An ode to an ODE

 

Sunrise

 
My alarm went off at 5am Sunday April 29th. No joke. Although I was feeling a bit tired, I was still excited. The jeep was packed. All that was left to do was load up Cu Chulainn. Rusty, Cu Chulainn and myself were on our way to Crecora, Co. Limerick for our first One Day Event ( I did some with Fred a few years ago). 
 
The work was put in. The torturous winter.  The flatwork and jumping lessons, and cross country schooling. Time to put it all together and see how we got on.
 

He's ready

We flew down the motorway in no time. We arrived just after 8 ( I should still be in bed by this time on a Sunday!!).  We were one of the first to arrive. Rusty and myself went to the entries tent to get our numbers and see what the scéal (story) was. I got Cu Chulainn out to start plaiting him. I hadn't thought to fix up his mane so we had some golf balls on our hands. 
 
Our dressage test was at 9.42. It was nearly tacking up stage when I finished giving him a brush off. The atmosphere was electric. I completely forgot what eventing was like. Poor CC wasn't sure where to look. He's tense at the best of times, but this was an unknown challenge for him (and if I'm honest, me). 
 
We got tacked up and I warmed up as best I could, but the warm up and general atmosphere was chaotic. There were people lunging horses everywhere you looked!! Needless to say our warm up was tense, although he did relax a bit in canter. Our time arrived and we went up that centre line, hoping for the best.  To be fair to him he did try and I was delighted with his efforts. Our free walk on a long rein was across the diagonal towards the chaotic scenes of the warm up, so there was no stretch down for that! We came up with our heads held high and he got pats for his effort. While I was cooling him off someone's horse went out of control across the warm up and the rider had to jump off as his reins had broken - for the second time that day! It's fair to say that Cu Chulainn behaved excellently in comparison. 
 
Thankfully I'd convinced my friend Dani to come too, so I had company for the long day. We watched her test while we were cooling down. When she was finished we untacked the horses and put them in her lorry while we went to walk our jumping courses. It was then we found out that we wouldn't be jumping till after half 1 (it was only 10am now).  Our course was up, but not at our height, so we walked it anyway. Then we went out and walked the cross country course. 
 
SWEET HOLY JESUS. 
What have I let myself in for????? I entered the 1m class because I was thinking of the Showjumping, not the cross country.... I naively thought that the cross country would be nice and easy and enticing as an entry into eventing. 
 
IT.WAS.NOT. 
There was many oh crap moments whilst walking the course..and the worst thing? We'd so much time to think about it after! Literally hours. 
 

I am not crouching here!!

 
In the intervening hours I attempted napping - not a goer. We watched some of the SJ for the lower levels. I think we saw one clear round all day. Not great for the nerves. 
 
Then there were delays in the Showjumping, so we didn't actually get going till after half 2. Needless to say my nerves were not great. They whacked up the jumps to a good 1m, I have suspicions they were higher. I laced the Balance oil in to me. Trying desperately to relax. Such a Catch 22 scenario; you need to be relaxed to get your horse to relax and actually perform to the best of their ability, but then if they're not relaxed you're not relaxed....AHHHH
 
The warm up was a bog by the time we got into it. The weather had been a bit crappy all week and although it held up well earlier, it was a disaster at that stage. You couldn't canter unless you wanted your horse to lose a shoe or pull a tendon.  I did a few small canters of about 10/15m. I popped the two warm up jumps twice and that was it. Then it was the hardball queue (just short of elbows) to get out on course and get going. CC was lovely and quiet in the pocket. Luckily I managed to squeeze in. I walked him over to No. 1 to see what way I'd approach it and was happy to see it was a small bit smaller than the others, so that gave me the confidence to go on. We popped that, and the others and next thing we were heading for the last two, that were a double. All I could hear was Damien in my head saying just approach the first part like it's a single jump. So out loud I said to myself; it's just one jump, just one. The next thing we were out and over it. CLEAR!!! I saluted the judge and we headed out on the cross country. Poor Cu Chulainn was a bit taken aback. 'Ah why are we now out cross country??' So the first few jumps were me convincing him, yeah we're going over these. After the 3rd one we were well on our way. He flew over them, not a bother to him. Some of them I would have liked to do with a little bit more momentum and speed. He also found some non-existent jumps like where a pipe had been buried... I remember coming up to one I'd been wary of as we walked the course. It was an X (if you looked at it from the sky) and it was high. I was so focused on that I completely forgot about the narrow fence up next through the gap in the bush. So unfortunately I didn't have him on target for it. So we missed that. But we got over it and no issues for the rest of the course. 
 
What an absolute star bar!! When we were finished, it was like that was the warm up. He was ready for off again!
 
To top off a great day, Dani came 3rd overall!!

We got home around 6, almost 12 hours later. Thankfully it was a lovely sunny, dry day because otherwise there's no way I'd have been able for it. It was exhausting. But so worth it.

Home sweet home