Crazy eights, equestrian style

Tonight Laura set up the fences in an elongated z shape so that we could do a jumps in a figure 8 pattern working our way up and down the fences. Although I was able to do all the fences and got some good practice at doing 12-15 jumps in a row, by techniques still needs a lot of help. I still tend to dip my shoulders into turns, like one does on motorcycle turns. This usually meant that I took turns very sharply, which is not such a great idea especially if there were to be fences straight ahead on a normal course. The problem was probably 60% me and 40% Pet Step though. He figured out that he could cut the corners and fell into the habit. But I let him fall into the habit. Felt good to get a lot of jumping in though. Still jumping 2'9 or so.

Bouncing in a grid on Pet

Had my volunteer stint at UNICEF this afternoon so just had my jump lesson tonight. Laura set up a "grid" for us to jump through that consisted of two fences at "bounce" distance, a vertical a left turn and then another vertical. Pet and I did pretty well but I still have a lot of work to do. Watching Joan jump with Eli was probably the most useful thing for me. I finally got a good mental image on what was supposed to happen at the jump. My problem has been that I lean forward into the jumps rather than letting the horse come to me. I also had two great jumps doing all the right stuff, so with Joan's image and my two good jumps I should start improving my form. I'm still jumping 2'9" or so, another foot to go before my pentathlon height.

Relax, ape arms and eyes on the shoulder

Tonight I attempted a seven jump course with Pet step. Although I finished the course several times, I never really got to the point of satisfying Laura...I still have a lot of detail work to do. In particular, I need to hold my hands/knuckles right - almost in an ape like position, hold my body right (not lean forward) and keep my shoulders back and up as if I had eyes on my shoulder looking over the jump. I also need to get used to keeping the horse under control in a two-point (butt off the saddle) by staying relaxed and trying to get 'responses' rather than 'reactions'. All that said, I felt pretty good about the whole thing. The jumping really highlights what I need to work on in my flat work. I also had a long talk with Laura after the lesson about pentathlon stuff. After the San Antonio camp, I would be able to come back with a training plan of the jumping...something I really need to put in place.

Two nine and climbing

Pet and I had to spend a little time working on a bad habit of his...cutting corners. Once we got it worked out, we had a really great jumping lesson. I did a lot better with hands and body position and made it all the way up to 2'9" easily. I also did a lot more jumps from a canter which rally built up my confidence.

Running in circles and the best fencing lesson ever

Didn't do any horse riding today, with fall/winter upon us it was time to clip the horses so I spent the afternoon helping out with this.

I met up with a friend for dinner so didn't go to the Club Northwest training practice tonight. Instead, I wanted to try to run Portage Bay (PB) again since my run yesterday wasn't all that great. Had the same issue tonight though, my lower back fatigued very quickly. So rather than do intervals, I just did a steady state run around PB. I felt pretty good by the end of the run, but am still wondering why my back is giving me problems all of a sudden. Could it be new shoe time already?

Had a really great fencing lesson tonight. We worked on flesches, which is a skill I've been too chicken to try, always get hit with from my opponents and have always wanted to learn. Basically, its a pretty aggressive attack in which you jump/strike at your opponent and then run by them. I had to do a lot of slow motion attempts, but did get it eventually. Can't wait to try it in a real bout. Now I just need to learn how to defend against the crazy things.

Pet Step jumping

Had a great night jumping with Pet Step tonight. The trot and canter felt better than ever and the transitions went well too. We started jumping with crossrails, moved quickly to a vertical and finally graduated to an oxer. My real oxer jump! My only problem tonight was being confident and in control at the same time...I couldn't seem to get them both to happen together very often. This was primarily due to the fact that Pet was a little hot tonight, he had a little buck in him and he was very strong out of the fences. So, I spent a lot of time and energy keeping him under control, as soon as I did it was time to jump again and I felt a little unprepared...well at least not as prepared as I wanted to be. By the end of the night things were going smoothly though. With the right signals, Pet settled a bit and our last five jumps were picture perfect.

The Vesty challenge, more cross country and busy feet fencing

I had the usual problems riding Vesty this afternoon. He's a stinker at the start...he likes to over react to my commands and balance and just is an all around pill for the first 5-10 minutes or our ride. But with some confidence and a whip I think Vesty and I are starting to come to a better understanding. Generally, a tap with the whip will give him a little surge and get him out of his lazy funk. This time, I gave him a little more whip and from that point on he was perfect and I didn't have to use the whip again. Not only did the canter feel awesome, the canter transitions were the best I've had on Vesty.

