I am ordinarily a fairly positive, logical, practical human being. I have actually spent a lot of time working on my brain, sport psychology is one of my favourite subjects and I pride myself in being resilient, focused and confident.

I’ve read countless books, been to many talks and read paper after paper on what makes athletes so good. The answer is almost always, the top two inches, how they get their head in the game and not purely their physical prowess.

I really got into sports psychology in 2012. I was in the lead going into the last vet gate of a Europeans when I went the wrong way and ended up coming in the top 20, instead of racing for a medal position. I knew my horse could get a medal that year and I had let her down. I had thrown away my dreams in one silly mistake and I couldn’t forgive myself. I couldn’t sleep through a night, I’d replay it over and over in my head, I was angry and I knew I’d never get that chance again because the next year I was a senior and that was my last Young Rider Championship.

This is when I went to a Charlie Unwin talk and I started working on the mental aspect of being a horse rider. How our mindset effects every minute of the day and how to harness just the power of my thoughts to improve. Since that talk I’ve learnt so much and have a great toolbox of strategies in my head to improve my performance, maintain consistency and keep a level focused head.

But when Azid went lame just before our 80km qualifier I had reached the end of my emotional resilience. I have had, like most people, a very up and down journey with my mental health and understandably it is easier to be positive when things are going well, but I’ve always been pretty good at looking on the bright side.

After two years of rehabing Azid for different injuries I was so excited to be back on track, at the back of my mind was the niggle of ‘will he be capable after all that’ but alongside that is the hope of ‘he’s going to make it’. In my head I could see us at the start line of our first FEI competition at the Royal Windsor horse show, and could imagine us crossing the line, the best 30th birthday present I could have wished for. But without that 80km under his belt Azid isn’t eligible for FEI and we have to start his novice qualifications all over again as he’s run out of time to upgrade.

What I would like to share is that I did feel sad, I did want to give up, I felt selfish for wanting Azid to be sound for me to compete on, I felt dread and regret that I’d have to go through the process of selling another horse so I could buy one that would be capable of doing what I want to do, I felt self-pity and like I would never make it.

And that’s ok, it doesn’t last, it might be a ‘first world problem’ and ‘pretty minor on the grand scale of things’, BUT to me at that time it was a big deal, that’s where all that research and training comes in and picks my emotions up. I’m not going to give up and I will keep working until I reach my goal. It takes elite athletes hunderds if not thousands of tries before they make it big, most people never make it because they never kept trying not because they weren’t capable.

Equestrians are pretty tough both physically and mentally. We haul haylage and water buckets around, push massive wheelbarrows and throw up lorry ramps. We spend every day caring for an animal in all weathers through all seasons. Horses are an emotional roller coaster and you have to become practical, resourceful and resilient. There’s often no one around to see the good or the bad bits of training, what we share with others is usually the competition highlights. That first place may have taken months, years even, of hard work without reward. I’m going to try and get better at celebrating my training successes, but inevitably, I think those emotions will always be hooked on the thrill of competition.

Everyone’s run up to an event varies. Not only from person to person but from horse to horse. What suits one, won’t necessarily suit another. I generally have the same kind of ethos towards the two weeks running up to a competition though no matter which horse it is.

Two weeks out I do my last canter training session. Hard fast work is where injuries are most likely to occur and fitness will not significantly improve over that two week period therefore I start to taper two weeks out. Over the following week I still do some longer training sessions, between 10-20km, but at slower speeds. Now I’ll still let them canter but not for long periods of time and not at anything much over 18kph.

In the week before a competition, I will do a couple of walk hacks and then a lunge about 3 days out, this lets me see how they’re moving and make the final decision as to whether they are definitely going to the event. After that I don’t ride until ride day. If they’re stabled at an event the day before competition I’ll hand walk them but other than that they get 3-4 clear days off before competing.

In the final week they’ll have a massage and stretch almost everyday and I change my feed and electrolytes slightly, just as a human athlete would pre-load (They eat the same thing but in different quantities throughout training depending on how hard they’ve worked anyway so nothing new is added).

