After Estrid did her 40km at Long Mynd I was feeling pretty confident that we might get to go to Thetford to do our first ever race and FEI event. She breezed around the course and looked great at the end but the following days she was showing signs of general stiffness. She also then managed to cut herself in the field…nicking a small artery which dramatically pulsated blood around for a bit, she must have done it just as I was walking down to give them breakfast. It didn’t seem like a big deal as it clotted quickly and it was a small wound but the next day there was a little bit of swelling.
Now I don’t know if she’d thrown some shapes and coincidentally cut herself and aggravated the injury from when she bolted through the fences or whether while she was doing whatever she was doing to cut herself she’s tweaked something new but she wasn’t looking great the next day.
We still put her race shoes on on the Friday and I had 3 days before the closing date of entries to make my decision. But the more I thought about it the more it just didn’t make sense to go. I’m in no rush, I have no goal of a 2027 Championship qualification, I don’t even have a long term goal at this point, there’s plenty more years to come and there’s only one Estrid, so I decided to give her the rest of the summer off, as my schedule doesn’t allow me to aim for any of the later races on the EGB calendar this year, and hopefully work towards doing our first race next year.
It hurts, putting so much time, effort, money and emotion into a dream, a goal, a single event for it not to happen, it really sucks. But you know what would suck more, doing something that I wasn’t 100% confident in and it backfiring with potential long-term consequences.
So with no competitions for us to aim for it seemed like now would be a good time for Estrid to have a break, for me to have a break, and then we can have a fun autumn going on some adventures and not think about ‘training’ but just go out and have some fun, before trying again next year.
Beth Endurance 