Fielding Spring Show- The rest.

Saturday my classes were all on in the morning. Kate was in the 1.10m class with no wins, Connie in the open 1.10m class and Rascal in the 1m class. Rascal after a short hack proved to be unsound which is about what I expected. Kate jumped more happily in the indoor but anytime I let her get behind my leg she took the rail and had 3 rails for 12 faults. Connie jumped well but a little sort of flat and dull and had 8 faults. I would like to point out that none of the indoor tracks were particularly easy, lots of rollbacks, bending lines and the such but fair technical not outrageous.

Then i got to have a big sleep that afternoon which was nice and the weather packed in which wasn't so nice but overall I was happy with the day. The next day Kate was up first in the 1.10m Championship class. Had a good warm up and she started beautifully and then I cantered straight past the gate which was fence 5 and got eliminated. Stupid, Stupid girl. The horse finally jumps well inside and I blew it. The amateur class was later that day and it was a big enough track. The 1.20m that followed didn't look much bigger. Connie as my nominated horse and so the horse I can get series points on went first and had a pretty disappointing three rails. They were only tiny touches and it just didn't go my way. Sometimes they stay up and this weekend they didn't. Possibly I overrode her to a couple of the fences. Her back fetlocks have blown a serious set of windgalls so obviously I put too much strain on her body and so am making a concentrated effort to a) Strip some weight off the tubby mare and b) get her fitter.

Kate was in the amateur as well and in hindsight I should probably not have started. I had a bad warm-up where I was struggling to see my distances and was under time pressure because by the time I got off of Connie and onto Kate and swapped spurs and rode back to the ring there was only 1 or 2 riders left. This is the difficulties of doing i all by myself. Anyway, the first fence in this class was off a 90 degree turn and while it was fine with Connie, Kate with her tendency to fall behind my leg inside was hopeless. I had two stops after some feeble indecisive riding. She would have gone if I had committed earlier and kept her in front of my leg. I cooked myself mentally in the warm-up though and so it was never going to happen. Connie ended up sixth and I get one series point which is excellent but still not that satisfying for a 3 rail round. I don't feel like I deserve it certainly. So much much work to do before Foxton in a fortnight.