A Slice of Humble Pie

Horses in general tend to hand out humble pie like it’s their job. And when you work with horses all day, especially as a working student you realize the humbleness is going to come from every which way and every time of the day.  Which is probably the best thing that will ever happen to you.

As working students, we are at the barn to learn, and through my many weeks of working student life I have grown to not only accept this, but be encouraged by it. I love learning, I really do. I am constantly trying to find out more, and be more aware of the community I am apart of. The first step of learning is to admit that you do not know everything. Here’s your first slice of pie. The second step is to accept what your trainer/ barn manager/ coworker is the truth. MMM, slice two. The final step to realize that most of the time cementing what you have just learned is going to take a lot of repetition, practice, and getting corrected. Slice three really hits the spot, doesn’t it?

But the best part of all this pie is that it will never go to your head. After a few pies you begin to welcome any advice with open arms, and that combined with a desire to make those changes will make you into an unstoppable learning machine; or at least a really awesome student. Either way you are better off.

Teach me your napping wisdom!

Live in the Now

I've been doing yoga for a couple of months now to compliment my riding, and in tonight's class my wonderful yoga instructor Sylvia Vitazkova said something that stuck with me. As we were twisting our bodies into some crazy pretzel shape one of my classmates remarked that she used to be able to do it. Sylvia responded that we need to forget who we used to be and focus on who we are now.

How many times have you heard someone say that they could do the splits, make a slam dunk, or win a boxing match "back in the day"? Or hear someone lamenting about how they used to be able to do blankity-blank, why can't they do that now?

While it's great to be proud of previous accomplishments, you need to remember that everyday your body changes, whether it's gaining or losing weight, muscle or flexibility, it is changing. I found this to be especially important as I am pursuing my riding education. Sure I can sit here all day and tell Allison, Karen, Holly or whoever that I have a perfect position over fences and my eye for distances is impeccable because that's what my trainer told me when I was 12. Well not only does it not matter if I can't show it, but also think of how many things have changed or happened to me in the past eight years. I certainly don't have the same body, I'm not on the same horse, and I'm jumping bigger and more technical questions. While I wish I could pick a level of muscling and hold onto it forever, or wish that height won't matter to me, my eye stays the same, that's just not true.

So next time you are struggling with something that used to be easy, just remember to focus on what you can do now, what you want to be able to do and what you can practice doing to get yourself there. 

And for sake of your sanity, leave your past self where they belong, in the past.

Change is hard to accept, but accept it we must. And reunions are always good ;)

No Rocky montage for me

So guess what happens when you hurt an internal organ? Pain, some hospital time, then a lot of nothing.
Being sentenced to time at home for most people is probably awesome. Get to miss work, catch up on tv shows and just generally lounge around. But when this happens to an athlete, an eventer specifically, it is very close to torture.
This is what I want to be doing:

But due to said internal injury, any kind of physical exercise that utilizes the abdomen or core (aka EVERYTHING) is out of the question.

So what will I be doing? Well getting very much ahead with my homework (why yes, I am still earning my degree through online school), cleaning the house to a point of absurdity, and cooking fattening food for my roommates so I feel better about the death of my muscles.
But basically this is what I'm doing:

Auf Wiedersehen friends!!

Teach Me How, Dougie

For about the past year, I have started encouraging my friends immediately before they do a dressage test, run cross country, or show jump by loudly insisting that they "teach me how to dougie". I don't really know why but I find that song and the dance highly entertaining, especially when I try to teach it to people *cough* David and Karen at the 2011 winter O'Connor camp *cough*. Also I feel that it conveys a better message than the usual "good luck" or "kick butt". It tells the person I feel they are capable of great things that I can only inspire to replicate and that they should do it at the moment, because the moment is theirs. So I have naturally adopted it as my own version of "break a leg". 

This weekend, Millbrook Horse Trials is going on in New York. As I have several friends competing I have been watching the scores, checking Facebook/twitter and reading commentary on Eventing Nation. Now what do I see today, but Doug Payne scored a ohmygoodness15.2  in prelim.

I'm just saying, this brings a whole new relevancy and meaning to my, much more implemented, phrase.

A Game of Catch Up

Wow, can’t believe I haven’t written in a year. Well let me try to catch up with everything:

            -in September I went to Georgia to compete in the American Eventing Championships in the Preliminary Amateur division, after a not so hot dressage test we jumped clear to finish in 6^th and win a variety of fun prizes

            -We then drove straight up to Middleburg, Va to get settled in at the O’Connors

            -After two months of priceless training, in October Karen fell at Morven Park on Veronica. While Karen is thankfully fine now, she was sidelined for quite some time. I had to make the tough decision to move on to a new system completely because of the fact that I knew I was not at a point in my career that I could be training myself and succeeding. This fact was what caused me to stop attending college full time in the first place. So with help from some irreplaceable friends I contacted Allison Springer about working for her, and luckily she needed a working student at the same time.

            -After the fall Virginia Horse Trials I followed Allison back home to the beautiful Beverly Equestrian where ASE is based out of.

            -So far it has been nine months of amazing training and experiences. I am so lucky and blessed that the stars aligned and connected me with such a talented trainer and instructor.

            -Apollo and I were all set to represent Area 2 at the North American Junior Young Rider Championships in Lexington, KY at the 2* level, but due to a injury were unable to go

            We will make our come back in the fall!

I will try to keep up with the blog more, so stay tuned!

What Does It Take?

After a few jumper shows and some weekly dressage boot camps Apollo and I headed off to Fair Hill this past weekend. Sadly neither Eliza or Holly could come because the morning that we were supposed to leave a few horses decided to break their pasture fences and got pretty torn up.
After being there a while Will Coleman pulled in and had a block of stalls directly behind me. The last time I saw Will (in person) was at Bromont when he was one of several riders just shooting for Europe and hoping to end up in London. Thinking about this it then occurred to me that Will, along with Tiana and Boyd were now Olympians. Regardless of how well they did, placed or what troubles may have happened during those 4 days, a selection committee picked them based on previous performance and sent them on with big hopes. They went and tried their hardest and can now add "Olympics 2012" to their resume. That is an accomplishment in its own.
So why do some people upon discussion of these athletes and team then feel the need to add "well yeah but they didn't medal..."? Why is there a constant degradation of athletes that put their all into their sport just because they aren't always the absolute best in the world? There can only be one "best" and while that individual is amazing in their own right, that doesn't mean that everyone below them is dreadful or unworthy.
You may see this at local horse trials, someone finishes the event coming in 7th or dead last even and that numerical placing is all they can think about. What about that amazing canter transition you got in the dressage ring? Or the awesome show jumping course when you horse got every spot and just toed a rail or two and it fell? While it's necessary to be realistic and go home to improve on the parts that didn't go so well, it's just as important to realize what was good. The horse doesn't know the difference between 7th and 27th, so why should you focus on it so much.
So circling back to my initial thought (sorry, i know its kinda rambley but stay with me) i think its time that we give people more respect for their efforts. Will Coleman, Tiana Coudray and Boyd Martin are Olympians now, and while they are bling-less for the moment it doesn't mean they deserve any less respect, but instead should be given time to learn from mistakes, work on problem areas and come back in the future because Karen and Phillip weren't perfect at every single event before they got their medals and yet they are now regarded as eventing gods, and rightfully so.

when i'm given internet access...

...i do weird things like friend the men's olympic gymnastics team, to stalk them  to show my american support and google myself. I happened upon this video of myself from this winter from my first intermediate that i had no idea existed. oh the things you can find on the internet.