Early swim, Vesty games and talking to animals

Because of the animal communication class I was taking in the evening, I had to switch my schedule around a little today. I did my swim at noon. Last time I tried this, I didn't have the best swim...I was just really tired. This time, however, it felt pretty good. I beat my 100m time by another 3 seconds. The pool was really full for some reason and I had to swim circles. This didn't really affect me much though as I was pretty much even with the two women in my lane. I didn't get a chance to practice flip turns.

Since the woman teaching the animal communication class is a friend of Laura's, Laura was more than willing to let me switch up my riding lesson to 4:00pm. Today, I started back on Vesty. Vesty, Vesty, Vesty. Vesty is one of the few horses in the barn big enough for me and that can make it over the fences I will need to jump. He's also very sensitive to balance and looks for any excuse to over-respond to you. My problem was my muscles. I was strong on my aids so he enjoyed doing things to try to rile me up. He'd start going at a trot that was way too fast so when I put a small mouth aid on left and right to slow him down...he'd come to a complete stop. When I wanted to make a nice wide circle at the end of the arena, he'd avoid my leg aid until I put it on stronger...then he'd turn on a dime. If I let him walk for a bit with no aids, he wouldn't follow the arena walls around, he'd walk straight at a wall, turn at the last minute and make sure to scrape my feet on the wall. Some of these little games were certainly my fault due to balance issues, but Vesty is very known for playing little psychological games with new riders and he was definitely trying them with me. Laura was snickering. I've actually jumped Vesty before, but its been a long time so I think he was trying to establish where I was in my riding. By the end of the lesson all was well though. Laura was really impressed with how I did eventually get back on track, particularly she was impressed with the canter I got with him, but Vesty and I still have some more bonding to do.

The animal communication class with Joan Ranquet was fascinating...a skill that will definitely come in handy in dealing with unfamiliar horses in the pentathlon.

Horse talker and stellar swim

Something is right in the universe. I had an amazing ride last night (even before I started the jumps) and today my swim was stellar. I started my afternoon by heading out to Hilltop Stables to pick up my shoes that I forgot there (yes, Cinderella forgot his shoes again). It wouldn't have a big deal, but my new orthotics were in them and I wanted to have them for this weekend. Turned out that Joan Ranquet, an animal communicator (I wrote in December about her thoughts on Eli. Having been raised around zoo animals and been accused of being able to relate to them, I have a lot of faith in the communicators. Sounds weird I know, but it works. And I really think I could use the insight when I'm meeting my horse for the pentathlon (you ride an unfamiliar horse in the event...you get 20 minutes and 3 jumps before going onto the course). So, I think I'll take one of Joan's courses to see if I can get some value out of it.

Maybe it was the alignment of the planets, maybe shiva is looking fondly upon me, either way my swim this afternoon was awesome. I had a lot of energy through the whole session, but most importantly, I felt like my technique was back. My final push at the end of each stroke felt the strongest it ever has and I was able to get my number of strokes across the during the knee board section down to 15. I'm really pleased...and ready for Wendy to coach me into the next level.