January was a total write off due to bad weather and then I caught the Flu so for Riley and I February has been the start to our year and so we have kicked the training plan in to gear and started getting out and about.
Photo www.jayphotos.co.uk
I think I am quite lucky with my location as I am within an hour’s drive of many training venues and have a great range of trainers and instructors in the area where I live, which is a godsend when you have no arena! My main trainer and mentor is Jo May and she has just been brilliant with the pair of us. I suffer with long engrained bad riding habits and Riley basically just doesn’t know any better because of his age. Fortunately Riley is a trier and has a good work ethic; however his alter ego, Kevin, does make an appearance every now and again. Anyone who has watched the Harry Enfield show and knows the characters “Kevin and Perry” will understand why I call him Kevin as every now and again Riley will throw a teenage strop or I just get given a horsey look of disgust if I ask him to do something that he does not necessarily want to do.
At the start of February we entered two classes for the unaffiliated JAS at Pontispool. As Riley hadn’t jumped a cross country jump since last September, and has never seen a portable XC fence in an arena, I took him to Kings Sedgemore Equestrian Centre the day before as they were running eventer training over their portables. And boy was I glad we went! Riley went into the KSEQ arena with his eye on stalks. He was so green at the start but by the end of the session we were jumping round with confidence and this was a nice boost before the competition the next day.
Competition day came on what is now a typical British day, it was raining cats and dogs! When I arrived at Pontispool I was really impressed to find the team there had done a great job building the courses which spanned two arenas. We warmed up for the 80 class and instantly Riley was on his toes. I went in for my round and got my arms pulled out of their sockets by Riley who now thinks that jumping is great fun and seems to be getting a little carried away. We did a double clear and then in no time at all the class ended and I had to walk the 90 course.
I was quite surprised by the difference in heights, this brought a nervous knot to my tummy, and also the technical questions were more apparent with some offset fences, skinnies and of course the ditch which they purposely built to connect the two arenas. I was at the start of the class and I didn’t get the best warm up as they were calling my number when I was still tacking up! But we were allowed to jump a couple of warm up jumps and then rushed across to do our round. Having jumped a previous round Riley seemed to have some of the steam knocked out of him so he was a lot more controllable but sadly Riley being Riley spooked on a turn and disunited a few strides out from an oxer which resulted in us tipping a show jump pole, but what I was impressed with was his gutsy attempt at the cross country phase. He was very focused and locked on to each fence which also resulted in a super jump over the skinny arrowhead, something which we have never even schooled over before! So we managed a good clear XC phase but did gain 0.8 time faults. To me the JAS comp was more about experience for Riley rather than trying to get placed and I feel that the day set a good benchmark to see how he felt for the start of the eventing season, and this has now put me in a positive mindset for Moreton BE80 on 3rd March.
So I will be back again in a few weeks with my report on Moreton.
