Well it’s not how it was meant to go, we were eliminated for being out of time at the first vet gate because I (despite having read the rules the week before) forgot you have 15mins to present to the vet instead of the 20mins you have at National. Now first of all, it should not have taken us as long as it did to get to the vet, in an ideal world we’d have never been in this position but we were and it’s entirely on me.

Estrid and I fought our way around our first 40km, neither of us were having fun and with each km I felt like our partnership was cracking a little bit more, it breaks my heart to think about it. I wanted to go at 15kph, statistically the best possible chance I could give her of a successful completion, Estrid wanted to go faster, she got angrier, my riding got uglier, adrenaline was high and she lost her head and I didn’t do anything to change the situation we were in.

We came into vet gate one with a pissed off, high on adrenaline horse that wasn’t thinking straight. I poured too may buckets of water on her, she got cold, her heart rate would settle and then another horse would move or she’d get angry again and then it would shoot up into the 80’s, it took us 9 minutes to present to the vet, at which point she was left alone in the vetting, her eyes went out on stalks, the shaking got worse and our pulse was too high.

I then though lets just chill, stand outside the vetting and take our time, we have one shot and I don’t want to blow it so lets just take all the time we have…I thought we had 20mins. I re-presented at 17mins, we passed the vet and the ground jury walk over to tell me I was out of time… my heart sank, I knew that I’d got it wrong, we only had 15mins to get through the vet gate, so we were eliminated.

I’ve learnt so much, hard lessons that I won’t forget. I should have changed my strategy on the first loop and let Estrid go faster, I should have separated her from the other horses and given her a chance to relax out on course, I should never have poured so much water on her, I shouldn’t have got the rule wrong. But I have a happy healthy horse, I was so grateful to make it to the start line and ride through those FEI flags, we have another opportunity to try again and I am nothing if not resilient and eternally hopeful that we will get there one day.

It’s been a while since I was regularly entering FEI rides and quite a bit has changed. So I thought I’d go through the process for anyone thinking about stepping up to 1* from national.

First of all the FEI have different requirements than EGB to be eligible to compete. The FEI require two rides between 40-79km in one day and two rides from 80-100km as two single day or one single day and one multi day event to be completed within 3 years and no faster than 16kph.

You can then enter a 1* no earlier than 1 year and 6 months following your first novice qualification. Then you must complete 2 rides at each star level within a 3 year period to work up the distances and then continue to maintain your star level.

Next up you need to register the horse and you as an athlete with the FEI, download the FEI horse app and upload your latest vaccination. All subsequent vaccinations will then have to be inputted into the app at the time of the vaccination by your vet. The app is also where you have to record your horses AM & PM temperatures leading up to an event and complete a self-certification form before you arrive at the venue. It’s well worth downloading the FEI rule app as it’s super easy to go check the endurance qualifications and rules. (The irony of this considering what happened in my 1*…if you know you know).

We have had 5 weeks between our 80km at Lavenham and our 100km 1* at Thetford, with almost 3 weeks of that being recovery and tapering there’s only been 2 weeks worth of proper training. Estrid has been 100km ready for a while now so we weren’t worried about improving fitness just maintaining condition and perhaps adding a few more canter sessions in.

The original plan was to take Tissy to the Oakover social ride, however, with Estrid’s 1* so close to fruition I just didn’t want to take the risk of leaving Estrid in the field by herself. Usually there are other horses out at the livery but at the moment, for various reasons, it’s just Estrid and Tissy. So I promised Tissy that her time would come but I took Estrid to my favourite social ride instead (Tissy couldn’t care less about being on her own or in company).

Oakover is such a great route with some decent hills and lovely long canters. To top it off the food van had ice cream and cake!

I find motivating myself to do things so much easier when I have a goal. At 28 Tissy doesn’t really need any goals but structuring her training and having something to look forward to is so much easier for me when we have something to aim for. I’ve wanted to go the the Elan Valley ride for so long and this year the stars have finally aligned so that hopefully Tissy and I can go for an overnight pony party stay.

Entries open on the 8th of July so if you fancy joining us for what will undoubtably be an absolutely stunning ride then here’s the link: https://www.endurancegb.co.uk/Events/Calendar/View?id=3138

Well we did it, we made it to Lavenham and we had not only a great time but a very successful time!

Estrid got off the trailer a sweaty shaking mess….no idea why, she usually travels well and we had a very straight forward very relaxed journey along straight roads. Nevertheless she settled well into her corral, ate and drank, and also had a good mooch around the vetting without being a drama llama.

