It’s seemed like a long time coming but we finally did our last training session before we start the two week taper before the first competition of the season. I don’t necessarily need to taper for a 48km ride but I wanted to practice the routine with Estrid and get to know what works best for her.

We did a lovely 20km ride, we had planned to do this on Cannock chase, but unfortunately my van is in need of repair and waiting on parts so I didn’t have a tow vehicle (fingers crossed it’s ready in time). So we just did the best we could from home, which is more road work than I would have liked but the sun was shining and we enjoyed a slightly slower paced training session.

We did 1hr 20 of walk, 45mins of trot and 4minutes of canter. I would have liked to have the walk and trot the opposite way around but we have to work with the situation we find ourselves in, and I wasn’t about to pound out miles and miles of road in trot so our average speed was 8.7kph. Now I’ll have 4 5km hacks, one schooling session and one water treadmill left before we, hopefully, get our 2025 season underway!

We’ve had the dentist, the vet out for vaccinations (and uploaded them onto the EGB website), we’ve had the Physio, the farrier has been and Estrid has new shoes after a winter barefoot, I’ve had the tow vehicle serviced, we’ve entered our first ride and have been consistently training, so having Reactor panel out to check our saddle fit felt like the last piece of the preparation puzzle before we let fate decided if we make it to our first competition of 2025!

They very excitingly bought along their new saddle designs and the new panel system for me to see as I’m tentatively thinking about getting a new saddle if we start to up the distance. I’m particularly excited about the new panel system and not having to rely on velcro for the placements of the panels.

I love my current saddle but the stirrup bars are a little forward for my liking so I was keen to try something different. I still hate knee rolls but the saddle I tried had the softest, comfiest seat I have ever placed my butt on in my whole life! I think my choice is going to be the new panel system with a dressage tree (for the stirrup bar placement) and a GP/ more traditional cut with knee blocks I can take out… well that’s what I dream of when I don’t think about my bank balance!

Tissy is having January/February off but as much as she would like to be entirely feral I do like to put some effort into keeping her in a moderately presentable state. As we live on clay the greys get a pinky roan beige tint and there comes a point where I wonder if their tails will ever be white again.

Tissy’s days consist of mooching in the field, then catapulting to the gate as soon as she hears my arrival, yelling at me to hurry up and get her in for food time, eating kilos of mash in her stable and then going back out.

Seeing as it was also trim day I thought we’d put a little extra effort in for a groom and mane & tail wash. She’s looking pretty good this winter and I’m excited to start riding her again in march and hopefully taking her out to a few pony parties.

If we could get the jobs we wanted Dan and I would move to Wales in a heart beat. You can’t beat the terrain, the opportunities for adventure, the wilderness, solitude and beauty, even in the wind and rain. We popped back to my childhood home so that I could ride in the mountains and so we could begin our training for multiday hiking/backpacking.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t on my side for riding. I don’t mind riding in winds up to 20mph but over that and it starts to get a bit extreme, add sideways rain and unstable trees from previous storms and it gets dangerous in the forests. So we only managed a short hack but it was still good for the soul.

Luckily the weather improved for our 32km overnight hike to a bothy up in the Cambrian mountains. We’re training for a 100mile hike in Scotland towards the end of the year and a two week hike in Nepal next year. It was so nice to see the mountains I grew up with from a different view point and there’s something that’s just so good for the brain and heart about going back to basics and being out in the relative wilderness. I’d love to do an overnight ride/camp like this with Estrid so I might start researching bothy’s with corrals? Do they exist?

It’s hard to find good going around me that isn’t stony track in winter so the gallops make a great option to actually get some continuous work in. I only start with 10km with a 50/50 split walk/trot and a tiny bit of canter thrown in for fun. I will steadily increase the canter and reduce the walk so that were getting up to 20km but I don’t like to do more than an hour of work on them, as the constant soft surface is pretty hard work on the soft tissue.

Still it’s nice to get out and start to focus more on cardiovascular fitness and stamina as the season approaches. I’m not sure we’ll get the opportunity to do an FEI ride this year with the uncertainty of our UK FEI ride schedule but hopefully we’ll be fit and ready if the opportunity comes our way.

If I lived near any hills, most my training would be on hills. Unfortunately we don’t have many in the midlands and the ones we do have aren’t very steep. At the start of any training block or after injury I utilise the one steep hill we do have that happens to be directly out from the yard. I don’t want to do too many sessions in the school a week, so in the winter this is an ideal alternative as our hacking isn’t very night time friendly from the yard.

