After my genius moves out on the stadium course, I was bound and freaking determined I was NOT GOING TO GET LOST on XC. Like, that was my goal. What’s that saying, “aim for the moon, even if you miss you’ll be in the stars” – this is something like “aim for making it to your gd space shuttle, even if you miss, you might make it to Target.”
Spoiler alert: I didn’t get lost! WOOHOO!
![](http://partyponyeventing.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/tumblr_ml47xqY22l1r8s5bto1_500.gif)
I did, however, do the following:
- Talk through my entire course (I really need to get a Cambox if only for the audio recording)
- Sit up and ride at the first (big) ditch, getting over it beautifully, only to completely not ride to the second (not even real) ditch and have a stop
- Convince Iggy that, yes, there was a rollback in this XC course and yes, he was going to do it
- Gallop the last two jumps completely out of stride because I am a minor adrenaline junkie, I love my pony and it was SO MUCH FUN
![](http://partyponyeventing.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image-4.png)
Image by Grace Waggoner
Essentially, that sums it up. The stop was dumb-dumb-dumb, but entirely my not riding. It was a half coffin, ditch to coop and others had issues there, mostly with the coop, but Iggy could have cared less about that. I honestly think he likes to look in ditches to check for hidden treasure. Like, “Oh, a ditch, I wonder if someone hid some hot tamales in here for me!”
Needless to say, I will be riding every single stride to every single ditch forever now. He can have hot tamales after the finish flags.
![](http://partyponyeventing.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/img_3870-1024x683.jpg)
Even with my dumb 20, we easily finished inside the time (honestly, without the penalties, we would have been cutting it a little close on speed faults, OOPS) and it was a fantastic experience. Overall, my goal for the weekend was to finish on a number, and that we did! We ended up 11th out of 15, but honestly I could seriously care less about it. It was about getting our first completion together under our belt and that we did!
![](http://partyponyeventing.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/img_3871-1024x683.jpg)
Next up is camp (!!!) the 6th-10th of July and then off to IEA, assuming we get in. I sent entries in on opening day, so fingers crossed.
5 Comments
awesome job!
Iggy is simply the most game horse ever.
i am there to hear your (mostly inappropriate I am sure) conversation while riding 🙂 So glad you had fun! ZOOM ZOOM
Congratulations! You definitely deserve cake and champagne!
You guys are awesome! That photo through the water is fab, you should definitely hang that someplace.