I did pretty well at the cross country tonight. My times weren't all that incredible (my fastest mile being a 6:16) but I was pleased that I did do almost all of the workout that the full group did. That practice was 4 x 800 at tempo pace, 2 x 800 at 5k race pace and then 4 x 200 'strides' (building up to a full sprint over the distance). I did all but the two 800s at the 5k pace. Watching the other runners in the group fly by is inspiration for me to try harder and gives me constant visuals for where I need to get to.

Humbled again at fencing lessons. My main problem in these lessons continue to be that I'm doing too much. I want to keep moving my feet and arms and shoulders when it is not required of me. These things are great in bouts, but in the lessons, they are baggage. Its kind of like a horse doing dressage, you only need and should do what the coach asks of you. It took me a while to really focus enough to get rid of the extraneous motions, but I eventually did and seemed to break through a wall as far as finding, giving and taking openings. Alan's doing a great job of breaking down my bad habits and really making me focus at the task at hand.

Pam, another prospective pentathlete in training was there taking here fist foil lessons. We chatted a bit and made plans to meet up on Saturday to shoot new Daisy air pistols that will hopefully arrive in time.

First shots fired and more jumping faster

Today, I took my first shots with an air pistol...a pretty major milestone. I was actually trying out a Steyr LP5 that belonged to a gentlemen I was referred to from Pilkington Competition Equipment. John is a great guy. Not only did he let me use his gun, he gave me lots of pointers for my first shots. I didn't do too bad, I got 4 out of 7 shots in the black circle. But it really made me want to get my shooting going. And now I know that eventually I will buy a Steyr for sure. I may end up going for a Daisy for a while. Remember the BB gun you had as a kid, it was probably made by Daisy. The Daisy air pistol is about a tenth of the cost of the Steyr I will buy, but at least the Daisy will get me started - and - I've been told that people have wond some competitions with the Daisy.

Had another good jumping night with Pet tonight. Had the same old issues of him being really strong out of the jumps, but overall had a really good session. I do need to work a lot on keeping my shoulders up during and after the jump, but Laura gave me a good visual for this so I should be able to correct it quickly. Pet seems to want to jump the fences higher than he needs to...maybe we need to raise the fence.

Very good Vesty, fist X-country mile and deconstructing fencing

Had a very good ride on Vesty this afternoon. His trot was the best I've ever felt and the canter transitions were really smooth. Hopefully, we're finally getting into a groove.

I ran my first cross country mile tonight at Greenlake. The workout was 5 x 1 mile on a course that went on grass, asphalt and trail. I only did three of the runs because 1. I had to save a little for fencing lesson later and 2. I went out on the first one a little too fast and was really tired after the 3rd one. I think I could have finished all 5, but my time would have dropped by quite a bit and fencing would have been no fun at all. I was pretty pleased with how I did though. Its the fastest consistent miles so far.

I was humbled once again at fencing lessons tonight. I seem to be trying way to hard, holding to strong and going too fast. But Allan is great with keeping me focused on the right things. This deconstruction phase, which will eventually replace my bad habits with good ones, is pretty humbling. You feel like you've lost all the skills that you've used up until now. Leeps backward for a small step forward. The same thing is happening in my swimming right now. I've survived it in my riding, so I'm sure I will make it through here.

Jump jive

On Thursdays I only have my jump lessons...and boy what a great jump lesson it was! Tonight I learned a lot more detail about where my feet should be in a jump, how to prepare for the jump, and most importantly what to do with my butt. I was riding Pet tonight, the horse I will be doing most of my jumping on for a while. I had some difficulty in the drill portion of the lesson doing the right thing with my butt and shoulders, but when it was time for jumps, it all came together. I really had some great jumps that felt great and boosted my confidence. I have a lot more technique work to do, but I will be slowly inching towards the 3'9" high fences I will need to jump too.

Vesty and running and fencing firsts

I had my afternoon ride today on Vesty. Had the usual issues at the start, he likes to over-react to little things I do. But we soon got into it and kept a pretty good trot going. Had some great canter transitions though. Vesty did have a few good trips though, both in the front and back end. Its just something I've come to accept...Vesty trips a lot. He got a little fast towards the end of our session, but I think that he's not doing a lot of work right now. I'm going to look into joing a lesson Laura has at 4:00 on Tuesdays to see if I can start a second jump lesson a week.

I made it to the Club Northwest (CNW) run tonight. I thought I had missed it last week as I arrived at about 6:40pm. Turns out that they meet between 6:30 and 7:00 to warm up then do their workout at 7:00. So I was early last week, not late!

