In all honesty Estrid is 80km fit already and she physically could have done an 80km at Haywood oaks. I would have had doubt in my mind about how she would have mentally coped with the ride atmosphere with it being her first outing of the season. As a rule I never do anything if there’s an ounce of doubt so I opted for a practice run at Haywood Oaks and a later 80km. This does mean that our opportunities to do an FEI 1* become a lot tighter but I’m in no rush, and thanks to some amazing people taking on ride organisation we have two opportunities, one in June and one in August.
I am still very much undecided about the road ahead in terms of FEI qualifications. If money and time were no object then I would love to compete at a Championship again, but I know the stress of putting all your eggs on one horse to be at it’s peak for one day a year all too well. I know the time, sacrifice, funds and dedication it takes. I’m not sure I want to do it even if I could afford to.
For now we’re aiming for one 1* and we’ll go from there. No expectations, no long term goals, just one step at a time. Our next training block is focusing more on distance and less on strength. So we started off with a nice 25km around Foremark reservoir. For the first 6 weeks, speed doesn’t matter in the slightest, it’s hours in the saddle and miles covered.
We’ll now have two ‘longer’ training sessions a week, we still have a few weeks left of our treadmill block and once that’s complete we’ll swap that for a faster 10-15km session once a week and keep one schooling/pole work session.
Beth Endurance 