I’m always on the look out for new places to train. It’s quite hard to find places with good going, variation and enough distance to train an endurance horse. And even if you do find it, having a bit of a change and trying somewhere new often gives me a way better training session because the horse and I are more excited for some exploring.

So as Azid wasn’t able to do his scheduled training session I took Tissy on a little adventure to Fox Covert Equestrian. The ground was pretty hard but we did about 13km over the cross country course. There’s a straight gallop up a slight hill and a really nice 500m canter track.

It’s been ages since I’ve done any continuous canter or gallops works on Tissy because she just doesn’t need to. But it was great fun to do some more ‘serious’ training with her, she’s just so good, so consistent in her speed, so forward and fun to ride. It almost made me a bit sad that I’ll not have a horse like her again.

There are a few things I do after every training session, my routine has evolved over time and I change it based on the horse or current research. I’m always happy to hear of better ways to do things or add in new elements, but at the moment we have our routine down. I don’t really have to think about it and I’m pretty sure, Azid in particular, would start doing it by himself!

Once I’ve untacked I always offer my horses some Baileys aqua aide to drink and they have a haynet where they are tied.

Next I wash off all the sweat, and if it’s been a particularly hot one then I wash down everything, paying attention to the major muscles to help with cooling. If it’s cold I then sweat scrape the water off, if it’s warm I let evaporation do it’s thing and leave the water on. I always have some sort of wash in the water from NAF skin wash, Botanica cleansing wash, Kevin Bacons Lucy Diamonds or the NAF citronella wash. I just find it gets all the grime off that little bit better and helps soothe sensitive skin.

Next I use some sort of arnica and witch-hazel cooling gel, lot’s of companies make them and they usually come in green or blue jelly like form. Now the quantities of ‘active’ ingredients in these might not actually be therapeutic but it makes me feel better and importantly it acts as a great lubricant for massage so I can feel the back , hamstrings and tendons after training and make sure there’s no heat, lumps, bumps or soreness. I tend to either use the NAF Arnica gel or the Gold Label version.

After that I whip on my equilibrium massage pad and if it’s really cold then a cooler on top. I leave that on while they have their post-training feed of British Horse Feeds fibre beet and Baileys Ease & Excel. I feed this in addition to their normal daily quantities as I increase their feed depending on the level of work for that day. So they get a baseline feed daily and then added feed before and after training.

While they munch and have a massage I then pick out their hooves, just in case we’ve got a stone stuck during our ride. Then I brush on some Kevin Bacon hoof dressing (on non-training days they also get the liquid dressing put on in the field).

To finish off I do some stretches using my Baileys Tasty treats as bait. I tend to do two stretches each side, two between the front legs then one stretch for each leg. If they need it I also do some pelvic tilts and tummy lifts but I don’t tend to do that every time.

The switch to summer grazing always makes me happy, it signifies the changing of the clocks, the coming of sunnier days and happy ponies munching green grass. We got some great footage of the horses first setting foot on their summer field on the drone……but Dan crashed into a tree during landing and the footage was lost…..so you’ll have to take my word that they were very exuberant.

This year I’ve decided to split my allocated grazing into two long sections so that I can rotate the horses every 2-3 weeks. The grass hasn’t grown much and I’m hoping this will give us some consistent grazing. There is also something very satisfying about an equally spaced neat section of electric fencing…..or is that just me?

I took advantage of the warm weather we’ve been having to give Tissy a bath now she’s off the muddy winter field. So she is now more white than Staffordshire clay brown! I even fit her leather tack so that she can go out on some hunt fun rides this season.

TWO YEARS AND 5 DAYS LATER…….Azid is back out competing. The last competition Azid did was back on the 6th of April 2019, where he bossed his first 80km at 13kph. He was balanced and consistent out on course, superb in the vet gates and a little pro away from home for the weekend. We were scheduled to do another 80km to complete our FEI qualifications at the June Euston Park. However, in May, Azid cut his legs and we were going to miss our ride…..no problem, we rescheduled for the Euston in August BUT on July 4th 2019, Azid came in lame from the field. He was sound quite quickly but it was more important to me that he recover properly than try and get out for the end of the season. He was then lame off and on for a while, with a hoof abscess here, a pull there and whatever other excuse he could find to injure himself in the field.

