Cross country training last night at Lincomb with Alan Nolan.<\/p>\n
In the rain.<\/p>\n
Actually, ‘rain’ doesn’t even come close to describing the downpour.<\/p>\n
Anyway.<\/p>\n
Alan’s style is broadly similar to that of Matt Ryan – which made me far more relaxed than I was a fortnight ago when the cross country trainer was a stand-in.<\/p>\n
But he’s much more ‘in your face’ than Matt – or perhaps it was because there were just two of us in the group last night.<\/p>\n
For example, the first fence that Alan started us on was the fourth<\/em> fence that Matt put us to.<\/p>\n Challenging.<\/p>\n Yes, that’s a word for it.<\/p>\n I used a different word.<\/p>\n Ofuckme! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n The second fence was a ditch\/palisade combination and Vin was very uncertain about going near anything that big with a freakin’ ditch right in front of it.<\/p>\n Eyes on stalks and a refusal.<\/p>\n But we got him over it.<\/p>\n The first time he over-jumped it by what seemed like three feet from where I was sitting (which considering it was a 1m fence was scary enough), but he also slipped back to racehorse speed which really had me cacking myself.<\/p>\n Because: gusty wind, hard and heavy rain, soft squelchy going, skiddy slidey take-offs and landings and diminishing light – all of these things don’t combine to make for happy cross country experiences, do they?<\/p>\n Well yes actually, they do. Or they did last night.<\/p>\n As mentioned in Podcast No 9 about Saturday’s show jumping training with Mandy Kent, but moreso applicable to last night…<\/p>\n Vin’s a star, I’m not bad, we kicked arse.<\/p>\n It’s that simple.<\/p>\n We were brilliant.<\/p>\n We worked over fences bigger, much more technical and far more complex than the Intro level we’re looking at competing in, in June.<\/p>\n And, as previously mentioned the conditions were far from perfect.<\/p>\n So that’s it then, it’s official.<\/p>\n We’re on track.<\/p>\n By the time we were finished (ironically we did a lot of work into and out of water) and had hacked back to the lorry we couldn’t have been any wetter if we’d been stood under a full-on hosepipe for a couple of hours.<\/p>\n I loaded Vin straight away and untacked him in his stall, slipped on his ‘string vest’ (it’s a slightly too-short sweat rug so that’s what I call it) and gave him his haynet which he dived on as if he hadn’t eaten for days.<\/p>\n When he was right I had a quick chat on the phone to Rebecca from the riding club who had organised last night (and all of the many training sessions we’ve attended this season) and a few words with Alan.<\/p>\n Then I disappeared in to the living accommodation, stripped off, towelled down and changed in to my emergency set of riding clothes.<\/p>\n We trundled back to the yard in a haze of adrenaline-fired excitement and joy.<\/p>\n Because everything was so wet it took ages to get straight.<\/p>\n But Vin got his tea and a thorough grooming, the tack got wiped over before it was put away (it all needs dismantling and being thoroughly cleaned before next use though!), and the lorry got mucked out, tidied, swept up and put away.<\/p>\n Vin and I are competing next on Monday at a Hunter Trial at Hilltop.<\/p>\n But I think I need to ask Gary to check the lorry over, the steering made a peculiar sound when I was reversing it in to its parking bay – I wonder if the new hydraulic pipes he put on a couple of months ago might need checking.<\/p>\n The washing machine at the yard has two numnahs, Vin’s tailguard and a full set of brushing boots in it.<\/p>\n Must remember to nip in, empty it and hang my things up to dry.<\/p>\n Although it’s Wednesday today Vin is going to get this evening off.<\/p>\n Though I will stop by and shove a couple of sliced apples down his throat at teatime.<\/p>\n Because he’s a star.<\/p>\n And possibly part fish. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cross country training last night at Lincomb with Alan Nolan. In the rain. Actually, ‘rain’ doesn’t even come close to describing the downpour. Anyway. Alan’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}