Training with CNW will no doubt push me in the run event. CNW is made up many of the areas elite cross-country runners. And boy do I have a long way to go. The workout was 4x1000m at 5K pace with a 1:30sec break in between, then a five minute rest, then 3x800m at 3k pace with 1:30sec rest. I did the last two 1000m and one of the 300m. I got a 4:03 and a 4:16 on my two 1000m and then a 3:07 on my 800. The 3:07 800m would equate to a 6:14 mile. Wow! Not bad. And I felt pretty good. This time is a minute faster than I ran in the 5k Glove Run on Saturday. I discoverd that my legs actually feel better when I run faster. I'm really looking forward to working with CNW, my runs should improve dramatically.

I had my first fencing lesson with Alan tonight. As I expected, I have a lot of things to work on. I was too fast, my positions were sloppy, I predicted his moves rather than waiting for the correct clues, etc. Alan slowed me way down and made me really focus on correct fencing. He also is in contact with Mike Jones, a former pentathlete in Seattle, a lot and is getting some good training plan advice from him.

Riding young Dundee

My new training schedule has me doing just a ride on Thursdays, kind of a day off or at least a 'low-key' day in the middle of the week. I found it was pretty hard NOT to do something to fill my time, I almost did a swim but decided to stick to the schedule I've set up. I'm sure I'll come to really appreciate the down day later.

Tonight I rode a new horse, Dundee, who belongs to Julia. Dundee is a pretty young horse off the racetrack. According to Julia he can either be a little slow or quite rascal. The ride actually went really well though. Laura had just spread a shoe turf bail on the barn, so we weren't doing any jumping...we wanted to let the horses get used to the new feel for a while. But the flatwork on Dundee went really well. The trot was incredibly smooth, I felt really relaxed and in control. I didn't have to fight Dundee as much as I did with Pet, Howie and Vesty who were just strong horses that wanted to go fast. We did some straight line work, which Laura was really pleased with and then went into some canter work. The canter was fast to start but it soon settled and we had some great transitions as well. Laura and several other commented that I had a really good ride. Hopefully I can bring this into my rides with Pet and Vesty.

First triple: ride, swim, run

I had my first triple workout today starting with an afternoon ride, then a swim in the evening, followed by a run. I not only survived, I performed pretty well getting a training personal best (TPB) in swimming and very close to one in running. They are not competitive times yet, but getting closer.

I rode Vesty today for riding. Looks like I'll be riding Vesty for flat work and Pet for jumping for a while which is great because both will allow me to progress in the respective skills. I had the usual issues/games with Vesty starting up, had to get a whip even to really get him going well...didn't have to use it, just make sure he knew that I had it. We had some struggles when it came to getting his head down and keeping the rythem, but once we got past these issues and into the canter all was well. The canter transitions are still a little messy, but there getting there. Vesty is very good a predicting my moves so he's usually a little ahead of the actual commands which is why he wants to rush in to the transitions. By the end of the session though, we were as smooth as butta.

The swim went really well. I got my 50m time down to 36 seconds, etching ever closer to the target 30 seconds. My 100m was once again a 1:20 which needs to get down to a 1:00 or so. The rest of the swim felt great as well both in strength and technique. I'm looking forward to starting up with Salmon Bay...hopefully this Friday.

With two sports down, I went into the run not expecting much. My legs were sore from my first day back fencing on Monday, and riding and swimming certainly took their told as well. BUT...it felt great! I didn't fatigue at all ended up coming in at 20:04 which was 5 seconds faster than my last Portage Bay time! It is still not the sub 20 I was looking for, but closer.

Pretty pleased for my first triple. I should be able to do three events in the same order as the actual pentathlon...swim, ride, run. On Saturdays, I may even be able to pull off a full pentathlon practice.

Jump coach, jump!

Today I went down to watch my riding coach, Laura, compete in the show jumping portion of a three-day eventing competition. I still want to get as many visuals of riding as possible as I start to get into higher fences myself and technique gets more important. Laura did great and with a very low dressage score from the day before, she is in a good position going into the cross-country tomorrow.

First track run and Pet jumping

I planned on a swim this afternoon, but the fall schedule went into effect while I was in Australia so the time that I normally swim was now a family swim. So I decided to start my track runs, which I will do once a week, to see how I'm doing for both my mile time and my 3k time. There is a cinder track at a community center/park very near my house so it will be a perfect place to train for the 3k cross country that I will run in pentathlon. Both my mile time and my 3k time were longer than I expected, but this may be due to the fact that its been a while since my last run and I am still VERY jet lagged. Lots of room for improvement here but since I was taking about 30 seconds off each run before I left, it shouldn't be long before I'm getting times that I like.

