the move up is upon us

We are off to try our hand at Novice at Olde Hope today. Wish us luck!! Our ride times are early-ish, so hopefully by the time you're reading this we will have already survived the outing. Fingers crossed lol.

the face of a fierce competitor?

I'm feeling a bit nervous as of this writing, and a little sad that we'll be alone - but nothing terrible. We had a really solid dressage school yesterday which helps - if nothing else I would like to put in a nice test at the show today. Score < 35. Tho I am not likely to have ANY media of dressage so... wah.

As for any other goals, well... I would like to complete. With confidence. Penalties in either jump phase will be ok - I kinda want to approach the courses as schooling opportunities. So if we have an issue, it won't be a huge deal. Isabel doesn't know what penalty points are anyway, so we'll just deal with whatever might crop up and fix it and move on.

That said tho, obvi I'd rather not have any serious issues!

they post their maps online ahead of time. pretty cool, huh?

Olde Hope already posted the course maps and just looking at this on paper makes me feel ok. There aren't any words on there that freak me out (trakehner in particular is missing haha). The banks should be fine, and the jump out of water (#8) looks situated somewhat similar to how Fair Hill was set up - meaning I might possibly have quite a bit of leeway for reorganizing before presenting to the fence.

We've working on ditches a lot lately too, so that should hopefully pay dividends today on course. Really I'm thinking the only complications might be if something looks a little spooky or imposing in size, or if some of these jumps are closer together than the map makes them look. Nothing is flagged as a A-B combo, tho.

this guy apparently lives in my truck's side view mirror now. consider yourself warned if you ever have reason to go near my truck! #goodtoknow

So we shall see. I will very dutifully take as many pictures as humanly possible, and will obvi have my trusty helmet cam strapped securely to my face for the jumping phases. And if I get verrrrry lucky my parents might arrive in time to see me jump (fingers crossed!).

I think it'll be a good day tho. Will let you know soon regardless haha. In the meantime hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!!