Well first of all, we made it to the venue!!!! I was disproportionately nervous for this ride which I think you can really tell in the video. I’m usually quite a positive human being but after the last couple of years I think I’ve started to expect things to go wrong rather than right. Something I need to shake off before it becomes learnt negativity.

Anyway, I was nervous about getting there, I was nervous that Estrid would be nervous and her HR would be too high to vet, I was nervous about doing my first 40km barefoot and booted, I was nervous about getting the HR at the final vetting. Basically at every tiny step I was just waiting for something to go wrong. Spoiler alert, IT DIDN’T!

First of all thank you to the Cromwell EGB group for putting on a fantastic ride, to all the helpers and to the sponsors that supported it. It was a great route, well marked with excellent field margins that went on for miles.

Dan did an excellent job crewing all by himself, dealing with a nervous rider and a nervous horse. It’s one thing crewing a horse you know well, that basically has a crewing handbook that comes along with it, it’s an entirely different skill to crew a horse that we don’t know very well yet and we don’t know what it’s going to want, when or how it’s going to react.

Estrid was incredible out on course. She was forward, she was keen and she was asking to go faster, but not running through the bridle out of control faster, she wanted to power from behind lift up and have fun faster. It was a dream 3 hours, she passed horses, left horses at route splits, lead out in front and followed from behind. She was balanced and responsive and I couldn’t have been prouder of her.

She was much better than expected at the venue, we had a HR of 48 to start and 60 to finish. We had a HR of 57 in under 5 mins at the end but every horse that went past, or thing that moved, or gust of wind, basically anything had it shooting back up. So we used the ‘do nothing at all but wait’ crewing method and grazed for 20mins before heading to vet. She was also very cold without her rug, so although her HR was in the 40’s when we presented to vet as soon as the rug came off she started shivering and her eyes were out on stalks. I wasn’t even sure that her HR would be under 64 but thankfully it was and she stood pretty well for it too. Our trot ups were entertaining…the last one using all lanes and chasing after the horse trotting up in the next door lane, but at least she was keen and sound if not in a straight line.

We finished on a speed of 13.5kph and came 3rd in the Performance formula, thank you to Enduro Equine for our prize! It was an excellent day, with exactly the result I hoped for: a fun 40km on a horse that seemed to love the job and a 40km novice qualifier in the bag. Hopefully with all the positive steps of our first ride I won’t be so nervous for the next one!

Estrid has never been on a trailer, so with only 1 week to practice before she did a 1.5hr journey to her first competition I was keen to do as many load, unloads and short journeys as possible. She travels well in terms of she stays still, doesn’t kick and has good balance but she is a nervous traveller, she has her eyes out on stalks, she’s always looking everywhere and she sweats up. So I set up the trailer with the full intention that it may take a little while for her to get used to it.

With a trailer being louder, slightly less stable and smaller I was a little nervous that she really wouldn’t enjoy the experience and what is already stressful for her would be made much worse. But Estrid being Estrid she just copes, she may not like it but she doesn’t make a fuss and she does what’s asked of her with minimal questioning. She took to loading, standing and coming off well and she even loaded straight back on after a little trip out, phew!

While Connie the lorry is at the garage, the crew have rallied to get my ponies and I out and about. Dan has fitted a tow bar to his van, traveled to Wales and driven many hours to pick up the trailer that my parents had cleaned up ready for me to use while I wait for my lorry to be fixed.

First world problems, but, I know have to decide do I sell the lorry once it’s been fixed up while it’s still worth quite a bit and is mechanically sound, do I buy another second hand box or get one built or do I buy a tow car and continue to use a trailer. All with pro’s and con’s and varying degrees of financial input.

The second big change is Tissy’s hooves, after a fairly normal 20km, her hind hooves were so worn laterally that it was rolling her fetlock. In hindsight, I should maybe have been training her in hind boots as well as fronts and that’s something I’m going to explore in the future. But for now she needing shoeing pronto. She’s always worn the outside of all of her feet laterally her whole life, she just doesn’t land flat so that’s inevitable. She’s worn her front boots in the same way. She is actually more forward going now she has shoes back on and I’m happy that we’re doing what’s best for her to get the job I want her to do done.

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.

