Typically I don’t ‘train’ the week before a competition I just maintain and assess. Recovery is so important for performance and you won’t make any improvements in fitness the week before a competition so I find it’s best to just keep ticking over. Of course the training you do in that week will benefit future weeks but depending on my training schedule and goals I tend to train in blocks based on peaking for each individual competition in a Novice year.
All my horses have been different too, I’ve had one that needed to do something daily or it was like riding a ticking time bomb. One could literally do nothing the week before and be on top form and some in the middle of both. I don’t really know what suits Estrid best yet but I went for the middle ground of 3 sessions in the 7 days before her first 40km.
We did one ‘easy hack’ of 8km with lots of trot and walk with a tiny bit of canter. One 5km just walk hack and one 10min lunge. She actually seemed to really benefit from the deloading and was looking great, full of energy, really responsive and bright but not too wired.
I cleaned my lorry, packed everything, ticked all my lists. Estrid had her first plaits in and absolutely WINNING, she didn’t roll overnight so was still sparkly clean the morning of our event. Ironically in this vlog I have a good chat about my lorry and how I’ve considered upgrading and that I’d decided to keep her……if only I knew the lorry would be the reason we never made it to Estrid’s first 40km.
On a positive note, we managed to get to a safe place where I could unload and walk her the 3 miles home. It’s in the garage and will be fine. So everyone is fit and healthy and ready to fight another day, it’s just disappointing to not get my season started when I wanted to.
Beth Endurance 