Sit Back And Kick. Kick And Sit Back
The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward.
-Amelia Earhart
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Phase Two: Stadium
There were 15 riders in my
division Friday. By Saturday morning, one rider had scratched. I was tickled
with my 40.0 dressage score, which put me in 11th place out of
14 riders. Now, I know I said I wasn’t going to be competitive. All I wanted to
do was complete all three phases. It’s a bucket list thing. But…the top 10 riders
get ribbons. That might be nice…
After dressage, Jen and I rode
back to the barn breathing a sigh of relief. This is really
happening! Time was of the essence as my ride time for stadium was
10:33. I sipped on a water and watched as Em started switching
tack. Paper tigers, paper tiger, paper tigers. Erika
would be a few minutes late to my warm-up since she was working with other
riders. Em was to get me started.
We headed into the stadium warm
up arena and were quickly stopped by the officiant. “You need an
armband.” Crud. Em ran back to the barn but couldn’t find it. I
had left it in the camper; it’s hard to think of everything at 5:30 AM! Since
there was not enough time to get back to the campground, and the Big Blue Tack
Trailer was literally next to our barn, she bought a new one and ran it to me.
By the time we had it all sorted, Erika had arrived.
This warm-up arena was less
crowded than the dressage warm up, but a nice fall breeze had come up and Romeo
was feeling fresh…a bit more than I wanted. We popped over a few jumps and his
excitement seemed to increase with the wind. After I slammed on the breaks
after a jump and gave him the “what for,” he settled down. Erika took the
opportunity and said it was time to head to the in-gate. We walked to the arena. Paper
tigers, paper tigers, paper tigers.
Erika: Sit up and kick. Kick and
sit up.
Me: Sit up and kick. Kick and
sit up.
And with that, I entered the
arena. I circled just as Erika had showed me. I heard the whistle (not to be
confused with any other whistles) and the announcer say my name and Prepster's
(Romeo’s registered name). We trotted toward the first jump. It had
butterflies on either side; very appropriate. SIT UP, KICK!! We
cleared it! Romeo didn’t hesitate at all!
I gathered my thoughts and got the
trot back as we headed down the rail to jump number two. Heels down,
eyes up, KICK! We were over two and cantered to three! On purpose! No
problems! My confidence was building.
But jump four was a tight roll back near
the rail, so I decided to trot again. Jump four was behind us.
We cantered
toward the fifth. Trot! Trot, damnit, trot! Nope. He
cantered. Screw it. Sit back and KICK! Clear five!
Again, the
rail and quick turn allowed me to regain my composure. Sit back,
KICK! Then the smiles came, we were over jump six (in a not so pretty fashion!).
Romeo was more than
eager! He was having a great time never really looking at anything and
completely forgiving my rooky mistakes. We cantered out of six and from there,
I abandoned the trot and went for it. Barely avoiding a display of hay bales and flowers, we took jump seven. We weren't exactly in the center of the jump, but Romeo didn’t seem to mind.
I completely lost balance on the hard turn to
the right toward fence eight and had to laugh as I almost toppled out of the
saddle. ONE MORE! SIT BACK, KICK!
And like that, we
were done! Eight jumps and no refusals or rails. (SQUEAL!) Thanks to me
trotting so much, we accrued 5 time penalties but I wasn’t there to be
competitive, right? Clearly, we need to work on our equitation but there will be time for that later. I was grateful to crumble the paper tigers and defeat both
Rome’s and my insecurities.
I’m not certain my
feet touched the ground the rest of the day! We enjoyed lunch and afterwards
walked the cross country course with family and friends by my side. There were
lots of different kinds of jumps; certainly, I had never jumped anything like
them…except for the logs! A quick glance over the map and I realized there were
no hay bale jumps. Well that was an unnecessary exercise but
hopefully it was a confidence builder for me. Honestly, I wasn’t too fazed.
I had slayed my fears in stadium; I could do this too.
Time to walk the
course again with Richard, Erika and Val; this time with intention and purpose. On our
way to the start box, I looked at Erika. “Ok, I do want to be competitive.” I
had moved from 11th to 9th place after stadium.
“7th place gets a purple ribbon. I want a purple ribbon.” I’m
not certain if the look she gave me was one of disbelief or “Uh-huh, I thought
so” but we walked it with the intention of being competitive. I tried not to
skip with joy! Her biggest piece of advice was to forgo the water. We had an option at
the water complex: trot/canter through it and deal with a really spooky in, or
trot along side it and jump a log. “If you want to be competitive, don’t do the
water. It’s not inviting. The safe bet is to take the road and jump the log.
“ Duly noted.
We wrapped up the day with dinner at the
campground with the team, family and friends. I was in bed by 10:30.
The
rest is merely tenacity, the rest is merely tenacity, the rest is merely
tenacity…
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