It's the final countdown

The final is two days from now. Friday is the only thing standing between me and possibly the biggest moment of my limited junior career. I would love to morph into a keyboard playing tyrannosaurus-rex right about now, though.

We haven't ridden in the big arena for a while because the ground was destroyed a while back. We plowed, then it poured again; we plowed again, it poured again, and the jumps all got knocked down. All work recently has been either in the indoor or smaller outdoor, and Baby has started to race in both, which is making me very nervous about going into a bigger space where there will be more space in between the jump and the arena fence.

Miss S tried to simulate what Saturday was going to be like. She changed the jumps in the small outdoor up a bit while we warmed up in the indoor. Baby was fine for flatwork; I even shortened my stirrups today, and it was fine, but once we started jumping, she just wanted to go, go, go! I honestly do not have time for that, so jumping today was just me attempting to hold her back the entire time.

Anyway, we go to the outdoor, and she's still Miss Rushy Rushy, but I just tried to focus on keeping my hands up, not bracing, and using my legs. The first course was disastrous. The first jump was fine, then two and three were an okay line. We chipped on the second fence. Jump four was the coop, and I could feel her thinking about stopping, so I reached back and tapped her one stride out. She jumped, but I lost the rein that I had let go of to use the crop. Most days, I can get my reins back in my hands pretty quickly, not necessarily on contact, but I'm holding both of them. I couldn't get that right one back, but jumps four and five were a line, so I kept going. I got over jump five, lost my left stirrup, but I got my right rein, so I just kept on to jump six without even thinking about it. I got over it, but of course coming out of it, she's just running.

We did two more courses which weren't bad, but she still required tight circles at the end to get her to stop cantering. So, yeah, today was not that great, and I'm praying for Saturday.