Despite my van trying it’s hardest to prevent our trip to Thetford by deciding to no longer have a functioning drivers door, our garage managed to diagnose, get the part and fix it in time for me to pack everything up on the Thursday. Alas vehicle issues were not the reason we did not make it to Thetford.
I was packed, Estrid was bathed, we were waiting for the farrier to come put our race shoes on. The silver lining here is that my farrier called to cancel, he’d pop her shoes on in the morning before we travelled, so I then proceeded to do our last lunge before a ride. I always lunge for 10mins on the soft and hard as our final prep so I can be confident everything is good to go…everything was not good to go. Estrid was lame.
At first it was so slight, if she was doing her fancy snorting straight line trot up you’d have never have seen a lame stride, but it was obvious anticlockwise on the lunge and it got progressively worse the next day. So that was it, 9 months of prep for our one goal of getting a 1* off the cards for 2026.
Hopefully, this is a short blip for Estrid and we may get to have a few end of season adventures and we’ll go again, hopefully wiser and more experienced next year. But right now I’m pretty sad and feel quite deflated, questioning my life choices…mountain bikes are much easier to keep, fix and train with!
Beth Endurance 