Better times and location made me stick with Aston since it was on.
I got everything ready the night before so it was a lovely leisurely start and we set off ahead of time at 9.30.
We arrived in good time, which was lucky as we had to be towed into the lorry park. I was glad to see the new arenas allowed much better warm up spaces, and I set about walking the course. I was quite concerned as it was pretty wet, and parts of the BE90 course were rather cut up.
I was in two minds whether to run XC or not - half of me felt well she needs to learn to go on less than ideal going, and she doesn't seem to mind mud at home, the other half of me didn't want to risk a fright.
I decided we would set off and if she felt cautious or unhappy I would pull up.
I unloaded her and she obviously realised this was a slightly more exciting party than usual as she was trembling like a hare and a f-ing nightmare to stud up (although bribery worked a treat). She bounced all the way to the warm up and I hugely regretted not putting my shit-strap on to hang on to. I was quite relieved to get inside the enclosed space of the warm up before I ended up in a puddle of slop.
I allowed 40 minutes to warm up which was about perfect. I trotted around for a while until she relaxed then worked on her transitions, bend ect until she felt nice and soft. Took her boots off and of course the first thing she did was cut herself with her studs (no studs inside behind before SJ from now on..) and then promptly lost her ear veil. Ear veil reattached and my backside heaved (so sorry to everyone who had to witness that) back onto my horse and it was our turn to go in.
She was great - bar a jog in the free walk and me doing my walk transition way too early (I forgot where I was meant to do it so figured I'd do it early to avoid being beeped at), I was very pleased with her. She was much more relaxed than I anticipated and although there's lots to work on (straightness in particular which came up on the comments!), I felt she did pretty much as good as she could for where she is now. Later we found we had a 34.8 which seemed a little harsh, but her straightness and tension in the walk (and my mistake) proved expensive. However, 31.4 was lowest of the day so must of been a fairly harsh judge.
The SJ looked nice, small and inviting and fairly simple bar a nasty turn back to the second to last fence down to a short two strided double. Lexi came in and popped through it like she does it every day, and didn't bat an eyelid at anything. Again LOTS to work on - namely get control back as soon as we land, as several times we bowled along for a while on the wrong leg thus losing balance and collection and basically everything. We rubbed a couple but left them all up!
Now onto the cross country. I did very little warming up as the warm up was pretty grim but she felt happy underfoot. We went into the startbox and I remembered how I'd envisioned that moment the very first time I sat on her as a wobbly baby.
We trotted out the starbox ("Go? I'm going...oh okay you mean GO") and popped over the first couple of fences. Then we realised what we were doing and the head went down and I had to sit back and take a serious pull because we were NOT going at speed on that going. Then Lexi figured out she could avoid the mud if she just took off into orbit over the fences which was interesting...
We cantered over the big open ditch and it was just great. There was nothing too exciting on the course but she jumped it all out of her stride. We enjoyed the log to a little slope up and down to another log, then trotted cautiously through the water, easily over the corner then brushed through the brush fence which led to an enormous jump over the last and finished!
We collected 8.8 time faults which put us into 12th place, and I couldn't be more thrilled with her.
Only one photo for now as my videos are playing up...
I'm SO happy with her, she was incredible cross country and I can't wait for the next one!
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