Falling off the Tracks

I've been feeling all sorts of useless lately. First I'm side-lined by mysterious hip pain, and suddenly my old back injury decides to flare up, and just clothes-lined me completely. Regardless, I rode through the Summer Classic and made it look fairly easy in the grand scheme of things.

The Summer Classic was, well... interesting, to say the least.

Faun was a complete spaz in schooling and in our first two classes.

Our first hunter course went something like this:

Enter at gate,
Trot across diagonal,
Slip into canter back-breaking buck into canter depart
Canter rush to diagonal single,
Jump fling self over burgandy flowers,
Canter crawl to outside line in seven nine strides,
Canter slowly build breakneck pace to white oxer,
Jump prettily boldly,
Outside line in seven five,
Diagonal line in three two-and-a-half,
Take off at full gallop around turn after unsuccessful lead change.

Yeah, it was a bit of a clusterfuck.

The second course wasn't much better. Still, miraculously, we managed to snag fourth and fifth out of nine, so I have no clue what the other riders were doing but... it must have been awful.

Luckily, Faun and I were able to pull it together enough to score a 69 (teehee) in our Hunter Challenge to win it. Part of me is appalled that we *won* with a 69 (teehee), and the other part is pleased that we were rewarded for pulling it all together and having a consistant ride. I'm pretty sure the judge rewarded us for straightening out and improving.

Overall, I was pleased. Faun and I don't get a lot of practice in, and usually I only ride him in the week leading up to the show, so we don't always get on; however, I think that when we both get our heads on straight we make a pretty good team.

Anyway, I still have notes from the June clinic to post, and the July clinic was actually today (!!), so I've got some catching up to do!