goddessfarmer | UNH HT recap. W00T!

That white ribbon is 4th place. Yes, that's raingear, with the dry clothes that I put on after I was done riding. The weather was wet, but not as bad as some years. My underwear was still dry.

It wasn't raining for dressage on Saturday, and we had a kind of average test, putting us 5th out of 9 in my section. Today, it was raining pretty steadily, but not too hard. I did put some of my bigger studs in Skippy's shoes though, because the combination of slick grass over hard ground is a bad one. At the event they run stadium jumping before cross country, in such a way that we have about 20 min between, and so ride stadium in our x/c gear. Because of the weather, I chose to have a very short warm-up, and that turned out just fine. Our stadium jumping round was one of those "gets the job done" ones, it wasn't pretty, but it was clean. I think I overrode in places, bringing him back a lot then sending him forward. I'm fairly sure that I didn't get to any jumps pulling back. I don't think my position was as tight as it sometimes is, but since I don't have photos or video, I can't really say.
Cross country was AWESOME. Skip was calm, cool, and collected in the start box, and I had to kick him out of it. The log at the first was a different jump than we have formerly started out with on this course, so he was a little confused on the approach, but I kept kicking and we both saw the same long distance and sailed over the log. He ran enthusiastically down the woods road, and was obedient on the turn to the chevrons and we actually got the perfect distance and a beautiful jump there this time. He powered up the little but steep hill and we got close to the big red box, but he was like "I got this" and off we went down the causeway. I kicked him on, this being a long stretch with good footing, knowing later I'd need to be more careful. As we rounded the turn to the house I thought, oh, that's coming up fast, about the same time skip locked on to the jump. He balanced his gallop as much as I did, and then we went forward to it. That one was effortless. He hesitated coming up to the bank complex, glancing at the prelim fence next to our track, but as soon as I pointed him at the up-bank and sat up he was all business. Perfect distances up and down and we got to the skinny after just perfectly. Then a good quick pace down the second causeway, but slowing coming onto the grass for the s-turn to the brush ramp. This fence had been the last one on the course the most recent past time I'd ridden here, and we'd jumped it badly, so I was doubly careful coming in. We got right down to the base of it and had a good jump. Then we had a case of avoid the rocks and small shrubs on our line to the down bank. I had planned on jumping down at a slight angle to get a straighter line to the doghouse that was a few strides later on a bending line, but Skip preferred to jump the bank straight. We had no trouble with the bending line to the doghouse, he was right there with me. I have ceased to be worried about ditches, He saw it, and didn't really want me to mess with him, so I just hung on. He was, however confused by our new route through the water - we had to make a sharp right just after the ditch to a log, and he thought about trotting, but I kicked and he was like, "Oh! this jump? OK." The water itself was just a run through, between that log, and the log cabin about 3 strides on the solid ground on the other side. We got a terrible distance to the log cabin, but he jumped and I hung on. Good footing after that meant I could push some more, but I had to mind my steering as we actually had to jump the sawmill for the first time in a while. We had another foot-perfect jump there, and kept going up to the little grey house. The tricky thing about the little grey house, which we got to and jumped easily, was the turn on the grass after to the shingle coop. But Skip was ON, focused and listening, and all I did was look and sit up and he did the rest. The coop jumped well, and I was worried about the down hill on the grass, but he didn't slip. He might have taken a few trot steps before the next log though, this same 2 logs on a 180 deg turn that was on the summer course. I kicked after the balance and the first one was good, I kept a show-jump collected canter around the turn, he tried to slow coming up to the next log, but I kicked forward and it was a good jump. Then it was pretty much straight on up a slight incline to the ramp that we've jumped I don't know how many times, which we did again in good form. The last was the same "trapezoid" that had on our summer course in a different place, and it was also small. He didn't bat an eye at it, and we were soon through the finish flags. My watch showed 5:02 time elapsed on our course with optimum time of 5:04. Needless to say, I am very pleased.