My ride plan for our 80km CER was to be going above 16kph but no faster than 8kph, taking into account I though she’d take about 8-12mins to present at the vet gates. Safe to say we nailed the plan with an average ride speed of 16.86kph. If I’m being picku our second loop could have been a bit slower, it was 17.09kph and our third loop could have been a little faster (16.61kph) as I prefer a negative split. But I think our speeds were consistent enough that it’s not too bad.

There were two big surprises of the day. Firstly Estrid’s vet gate presentation times were consistently around the 5 minute mark, a dramatic improvement from last year. Secondly, Estrid led a horse around almost the entire 80km. Estrid used to just stop or be very wary and stuck in the mud if there was ever a horse close behind her, so I would opt to part ways with anyone we came across so we could get into a rhythm. There were moments where she wasn’t quite sure and she’s still definitely more forward by herself but I was so impressed that we had a nice ride with Jenny and her stallion, Jasper.

Jenny and I discussed the finish and we opted not to do a racing finish, but as Estrid had taken the lead for the majority of the route I have a sneaky suspicion Jenny may have held back by a nose to let Estrid take the win. The best part of the whole thing was behing awarded Best Condition. Estrid was certainly a little tired towards the end of the last loop, more mentally than physically but the later that evening and the next day she trotted up with as much enthusiasm as she had the morning of the race.

I’m really glad I opted to do an 80km CER rather than go straight to a 100km 1*, as I now feel really confident that we’ve got our vet gates down, I know what she’s like in bigger groups of horses and what kind of speeds to think about doing.

Vet gates are highly personal and very horse specific in terms of how you set up and how you run them. It depends on your horse, the amount of crew and their experience, your goals in terms of speed through a vet gate etc. But if your a first timer I thought it might be useful to see how we set up, what we take with us and why we do what we do.

Ultimately it will be a lot of trial and error and getting to know what you like but here’s what we do.

I find thinking of my horses a great motivator when the enthusiasm for a workout is low, but I obviously want to keep fit, healthy and mobile for myself too. I lead a very active lifestyle regardless of whether I did any structured training. I’m a Physiotherapist working with athletes and trauma patients so my day to day has a lot of movement. Throw in riding 4-6 x a week and I probably hit above the average activity level for most people.

But none of these things work as well as lifting weights, staying mobile, keeping my low threshold core strong and maintaining my cardiovascular health with purposeful training. Working with athletes who often get their dreams crushed and patients who’ve had their whole world changed by injury really makes you respect your body and want to maintain it the best you can.

For me that looks like a minimum of 4 sessions a week with sometimes an extra 1 or 2 thrown in if it fits with my schedule. I do a mix of weight training, Pilates (Mat or Reformer) and running with a hike or a bike ride thrown in as the extras.

I try to get my training done first thing in the morning before work because I find motivation harder to come by as the day goes on and also the post-work time slot is where I ride my horses.

With all our transport troubles of late it was extra nice to make it to a venue on a warm sunny evening and sit in our campervan watching my horse graze.

Thank you to the Cheshire group and all their helpers for a lovely weekend, we also had lovely camping company and an all round good time. Exactly what a weekend of endurancing should feel like!

Estrid was a little unhinged to start with but got better as the day progressed and gave her all with the hard going and heat, she even tolerated actually being crewed in the vet gate. A successful outing to give us the prep we need to step up to her first race ride in a few weeks time.

Tapering is a pretty well researched art in humans, taking into account the physiological and mental aspect of preparing and peaking for certain events is standard practice. In the equine world it’s certainly not as standardised or well researched and although equine physiology is vastly different to human, human is what I know, so I work with what I’ve got and base my training blocks, tapering and peaking on my human athlete experience with a sprinkle of equine research.

If it was as simple as pure physiology then it would be pretty straight forward, but peaking for an event is an art, as you have to take in the psychological aspects too. I’d say it’s the same for horses, some you could not ride for a week and they’d be on their best form from the rest, some need riding everyday and kept in a consistent routine. It doesn’t really matter to me how we do it, it’s just about reducing load and maximising recovery, whilst being as confident as possible that the preparation is as good as you can do.

I haven’t really learnt what works best for Estrid yet but she seems to really benefit from the physical and mental rest of being left to mooch in a field and do a few chilled 5km hacks in the run up to an event. On the flip side if I don’t trailer her out at least once a week she quickly loses her ability to regulate her emotions and stay calm in new or busy environments.