How things change. Two years ago,I had the amazing luxury of riding three strapping young thoroughbred horses around events every other week.And they were rarely out of the money. It was a great feeling of success and accomplishment that gave me great strength and the fortitude to fulfill all the challenges this sport requires.
It takes tremendous willpower not to equate ones self worth as a human being with how one ends up on the weekend.I am currently down to one eventer,Peter Pan.Ninety Nine percent of this darn game is confidence. I am currently standing on about 10% in my ability.
Show Jumping once again seems to be eating me alive. Even though I had a great summers jumping at proper shows with Peter and Zidaan.For some reason my last event brought me to my kneees with a charming 5 rails down. And this week ,,,well I'll start at the beginning.
Peter is entering into the power stage of his career and it is not an easy one.I always tell everyone riding well is an illusion.(Except if you watched the top 5 at Burghley this week!OMG do they ever miss?)(Another blog entirely)
I was very pleased with my dressage warm up and test this week only to be hammered by the judge.Hurrumph!Grump Grump.
The cross country looked great,although I said to Barbie at a small ditch /bounce combination...."I hope they read this....This ditch is not much to look at." Peter pinged around inside his minute markers easily until,splat ...that darn little ditch.He Left both his hind legs in it and I pulled out quickly to avoid hitting the skinny out. There was no room to do anything except pop back out over that ditch the wrong way and represent to the combination. Well
he saw it that time and off we went. He finished the course with 20 jumping and 20 time as there was no point in running his legs off at that point.I was not happy.
Most importantly I had to make sure he was OK. He had some pretty good scrapes on the inside of his hind legs. I felt I had let him down in my presentation.
Show Jumping on Sunday I had another disappointing 4 down and felt I rode really badly.UGH. WE forgot the camera. My only source of info.
So It was a long ride home. I miss Pickles. I miss River Dance and Harry too.I need to clean up my game. AGAIN!
Upon arrival at Paradise,the grass is long and untidy. It looks overrun. Ugh. We are killing ourselves to keep it all going.Doom and Gloom.
We leave again in two days for The AEC's.Hopefully things will go better there.I can't stay in a slump for too long.I look at Peter and I see great things. I feel it.Just not this week.Karen O'Conner's groom Max told me to go to the movies and forget about it.Good advice.
So we'll be washing,mowing ,jumping and teaching again till we leave and see what happens the next time... Stay tuned...I am going to keep telling myself it's going to get better and remind myself how lucky I am to be this miserable at times.. Horses are great levelers!
Any of you guys ever feel this way?
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3 comments:
Great post, and boy can I relate to how one bad show can make me feel like less of a rider. My mantra these days is "any day I get to ride I'm grateful for, and if it's a good ride, all the better".
I feel this way all the time :-) Your blog post made me sile.
Love your blogs Lellie.
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