With two weeks until Estrid’s first 40km I wanted to get in another ‘public’ outing. Thank you so much to the Team who made Freehay happen, despite torrential downpour the course ran beautifully and as usual, I think Derbyshire group must have the loveliest helpers going!

Estrid did a solid 19km at 10kph and really impressed me with her progress, she was taking the lead, she did more canter sections, her balance downhill was impressive. You could really see that she was getting more confident and forward. We were accompanied with Cat on Tissy and Izzy on Fluffy, the three went quite well together and it was a lot less frustrating than when we take Estrid & Fluffy out together.

It was a lovely course with lots of hills and lovely canter stretches, woodland and views. I was actually really impressed that despite the deep mud that all our boots remained on too!

Despite being so much better on the trail, I can’t say the same for her venue shakes. She’s much less stressed after traveling but as soon as we’re at a venue with lots of other horses she has her eyes out on stalks. When I take her out in the box for training she’s fine but there’s something about lots of horses together that she struggles to process.

Her HR was in the 90’s when I jumped off and then stuck in the 70’s for the 10mins after before I popped her back on the lorry to eat her food. I’m hoping that within the 30mins we have I can graze and calm her down enough to pass the vet for her first graded ride but we’ll just have to wait and see.

For those that know me in real life, they know that this has been on the cards for a while. Firstly, I must say a huge thank you to Roo’s owner, Liz, for giving me the opportunity to have Roo for the last 18 months. He taught me a very valuable lesson, to enjoy horses for fun not just for competition. A lesson you would think I didn’t need but I most certainly did and it has totally changed my perspective on goal setting and doing riding activities for fun not just for training.

Roo is the most dependable, safe and reliable horse I’ve ever ridden. He never quits but he doesn’t work harder than he has to, there are no surprises, he tells you exactly what you need to know. You put him in a gear and he stays in that gear, he’s excellent in traffic, if he’s unsure he just stops and waits.

But it was time for him to find a new human who would really appreciate all this and after seeing a wanted ad on Facebook that basically described Roo, I reached out to see if they would like to come and meet him. A few weeks later and he had a 5 stage vetting and was sold to the most lovely home where I know he will be cherished and they will have a lovely time together. I wish them the best of luck for the future and many happy adventures.

Thank you Roo for all the fun, all the life lessons and for being such a cool dude when I needed you most.

We are 13 weeks out from Man Vs Horse (well we were when I wrote this). Which means it’s time for Tissy to start training. I’ve been seeing lots of updates of people in full swing training on Facebook and I must say I’m impressed with the preparation. Tissy, however, is a seasoned pro and has an excellent foundation of fitness and strength, coupled with the fact that winter training is too hard for her to keep weight on, I knew that we’d have to start our prep later than everyone else.

Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in human and horse athletes I have seen people get the peak of training wrong, training harder and harder instead of smarter with very little recovery. So although a little part of my brain felt like I should be keeping up with everyone else, I also know that my plan is sound, it just doesn’t allow for much wriggle room.

So here we are at the start of a new challenge. I have broken her training down into 3 blocks. We aren’t starting from scratch as she’s been ticking over with a ride here and there for the last year. Which means we’ve done the longest part of any training, setting the foundation. The first block will focus on strength with x3 sessions a week of 2x 10km minimum training rides at an average speed of 10-12kph and x1 Pessoa or pole work. I’m also trying to make the majority of her rides on hills to add specificity to her training and have a week booked off to go home to Wales in April.

The next block will focus on distance, increasing to 2x 10km minimum and x1 20km training ride, whilst increasing speed slightly, and the last block will focus on speed, based on previous Man Vs Horse results (Yes, I have run the stats for all finishers over the years) my aim is to up her training from 12-14kph to an average speed of 16kph.

I have lots of experience training Tissy, so that part I’m pretty confident about. What I’m not so sure about is our hoof plan. Now I know people have done Man Vs Horse barefoot and booted, but I have only ever raced Tissy with shoes on. There are pros and cons to both. Shoes might come off in the bog but so might a boot, barefoot negates that risk but the stony terrain might be too much for her. If she wears shoes I can use the boots as back up. It really comes down to my inexperience of anything other than shod. For now I have 5 weeks of training to decide what to do, so I’m going to see how she copes barefoot over harder, stonier terrain and go from there.