At riding tonight, I was back on Pet...and back to jumping. I was really excited to start jumping again. For the jumping, we worked quite a bit on moving my hands up Pets neck and shooting my rear out of the saddle at the jumps. All went pretty well, I haven't lost too much since my last training session. I just need to remember to get into two point at the right time before the jump and to keep my knees bent. We got to about 2' tonight on the highest jump. I have another 2 to go for pentathlon height.

Down for the count and a little more Vesty

Looks like my website was down for a couple days...that's OK because I was too. Seems I got a two day flu or something. Certainly didn't feel like doing any training so there wouldn't have been much to say even if the sight had been up. But, I noticed there were a LOT of hits yesterday when the site finally came back up, so I know there area few fans out there.

Didn't have much energy yesterday to swim due to the quick flu thing, but I did go to riding in the evening. I was also starting to feel a little better by then, getting more of my energy back. I rode Vesty again tonight. We're still working on things, but we're doing much better. I do have a couple bad habits that I bring from polo that aren't helping. First, I tend to lean into the canter transition...helps in polo but not a good habit to develop for my jumping. In addition, in polo I'm used to pushing forward in a canter transition until I get a canter...no big deal on the polo field, but in my riding this shows up in during that transitions as well. When I don't get the canter and Vesty goes into a fast trot I keep asking for the canter rather than bringing him back and getting a good trot for a good canter. I also seem to be squeezing my thighs a little too much, which to Vesty means a half halt. Vesty stops or slows down, I fall forward and our balance gets way off. By the end of the lesson, we had things working well though, Laura was pretty pleased.

Spokane polo

I was Virginia's groom this weekend at the Spokane tournament. It was a great weekend! Met a lot of great people and saw some awesome polo. I warmed up Waco, one of Virg's two horses, on Saturday but that was the only riding I did over the weekend. It was actually really nice just to slow down and enjoy the game. As usual there were some incredible meals and parties in the evenings.

The nine goal polo on Monday was amazing...I've decided that I definitely don't want to play at that level any time soon. Polo at this level is very physical (as in crashing into each other) and I'm not to keen on getting hurt in polo at this point in my pentathlon training. But my how its great to watch! One of the highlights of the weekend was Augustine, one of the Argies that stuck around to play some more polo this summer after the larger group of Argentines went home. At 19 years old, Augustine has servants in his home and several grooms to take care of his polo ponies in Argentina. Well...here he had to stay in a cold, went tent and do his own grooming. But he smiled the whole time, especially when George Dill pulled the tent out of the box and called it Augustine's "Estancia in a box".

More turn than flip and a little wild on Waco

Had a generally good swim today, cut another two seconds off my 100m time...slowly but surely I'm going to get this down to a minute. The challenge still seems to be the flip turns for me. I'm practicing on the swim during my warm up now, but still have some pretty basic issues to deal with. I do the first few flips just fine, but then I start turning in my flip and end up wanting to go sideways. Practice makes perfect I guess.

I rode polo-buddy Virginia's Waco tonight at riding. I'm going to Spokane this weekend to help Virginia groom and tack for a polo tournament. Waco is pretty wild when he gets started up so one of my duties over there will be to warm him up for Virginia. So...Laura was showing me some things to do in order to get him warmed up well for Virginia. We did some straight line work, then a lot of trot-canter transitions also working on the straight line. In the canter it became pretty obvious that Waco doesn't really like the straight line work so I had quite a time getting this to happen. But...it did with both Waco and myself for the better. Its always good for me to try my hand and new horses. We'll see how it goes this weekend.

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.

Howie countdown and short swim time

I did my Tuesday afternoon ride today, no lessons, just a ride to give me more time in the saddle to work on some things. I got to ride Howie again. A big chestnut...the kind of horse I will need to do the kind of jumps I watched at Evergreen this last weekend. Howie's actually done a few Grand Prix events, so he's a great horse to learn big jumps on. The ride on Howie went really well, he's back to the point where he responds easily and quickly to my aids...keeping his head down, slowing down to the pace I ask for, etc. Unfortunately, he's going to California this weekend to reunite with his owner. Everyone at the barn is sad to see him go. He's a great athlete, so he will be missed.

The swim went well later in the afternoon as well. Took two seconds off my 100m time which was pretty good considering I felt like I was putting in about 60%. Overall, my workout time has dropped about 10 minutes from when I first started. My workout now takes about 40 minutes. When I get back from Syndey and start working with a coach, I expect this time will go up. I discovered that of the lifeguards at the Y give private lessons. I worked on my flip turn a little with one of them today, but in October, when their summer schedule is over, I'll get some stroke skill work too.