♣Ambitious♣

After Saturday's success, I went into the show on Sunday with the goal to simply improve on what we had the day before. With a ride time around 3:30p, there was plenty of time to work with. Also plenty of time in the morning to take a lot more pictures. I ended up clearing my SD card midday to free up space. Y'all ever see something so beautiful it kills you on the spot? Fi had her two tests back to back, first with Sanibel then with Roman. There were a couple of scratches, so I ended up moving my ride time up to 3p at trainer's request cause it was a long drive home. He is, quite literally, a beast With the down time between Fiona's last ride and mine, we got the trailer mostly packed. Then I changed, we went to school, aaaaaand it wasn't as good as Saturday. I could not, for the life of me get the horse to bend. I think it was a combination of him being tired and not wanting to be away from Sanibel, but it wasn't happening. I kept trying and trying...

Had an easy start to the day on Saturday. Woke up around 6am, and we were on the road to the show grounds by 6:30. Trainer was the first ride of the day at a little bit after 9. It was a pretty dreary morning since the rain had stuck around from Friday. It drizzled on and off, but the clouds finally departed by the time I had to get myself ready. As we were schooling the night before, I noticed that my old and worn out show gloves were ripping and shedding onto Roman's half pad. Since I 100% did not want to walk into the ring with flakes of faux leather dotting my tack, I grabbed a pair of Heritage gloves from the VTO Saddlery that was on site. Bless vendors. My ride wasn't until 1:21p, so we grabbed lunch at an Italian joint beforehand. Guys, they had tuna bruschetta. I haven't had tuna bruschetta in forever. I nearly sobbed. After eating my weight in bread and tomatoes, we went back to Commonwealth, I changed and tacked up while trainer braided. Then it was of...

Yeah, it's a name. Sounds nice when it's your first Dressage show. Did I mention it was in Culpeper? At Commonwealth Park? Ya girl is moving on up. Since Virginia is so damn far away, we hauled out around 8am on Friday. Earliest I've woken up on a Friday in a long time. After packing literally everything at 10pm the night before, I was pretty tired and went in and out of naps for most of the drive. We arrived a bit after noon, unloaded with no problems, and got the horses settled. After that, we checked into the hotel, sat around for a bit, got lunch, then head back to the show grounds to school. The town was really cute, too! This is where we had lunch. Fi and I went for a very long walk with Ro and Sanibel around the property. We talked about things, laughing when Roman would give big snorts and arch his neck at, well, everything. He honestly took everything pretty well and only had a true spook when he saw something off in the woods at the edge of the property. A...

Finally happened. Another goal off the list. Song: "Aloha" by Møme https://youtu.be/1YRW1QRKTBc (I don't the music, but you should definitely check Møme out) Filmed 8/11/17 to 8/13/17

And by "discerning" I mean "couldn't cook even with the blood of Gordon Ramsey in their veins". I tried out this recipe a couple weeks ago after finishing a work out and having no dinner planned. I went straight to the Equestri-fit Group and asked Gabriela for some ideas. She recommended taco salad. I hadn't had Mexican food in a while, so I rolled with it. I used this recipe as my reference but decided to put a bit of a twist on it. It's easy to make one serving of this, and it's probably decent in the nutritional value things, but I don't pay much attention to all that. Just follow the 20 steps, and you're good to go. Step 1: Rush to the grocery store directly after riding because you need to get the pictures done for this blog post before your parents return from Turks and Caicos and start asking questions. Step 2: Venture into the produce section. Avoid buying copious amounts of blueberries while simultaneously losing ...

So, drowned my first iPhone after about two months of having it. Only my second fastest time killing a phone. With it went a decent amount of media (and also my sanity for a day & a half since most of the people I need to communicate with do so through text). Trainer had to cancel last week's lesson, so I ended up having two this week on Roman. At the end of my lesson on Tuesday, I let her know that I planned on doing the show this weekend, which I thought she knew, but apparently she didn't. Many emails later, my (very) late entry was in. Bless show staff. They dealt with me at this stage and continue to deal with me Roman has just been his normal self lately. It's really the same update as usual: softness is getting more consistent, pace is getting more consistent, less bracing, less curling, better canter transitions, less sticky. The canter transition is the most frustrating part because the quality of his canter is getting disgustingly good. The quality o...

Song: "I Remember" by TRITON (honestly, a new favorite) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDWwxwVD8v0 Filmed 5/24/17

Gonna be honest, I *think* we're on Week 5 at this point, but I haven't had to do math in a while, so no guarantees here. I've been meaning to write posts all this week because I have been doing things, but my mood took a turn for the worse last Sunday, and I haven't had the motivation to do much of anything. I ended up not even riding on Friday because riding green horses when you're an emotional wreck is definitely not a good idea. Yeaahhh not easy when your serotonin abandons you Despite how this week turned out, it actually started out pretty good with the 8:45 mile. My pace has stayed generally around 9:00/mile, sometimes getting too close to 10:00. Most of the fluctuations come with the weather; when it's hotter, I run slower because I'm dying. Simple correlation. Riding 5x a week has definitely put a strain on how long I can make my workouts, but the elimination of intense abs with every workout has opened up the schedule quite a bit. Things w...