The excitement I feel when the ride calendar for the next season comes out is slightly embarrassing. You would have thought that the novelty would have worn off by now, but no, I absolutely love planning!! Which I’m well aware is a pretty useless venture when it comes to horses…..or maybe they’re perfect because they allow me to plan over and over again by messing up the original plan.
Anyway, I like to work backwards in my planning. I have a long term goal: Compete at a Championship for Team GBR, then I list all the steps I need to get there and that’s how I break every year down and plan each season.
So for 2022 I would like to upgrade Roo from Novice to advanced. He has one 40km under his belt so I need two 40km’s and I’d like to do one two day 80km and a one day 80km. I like to do the minimum amount of competition miles I can for longevity sake so in an ideal world next year, Roo will only compete four times. If we achieve that, it sets us up nicely for his first 1* in 2023.
Once I have the years goal: Upgrade to advanced, and how to do it. I then look at the ride schedule and my calendar and see which rides are closest (saves money on fuel and accommodation), which rides fit in around my work and anything already booked in, and then which rides work with the correct spacing for my goal.
I then look at a specific season goal. So I know for my long term plan my goal is to upgrade to advanced but I also like to have a goal for that particular year, something to work towards and set up my training schedule to peak around. For Roo this is going for Welsh Team selection for the Home International in Scotland. My year goals are usually something like this, or go to one of the big events, stay over and get used to the atmosphere, anything that is going to set them up for success in a Championship environment really.
Based on that I then work backwards and space all my rides out by about 6 weeks, so I can then switch my training block after every competition. This then gives me the dates of the rides I want to do which allows me to work backwards from the first one to plan the pre-season training schedule.
There are Plan B’s, C’s, D’s and fly by the seat of your pants plans but having some structure and awareness of what I want to achieve really helps me stay motivated and enjoy what I’m doing.
Beth Endurance 