Vin’s first full-on affiliated horse trials (or One Day Event if you prefer) is next Saturday.<\/p>\n
A few days ago we received an acknowledgement letter that said (essentially) that we’d jumped through the correct administrative hoops, survived the ballot and told us our entry number.<\/p>\n
We can pick up our times for each of the three disciplines from Thursday.<\/p>\n
Whatever times we do get, it looks as though it might be a very early start on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Working backwards from the ‘knowns’:<\/p>\n
Dressage in our section kicks off at 08.00<\/p>\n
Our section entry numbers run from 51 – 100<\/p>\n
We are entry number 64<\/p>\n
Estimate 5-1\/2 minutes for each dressage test and judge’s comments, therefore:<\/p>\n
Probable dressage time of: 09.12<\/p>\n
Add time for working in, tacking up, getting changed: 08.00<\/p>\n
Arrival stuff, checking in with the secretary, picking up numbers etc: 07.45<\/p>\n
Travel time (approximately 1-1\/2 hours): 06.15 leave yard<\/p>\n
Arrive yard, feed and groom Vin, load lorry, stuff haynet, put Vin in and go: 05.45<\/p>\n
Leave house: 05.15<\/p>\n
Get up at???<\/p>\n
Now obviously, at this stage, all of these times are ‘best guesses’.<\/p>\n
But I’m pretty sure they’re accurate ‘best guesses’.<\/p>\n
Ho hum.<\/p>\n
There are two sets of ‘unknowns’:<\/p>\n
1. The show jumping and cross country times<\/p>\n
2. The amount of time that will be available to us to walk the show jumping track (less important) and the cross country course (very important).<\/p>\n
The organisers at some venues give a generous amount of time for course walking.<\/p>\n
Some don’t.<\/p>\n
To mitigate the risk of having to jog around the cross country track having just completed the dressage, I’m considering driving to the venue the afternoon\/evening before.<\/p>\n
Hmmm…<\/p>\n
We shall see how that idea pans out.<\/p>\n
It’s a lot of effort but putting it in to action would bring an enormous comfort zone!<\/p>\n
In other horse-related news…<\/p>\n
Vin looks good.<\/p>\n
He’s replaced the condition he lost in the early Spring when his coat began changing from Winter.<\/p>\n
It’s weird; Beech also went through dramatic weight loss at that seasonal change.<\/p>\n
But yeah, he looks good – and feels good.<\/p>\n
In fact he was a little argumentative during a couple of exercises yesterday.<\/p>\n
I don’t mind that, it’s a good sign.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday Jo came in and gave us a thorough flatwork work-out.<\/p>\n
At the end of the lesson we ran through BE Test 102 (which will be our Dressage test on Saturday).<\/p>\n
She gave us helpful words and a little bit of ringcraft – I love that she’s a highly listed dressage judge as well as a trainer and an FBHS.<\/p>\n
There’s nothing left to do now except schooling and worrying.<\/p>\n
I’ll school lightly this evening and try to fit in some after-work sessions three or four evenings this week.<\/p>\n
I need to dismantle all of the tack and clean it thoroughly; that’s really going to eat in to my spare time this week!<\/p>\n
The lorry’s been checked over, it’s been cleaned out, is fuelled up and ready to go.<\/p>\n
The only thing that really needs keeping an eye on is my nerves!<\/p>\n
B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vin’s first full-on affiliated horse trials (or One Day Event if you prefer) is next Saturday. A few days ago we received an acknowledgement letter<\/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-572","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\/572","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=572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}