Fighting the fear...

Many of you will remember back in September, Ceaser, Ziggy and I attended the British Riding Club Nationals. In all honesty, it was a bit of a flop because I made a complete douche of myself by throwing up in both my show jumping rounds. You know, like you do?

Anyway, since then I've had a massive phobia of jumping in the public eye, and I've been very self conscious of people watching me jump.

To help, I've started having regular jumping lessons with two difference instructors. Oddly enough, both have never spoken, but both gave me the feedback that I ride too much into a fence, and I think about it too much instead of just letting it happen. I also don't breathe when I go over a fence, so we've been focussing on getting me talking whilst jumping, and simply not really thinking about the jump.

I’m not an emotional person but yesterday  I’ll admit, I finished my competition and I put Ziggy in the box, stood with him and cried. Happy tears. 

This combined training competition with the riding club has been on the back of my mind for a while. I didn’t want to let the team down again, and I didn’t want to jump in front of people. 

Zig warmed up beautifully for his Dressage and he did a lovely test to score 67.75%, putting us into second before the jumping. I know I needed to go clear. I felt the dressage possibly deserved slightly higher, but a couple of transitions were a little abrupt and the comments reflected this. He's so sensitive that if I put any pressure on he steadies or stops, which is honest of him I guess. 

The warm up was quite busy for jumping so I popped one fence and decided to bloody go for it. My instructors words of “sing to yourself” stuck in my head and just as I trotted in, I started singing my grandads favourite song. 

Zig started screaming and whinnying and was quite tense but whereas before I’d let this bother me, I gave him his rein and off we went. I couldn't get tense, or he'd pick up on it. Everything was going perfect until coming off the corner into fence 5, a double and the first part was a rather large spread. Zig slammed the breaks on and just as I was about to turn away and represent, zig said “I’ve got this” and took off, clearing the rest of the combination no trouble! I’m sorry, but HOW HONEST IS HE?! 

Honestly, sometimes he just never fails to amaze me, and I remember just how far he's come. 

❤️

We finished the rest of the course clear, and with no time penalties meaning we had gone clear and stayed on our Dressage, all whilst singing “catch a falling star..” and guess what? I wasn't at all feeling sick, which was such a great feeling. 

I might sound like a sap, but I’m so, so proud of him. He looked after me 100% at that fence. Back to the box we went and he had so many cuddles! I feel like he’s back, and after the winter we’ve had, his virus etc - it’s all coming together.

Watching the score board like a hawk, we finished on 2nd, narrowly missing out on a place at the Nationals as an individual but absolutely over the moon to realise our TEAM HAD WON overall, so we're off to Nationals as a team!

It will be all systems go now as we prepare for the championships, and will spend a lot of time focussing on not riding too much around a course and trusting that Ziggy can do it. I want to try and fit as many lessons in as possible to give us every best chance! Watch this space....

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Labels: blogger , equine blogger , Festival of the horse , horses , Nationals , riding club nationals , ziggy