My aim for the event is to have fun on a horse who loves to race, I am going to stick to my race plan (that is adaptable depending on conditions), if that plan means we’re first or last I don’t care. It’s just about setting my own goals and enjoying my favourite pony in her favourite environment.

Horses are a wonderful lifestyle but there’s no denying that comes at a price both literal and metaphorical. I think we can all agree that we’ve had to turn down social occasions….if we even manage a social life. That we go without so are horses can have all they need. That we may turn down opportunities because we don’t have the time or there’s no one to look after them if you’re not around. It’s a price I am more than willing to pay and it is my choice at the end of the day.

So when I was given the opportunity to be medical lead for two weeks in Nevada, USA my first reaction is ‘oh, but can I do it’. For a few reasons, one I’d have to take unpaid leave from my full-time job, so could I afford that. Two, would someone be able to look after the horses while I was away and three, it’s out of my comfort zone and did I want to do it.

So I turned to the people whose opinions I trust, my family and Dan (my Fiance). Dan’s instant reaction was ‘I’ve got you, you can’t turn this down’. We worked out that he could cover the finances (most of which are solely horse related) and he agreed to look after 3 horses, one of which is stabled overnight, for two weeks. But even better than that, Dan and my brother, Will, believed that I could do it, that stepping out of my comfort zone is the best way to make that zone bigger and the best way to gain life experiences.

I am so grateful to have people in my life that push me, believe in me, and enable me to do what I want to do, that mean I can take opportunities when they arise and feel confident that everything else is taken care of. I know how lucky I am to have had this kind of support my whole life, and I just want them to know I don’t take that support for granted.

So this weeks video is how Dan fared looking after the horses while I was away working!

We headed off to Shipley Park near Nottingham for Estrid’s first outing of the season. A really different ride for us, we had never been here before, it was such a suprise to have a ride somewhere so urban! Maybe not quite as urban as the famous Concrete cows ride which goes through Milton Keynes but still not your usual country side.

Firstly Estrid did very well with all the dog walkers, runners, push chairs, children and general busyness of the park. However, Estrid and Fluffy do not make the best adventure companions. Estrid is very nervous of overtaking horses and if they are close behind her. Fluffy doesn’t really enjoy being up front. So although if Estrid had a good lead she did really well out front and was also happy behind when Fluffy got going it was a little messy in places with the flow of our speed as we struggled to keep a good rhythm when one of them wasn’t happy.

Despite that we still had fun and managed a nice 17km at 9.7kph. It was also quite a hard ride underfoot with gravely tracks or paved paths so a great test of Estrids bare and booted feet. I’m still so unsure about doing her 40km’s barefoot, and about when would be the best time to shoe her, but so far she hasn’t been sore and her feet are holding up well. So I guess I’ll keep as we are and see how we go but I’m pretty certain that I want her shod for anything over 40km, but we’ll see it’s such unknown territory for me.

Her heart rates weren’t great, 60bpm at the start and finish but she was beginning to settle down and I am quite confident we could manage this for a graded ride so I have entered our first 40km, everything crossed that we make it to the start line!

I always use a 16km training ride as a test before I enter a 40km. It’s more for my peace of mind than anything. I use it as a baseline throughout training to compare to and it gives me confidence seeing the improvements. Estrid did her first one of the year and breezed it. I focused on how she was feeling, how she coped with changes in terrain, the speed she could maintain, the percentages and ratios of walk, trot and canter. It’s nothing different from an ordinary training ride really, other than I really think about how it went and what that means, comparing it to past attempts.

Estrid is ready for a 40km physically. But I’m still not sure if she’s ready for vettings mentally. She’s still pretty hyped and shaky when we go to new venues, her eyes are out on stalks, her breathing is shallow and rapid. She does nothing wrong, she’ll stand still for a mock vetting. She’s easy to handle and as soon as you’re on board she’s good as gold and ready to go on an adventure. I’m just not sure we’d be able to keep her calm enough to get her heart rate within the required parameters.

We have a social ride lined up to put this to the test with a before and after ‘fake’ vetting, my personal parameters are that she completes between 9-12kph and has a heart rate below 60bpm within 5 minutes of untacking, and then hopefully we’ll be off to our first 40km before we know it.