The beginning of 2020 after having a Welsh Mountain holiday I was bringing him slowly back into work, he then went to Readwood Rehabilitation livery for 3 weeks water treadmilling and came back looking like the FEI fit horse I wished he had been all along. The difference in him was astonishing and I was super excited to get back on. I gave Azid two weeks off after his treadmill holiday and then I was going to get back into the proper training.

In those two weeks I was still doing groundwork with him and on the day I was due to get back on, incidentally the 5th of July (My Birthday of all days). I walked down the field with my Mum, looked at Azid strolling towards us, saw a lot of red and said ‘Either that’s a leaf stuck to his foot or something has gone horribly wrong’. It had gone horribly wrong. You can check out Azid’s Injury Diaries for how he fared during the last two years and his Injury Update from back in August 2020, followed by his rehab journey for the full low down.

Anyway, here we are a little while later….and HE IS BACK!!! We didn’t know if he’d live, never mind come sound so when we set off on our first 40km competition of the season I was grinning from ear to ear and you can see the result of our day in the vlog below.

I am very self conscious about my riding ability or my perceived lack of riding ability. Now don’t get me wrong, I know I can ride, I can keep a horse balanced and in a rhythm for 160km, I’m not a hindrance in the saddle and I carry my own weight evenly, I know this because I wouldn’t get a horse around an endurance competition, or even through the training, sound and happy if I wasn’t.

BUT my classical riding skills are pretty non-existent. I don’t know what half the movements are and I definitely don’t know how to do them. If I want canter I stand and make a noise to my horses and just like that they canter. If I want a flying change I then sit put the opposite leg back and I get a flying change. But that’s not how it’s meant to be done and I spend the majority of my time stood in the stirrups.

So in my constant quest to be better; physically, mentally, technique and knowledge. I have been riding different horses, having lessons from different people. Learning from different disciplines and trying to soak in as much information as possible. I fully believe that you can learn something from everyone and every experience, whether it be a positive or negative, what not to do, what you don’t like or a lightbulb moment of clarity.

I’ve had instructors that want to teach me how to ride like a dressage rider and instructors that want to teach me how to use dressage as an endurance rider. The two are very different and I learnt from both. More recently (which I didn’t get on camera for a vlog, because only 10% of my life makes it into vlogs, and I don’t carry a camera with me for every moment 😛 ) I had a go at jumping. I haven’t jumped in 3 years and I had a lovely horse who will jump anything you point him at, he was very forgiving of my mistakes, but seeing strides into a jump and thinking about my position particularly on landing, gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I hold myself for the steeper up and downhills of an endurance ride. It also gave me a huge confidence boost in my riding ability as I felt like I managed to jump 1.10m with relative ease, all be it mainly due to the horses ability.

Another thing I’ve been constantly tweaking over the last few years is my saddle, the stirrup bar position, the knee support, the type of seat, I’m on a quest to find the saddle that is best for my horses but also makes me use my body actively whilst effortlessly putting me in the right position, I hate feeling like a saddle is ‘holding’ me securely, I want to hold myself and the saddle let me do that. I think I’m almost there, I have bought two second hand reactor panel saddles to make sure they suit my horses and if they do I have the opportunity to make a custom saddle to suit my riding. I have previously used free and easy saddles which allowed me a lot of customisation but they are no longer in business and I wanted the support of an active saddle company to try new things and make new saddles.

So between all my riding lessons, my webinars, sport psychology, training and saddle exploration I think I’m on the right track to improving my riding ability. My self confidence bounces up and down like a yo-yo but overall I feel like I’m getting there and I need to remind myself that we’re all a work in progress.

I entered a competition with Glaze and Gordon on Instagram to win and review an outfit from Kerrits. I was super excited as I’ve been using the brand for years and have loved their riding tights for everyday wear. It was also really lovely to have been chosen to review the brand as an endurance rider. Being a less main stream equestrian sport we don’t get many opportunities like this, so I was super grateful to Glaze and Gordon for selecting me.

