It's Over...Now What?

We spent 6 minutes (or what feels like an eternity) riding through our dressage test on Thursday followed by  6 minutes and 13 seconds galloping around the cross-country on Friday, and today for the final phase, stadium jumping, we spent only 85 seconds cantering around a big and technical course.  It seems somewhat anticlimactic after the cross-country, but can be very influential in the final standings.  That was certainly the case today.  The top 10 in my division swapped places all over the board because of rails, stops, and time.  Only 5 people went double clear (no jumping, no time), one person had no jumping and a few time, and everyone else had jumping penalties added to their scores.

Lady took a number of rails today, seven to be exact, but 3 of them were due to an unfortunate stumble.  In the middle of the course, there was a BIG triple bar set six going strides away from a BIG triple (a vertical-to-vertical one stride, then two strides to an oxer).  I pressed Lady up to a nice forward deep distance at the triple bar and landed going for the 6, and at stride 5 Lady took a strange step with her hind end.  She took a stumble step to the base of the first part of the triple and picked her feet up and over as best she could.  I sat up, put my leg on, and told her to just keep going.  So like the awesome/amazing/fabulous/perfect horse she is, she kept picking her legs up but with the added strides we pretty much cleaned out the entire triple combination...but we did it in style!  As for the others, I will have 14 hours in the car to think about the round over and over to come up with what I could have done/should have done...but I won't over-analyze the course now.

I allowed myself a few moments of disapointment, because no one goes into stadium thinking "it's fine if I take  rails."  But only a few, because (1) my horse literally turned herself inside out to get through a really bad situation and kept both of us upright without taking on any refusals, and (2) as I left the arena I got a little course completion prize.  Walking back to the barn I grinned ear to ear because I had just accomplished something I never thought I would: competing at and completing the USEA/USEF Advanced championships.  We finished in 16th place.

More XC photos from USEA

I ordered tons of pictures from this weekend, and there will be video later too =)