ll be totally done by like 9am on Saturday, which gives me plenty of time to ice and pack and make the 4 hour trek to Abilene before dark. When both the weather forecast and the ride times look perfect, I start getting nervous wondering what the catch is. It seems too good to be true!

I still have to hit the grocery store today (this time I am determined to remember to bring food and drinks for MYSELF, since I always forget) and I need to dig the big fancy Yeti cooler out of the shed. Plus, like… pack all my shit. And decide which show shirt to wear, since I’ve managed to accrue 3 new ones in the off season.

Luckily I only have to pack one, since I dressage and SJ on the same day. I like it when packing is simplified.

I can’t tell if I’m nervous or excited or both, and if the feelings relate to the show or picking up/bringing home Presto. I’m a little all over the place, but hopefully once we actually get to the show I can take one day at a time and try to focus! Poor Henny, not only is his mom a total nut, he’s gonna have to ride home with a baby hooligan. Poor baby hooligan, he’s about to meet his match in Uncle Henny.

 

One of the items on my crazed list of weekend activities was a course design clinic with Eric Hasbrouck. I fully admit that I was only in attendance for about half of it… by the time we closed up the shop and got some food, we got there a bit late, and then we cut out a little early to go watch the handy round of the derby. My notes are a little light, but it was still interesting.

None of what he said was a major revelation to me, I’ve heard it before, but it’s definitely been a while since I’ve dedicated any real brain power to SJ course design, so it was a good reminder. In the beginning he spoke a lot about how it’s important to design courses appropriate for the people that are showing… like a Grand Prix the first week of WEF is going to be softer than a Grand Prix near the end of circuit. Or never put a 2 stride into a speed class or jumpoff for an under 1.10m jumper class, because without fail someone will try to leave a stride out and end up crashing. Or how, since he was new to the Texas crowd, he designed the courses a little bit friendlier the first week, like putting a more difficult question going toward the ingate, so he could feel it out a bit before ramping up the challenge.

Then he talked a bit about the jumps themselves and how the horse’s see them.

• White and yellow is hardest to jump clean
• Horses are more bothered by severe contrast than by lots of color (he gave an example of a black and white domino jump that caused a lot of problems)
• Always pay attention to the background that the jump is going toward… poles that are the same color as the background are harder for the horse to see clearly. For example, the curtains lining the arena were blue, so the blue rails were going to be more difficult for the horse to see.
• For jumps with pillar standards, a pole that is set near the front of the pillar (as opposed to the middle of the pillar), is harder to jump clear. The pillar draws the horse’s eye in past the rail.
• On the same note, jumps that have a planks near the bottom draw the horses eye down.
• A liverpool that is set flush with or slightly behind the front rail will also draw the horse’s eye down past the rails, and is more difficult to jump clear than a liverpool that is set so that it’s edge is slightly in front of the rail.

There was also some discussion about a movement that some riders are championing, trying to get open water jumps taken out of the sport. Eric is very against this and thinks that the open water is a staple, and should stay (I agree with him there). He said that instead, we should be working on introducing these jumps a lot sooner in a horse’s career, in smaller and easier-to-jump versions, so that they don’t end up 7yo and thrown into a class with a full size open water and be caught unprepared. He said that in Europe horses start seeing them a lot sooner in their competitive career, so by the time they get to the real GP with a real open water, it’s not a new concept to them.

He was also a big proponent of keeping variety in the courses, and bringing back some of the more old-fashioned fences. He said that this year he used a hedge oxer at WEF, something that used to be very common but isn’t seen much anymore, and included walls as much as possible. He expected riders to be a little up in arms about the hedge oxer but actually got a lot of people that loved it, and enjoyed seeing something different in the ring. He is not a fan of how most of the courses look so cookie-cutter these days, and thought it was really important to preserve the types of fences and courses that you see at places like Spruce Meadows and Aachen and Hickstead.

He also talked about the fact that time is much tighter than it used to be, and courses are wheeled on a higher speed. This is mostly due to the fact that everything is so much more competitive now, and the footing is so good that you CAN set these higher speeds without it being dangerous. BTW, he thinks it’s also very important for riders to know and understand how to think in METERS, including meters per minute for speed and what 350mpm vs 375mpm vs 400mpm feels like. Not just an eventer skill!

I wish I could have stayed for the whole thing, Eric was interesting to listen to, and if nothing else he’s definitely re-ignited my brain as far as how closely I look at our showjumping courses to understand the questions the course designer is asking. You can bet that I’ll be looking at them with a bit more of an analytical eye! Yeah sure, a lot of it isn’t applicable to me (like… don’t have to worry about jumping open water) but even just as a spectator, knowing these things makes it a little more interesting.

I know that this clinic was live-streamed but so far I haven’t been able to find a replay of it anywhere. If I do, I’ll come back and add the link.