Redemption at Flora Lea

After being eliminated in the stadium ring at Flora Lea Horse Trials last fall, I wasn't all that interested in going back there...ever again. But it turned out that Flora Lea was the only other event in May that Leo and I could compete at so I had no choice. I had to go.

Well, long story short...Leo was great and we now qualified for our first 1-star! Dressage score was 41.1, two rails in stadium, and clear xc with 8 time faults (20 seconds over). We ended up in 5th place  out of 9. Oh, how I love small, rider divisions!!

Here are the highlights...

Competition Lead-Up...cracking under the pressure inside my head
I had a lesson at Sally's farm on Thursday and, while Leo was great, my riding left a lot to be desired. I kept making the same mistakes over and over: riding Leo on too long and forward a stride, riding Leo past his balance, getting long spots everywhere. No matter how hard I tried I could NOT get my body / eye / mind to do what Sally was telling me to do. At the end of the lesson, all I could think about was how I had to clean up my bad riding quickly before it started impacting Leo's confidence.

Well, I cracked in my self-created pressure cooker and started crying - even though nothing seriously bad happened. In fact, despite huge mistakes on my part, Leo kept jumping even though he could have easily said "No thanks." Crying in front of people is so embarrassing - particularly when you're 37 years old. I was just so frustrated with myself and my inability to perform like I wanted that it all turned to tears. It was just one of those days. *Sigh* Sally was unsympathetic (especially since Leo was great). She said without being able to jump 5-6 different horses regularly, my progress will always be slow. That is simply my reality and I can't have a pity party for myself because it takes a while for me to get experience and progress my own education.

What can I say? I can be really hard on myself and most of the time I keep that part of myself in check, but sometimes it rears its ugly head.

So at Flora Lea I spent the morning trying not to think about all the ways I could screw up. I just told myself if I got eliminated again, I was just going to have a good laugh about it and never come back to Flora Lea.

Leo tried to stop at Fence 3 in stadium...AGAIN! I'm not kidding
Our course started off well enough. There was a related, 6-stride bending line between fence 1 and 2, followed by a rollback turn to a coop and rails at fence 3. Well, Leo saw that coup and rails and wanted nothing to do with it. He started to slide to a stop and I realized in that moment I had a choice: to quit or to persevere. (Fence 3... the same place in the course where we got eliminated last fall. I was shocked. Could this really be happening again??) I made my decision.

I dug my spurs in and decided that come hell or high water, Leo was coming with me over that fence. We took out the top 2 rails but he went over/through the fence. On landing, I got after him and hit him behind my leg with my crop. That is always guaranteed to upset Leo, but I didn't care. I knew I was going to have a problem if I didn't re-establish the chain of command. Funny isn't it? Two days earlier and I am a mess-of-tears-rider. In competition, I somehow become a tough-as-nails-get-this-shit-done rider. It's taken 5 years of competing Leo to become that rider in competition though. I used to get my confidence from him and when he didn't have it, I didn't have it. Now, I get my confidence from myself and give it to him when he needs it. It just took 5 years. :)

Besides leaving out some strides, we made it around the rest of the course with just one more rail down. No refusals, no elimination!! Woot!

Leo dominated the cross country course 
The cross country course at Flora Lea is listed as a 'good test for horses and riders with experience at this level.' It had more bending combinations than any other course I have ridden starting with 4AB: a big brush table followed by a left turn to a corner. Before cross country, we switched Leo's bridle to the corkscrew. That was a great decision. I could get him in a better balance with a lot less effort, which in the end, is much more sympathetic to his mouth.

Well, Leo was insanely amazing on cross country. In stadium, Leo seems to question nearly every fence I point him at; but on cross country, in competition, he questions nothing. If I can get his eye on the fence, he takes me to it. It's really an amazing feeling.  It feels like we have a real partnership right now. I could feel my trust in him build with every fence on the course.

At the corner combination, Leo was simply awesome and from there on, I knew if I got the line right and got his eye on the fence, I wouldn't have any problems on course. He eradicated all doubts in my mind when he jumped through that first combination. Our round wasn't foot perfect but every fence was so easy for Leo. Fence 10AB was a 3-stride bending line between 2 brush fences and I under estimated how soon I needed to turn to get my line to the second fence. I just barely jumped inside the flag on the second fence. Whew. The water complex was a jump, 6 strides through the water to a bank, 4 strides up a hill to a table. I didn't get a powerful jump up the bank and the 4 strides got long, but Leo powered out in the four all the same!

I was 20 seconds over the time but I can spend the rest of the year working on my galloping skills.

So what's next? 
Assuming Leo stays healthy and sound and our training progresses appropriately, we'll aim for the Virginia 1-Star in November. I'm going to take the rest of the year nice and steady and just focus on getting Leo and me more experience at Prelim. We'll head to the Horse Park of New Jersey at the end of June, and then Loch Moy in July. Then in the fall focus on the more challenging prelim tracks like Seneca and Morven Park.