I also really love doing this as I have to walk up and down the hill too, so it’s exercise for both of us. It’s only a 400m incline but we go up and down a few times and it takes about 40minutes before we’re both on the sweaty side.

I do this once a week for 6 weeks, then I add some trot pole work after or I start running up and walking down. After about 12 weeks, I have more daylight hours after work, and I swap this session for a ridden one of trailering out to somewhere for a decent hack.

I also find that doing non-ridden work is easier for me when I’m not feeling motivated. I don’t have to groom, I don’t have to tack up, there’s very little prep, it doesn’t take very long and it gives me some exercise too. I don’t usually struggle with getting sessions done but when it’s mainly dark and wet it’s good to have something easy to achieve.

We are a few weeks into 2025 and we’ve only just managed a full week of our actual scheduled training. I pre-empted a variable start to the year with weather, work and training so I have set my sights later into the endurance season so that I feel less pressure if training doesn’t go exactly to plan.

Estrid is not the type of horse you can plunge head first into anything and expect the best from her, so although an early 80km or 1* would have been lovely, I think she will do better with a softer and slower ease into competing again. Fitness wouldn’t be our issue but her confidence definitely improves with repetition, so to optimise our chances of success I am going to do a few lower distance events before we set our sights on our 2025 goals.

This week we managed a 30minute schooling session, focusing on changing the rhythm in each gait. Her first water treadmill session of 15mins and below fetlock for the water level, a group 1hr pole clinic, and a 10km hack, of which 50mins was walk and just over 20mins of trot.

It’s always frustrating when you’re feeling motivated and have a plan but weather stops play, but it is what it is. For my own brain I find doing something, no matter how small, keeps my motivation up. Be it extra carrot stretches, playing on wobble cushions or just and in hand walk. So when the snow and sheet ice hit our yard for a week we did in hand walk poles on the frozen school for a whole week, we tried different patterns and drills but even Estrid got a bit bored by session 5.

Despite it being a bit dull and not really contributing to her fitness it did give me time with my horse and it was also interesting to see how her ability with different tasks varied from session to session, how she initiated movement and what she found most difficult. I do in hand sessions all the time but rarely back to back and the insight was very interesting.

I always enjoy the cold snaps, although not very practical it is very pretty and I love the sound of walking on crunchy snow. But I am definitely keen to crack on with some decent training now, so hopefully weather doesn’t stop play too much for this pre-season.

Now this was a tricky one… if money, annual leave and time in a day were unlimited my goal would be to clamber up the FEI ranks, get selected for Team GBR and go to a Championship…unfortunately for me everything comes at a price, be it money or time.

I no longer want to commit my whole free time to training for Endurance. I enjoy hiking, mountain biking, climbing, surfing and going on adventures. I’m happy to train hard for 1 or 2 bigger events in a season but I don’t want to spend 7 months at FEI Endurance training level.

I don’t have the finances to do more than 3 events a year anyway. Even if I qualify for a Championship again, would I be able to afford to go? Probably not without sacrificing elsewhere in my life.

I have limited annual leave and 3 jobs, so also limited free time for training.

BUT, I’m competitive, I love Endurance, I live for the training, the goals, the ambition, the racing, so where does that leave me?

I decided for now that I would still give FEI a go. Maybe only one FEI competition a year but still try to qualify for a 3* at least. Which means this year I would like Estrid to attempt her first 1*. I would also like to do a national CER and have the thrill of a race ride again. I would love to aim for the Development Squad but unfortunately I think time and money will be prohibitive (keeping my options open though!).

Who knows whether our year goes to plan, we have 6 UK FEI opportunities and lots of 80km CER’s to chose from so hopefully we’ll achieve something, or at least have fun trying!

I’m starting off with a 4x a week schedule; Monday, Wednesday, Friday and one weekend day. The first 6 week block will consist of:

Monday: 45mins in-hand hill walks or in-hand pole work

Wednesday: 30minute water treadmill session

Friday: Longer hack (10-20km) or Schooling

Weekend: Short hack (5-10km) or faster surface work

I don’t have many options from the yard where my horses are, we have two 5km loops, two 10km options, and one 16km option, all of which are 90% road, but I do have lots of access to facilities if I trailer out. Due to being on clay using gallop surfaces is one of our best winter options, even if we just walk and trot on it. But my hope is that we’ll get out to Cannock chase as much as possible because it has nice hard ground that’s accessible year round and it’s free!!

For our first training block the main focus is on strength with the majority of our training at walk. Last year 50% of all our training was walk work so that’s the baseline we’re aiming to get to over the next 6 weeks. Once we’ve got back to our baseline I can then start thinking about increasing the trot and introducing some canter.