I was given four items:

• The crossover soft shell riding vest
• An Ice fil lite long sleeve top
• Some long riding socks
• Flex 3.0 full seat riding tights

Now as a brand Kerrits are pretty forward thinking, they have super inclusive sizes and even have something called the Inclusivity project who’s mission statement is:

‘we strive to celebrate women and female riders of all colors and sizes. We want our brand—and our sport—to be inclusive, not exclusive. Every rider, regardless of body type, race or economic status deserves to be treated with respect. We want to have an open dialogue about how to better represent riders from a variety of backgrounds who bring their best to the barn every day.‘

Something I can totally get behind!

I have been using the items for a few weeks now and you can see my first impressions in the Vlog below. My favourite item is the Ice Fil lite top, it’s so airy and such a flattering fit, it really boosts my confidence. I love the belt loops on the riding tights as it gives them a slightly smarter look and the Griptek fabric of the full seat is really interesting, I don’t like silicone grip, I find it too sticky and it tugs on my skin over the longer distances. But the Griptek is definitely grippy without being sticky, the wide waistband is super comfortable and the phone pocket is an added bonus to top it off. The gilet is also a lovely piece, HUGE bonus, hay and shavings don’t stick to it (If you know, you know) and it has some lovely lighter weight stretch panels on the sides.

I loved receiving the parcel as the wrapping was so lovely it felt like a real treat. For now I’ll leave you with my first impressions and get back to you in a few months time to see how they’ve worn and washed.

Azid is now in his second block of training. Which means we’re starting to work more on fitness. His first block focused on schooling, building up his strength with poles and hill walking but now we’re switching it up a gear. He still get’s schooled and lunged but these are now less of a priority as longer hacks and canter sessions become the main focus.

I have my horses on a two week cycle broken down into training blocks of 6 weeks with a 12 week peak. So Azid is currently on day on day off on the same schedule every two weeks, this will then be changed in 6 weeks time. All of which is focusing on a 12 week training programme to get him to peak fitness for one of our main goals of the season.

I usually fit 2-3 training programmes into a season, aiming to peak a little higher each time with rest built in between each one. This works out fairly naturally as we’ll peak for a certain competition and then he’ll have 2-4 weeks off depending on the distance.

This week we had a good mix of schooling, lunging, hacking and his first canter session in two years. Next week he’ll do two hacks and one canter session. So far he’s coping well with the work and the injuries from the previous years appear to be under control, so fingers crossed that continues.

A big thank you to Poplars Farm Cross Country for allowing us to film the drone footage in this vlog!

Qantas had a little trip out to the vets this week. He’s had a sarcoid under the girth area since I bought him and over the last year I’ve taken pictures and monitored the size, it hasn’t changed or caused him any issues but I decided I wanted it removed.

I didn’t want to do it in the summer because of all the flies and autumn winter the fields are super muddy and wet, which I didn’t want him to be splattering mud into wounds all the times, so we decided on now. The fields are dry(ish) the flies are at a minimum and although it does distrupt training for an early season, in the current climate of rides never quite being assured I don’t really mind a later start to his competitions.

This also gave me a concrete excuse to not start Qantas and Azid’s pre-season training at the same time which allows me a bit of a breather as they’ll be at different levels at different stages now. Azid will be 8 weeks ahead of Qantas, Q will be doing the slower work with plenty of schooling, whilst Azid will be doing the longer stuff. Which gives me more variation and a bit more time as opposed to them doing the same thing.

Qantas had his sarcoid lasered off at Pool House Equine Clinic under standing sedation and he also had a melanoma lasered off near his bum, which is odd for his age and colour. The reason we know exactly what each lump was is because we sent the tissue off to be sampled, one to confirm the diagnosis and two so that they know if they’ve removed the whole tissue and not left anything behind.

Q was in and out in about an hour and a half, and this is a shocker, was absolutely beautifully behaved!!!!! The aftercare is minimal as they want him turned out for maximal movement to reduce swelling and ensure any scar tissue is as mobile as possible, and they also didn’t want me to clean the wound (unless it got something disgusting in it obviously). We were sent home with oral antibiotics and bute and off we went.

Even though the vets said I could put a fluffy girth over the hole to ride, Qantas is so sensitive I’m just going to wait until it’s healed to start riding and then we shall see if I can get him to a Novice ride this year!