the audacity of a plan

There will always be a commonly held belief that sometimes it's better not to have rigid plans or expectations. That sometimes it's better to fly by the seat of your pants, taking life and each day as it comes. That sometimes a plan can be too limiting. Or can lead us to act or make choices bc that's what the plan says to do, even if maybe the circumstances aren't quite right. 

loch moy ct in march

I understand this completely. It's certainly easier and safer than risking feeling disappointed or let down when the plan doesn't pay off. Or when it has to be re-imagined or abandoned altogether. The anticlimactic end of this year's season has been yet another lesson on the subject. And it's horses, after all. Horses live by their own rules.

loch moy ht in april

What can I say, tho, but that I'm a planner? 

I have two main fundamental reasons for this. 

1) You don't get where I want to go by accident. Luck alone won't get me there either. 

While my long long term riding goals may be murky and vague, I've got a pretty clear sense of where I want to be in the shorter term: Where I was when Isabel and I were at our peak. When I felt my strongest and most capable as a rider, and we had just moved up to novice.

I want that feeling back, and I want to jump bigger fences and jump them well. And there is absolutely no substitute for hard work and practice in getting there. This includes making time for lessons. Making time for schooling. And creating benchmarks along the way to gauge progress. 

loch moy ht in april

Am I a stronger rider today than I was a month ago? Am I making better choices? And is it consistent? If I run through the same exercise 5 times, how reliably can we execute it correctly? 

All of this requires planning, especially when considering the reality that my mental game is a huge factor. For me to be successful over 'bigger' fences, I have to feel strong and secure in the saddle. But I also have to have enough practice and mileage at the height to make it feel more routine, mundane even. This takes time. And..... time takes planning. 

fair hill in may

2) There's something to be said for positive anticipation. We often dwell on the negatives of angst and anxiety, but forget how powerful positive anticipation and expectation can be. 

Years ago I read some study finding that people were often as happy (or happier!) in the days leading up to a vacation as they were during the vacation itself. That the brain, in anticipating a positive, happy thing, can actually experience an increase in happiness just by expecting future happiness. 

jenny camp in may

In other words, all that mumbo jumbo about visualizing success and happiness can be very real. The more I can create tangible, well defined progressive steps that take me ever closer to where I want to be (even if each step seems small or insignificant when taken by itself), the easier it is for me to imagine reaching that ultimate goal. 

And naturally, if I've done my homework in developing my goals -- the goal should be something specifically formulated to bring me happiness upon reaching it (otherwise uh.... what's the point, right?). 

loch moy in may

Thus we get back to my initial point: even the act of planning itself is often just as important to me as slowly ticking off those boxes, carrying out those plans, reaching those intermediary milestones, and ultimately reaching a goal. 

The downside, tho, is that an unwelcome change of plans therefore has equal power to make me feel somewhat robbed of that joy. To make that distant goal feel even more out of reach. 

tranquility in june

And.... yea. This is a struggle for me. It's hard to experience disappointment like that. And I feel like I've had my fair share of broken plans in the past couple years. Breaking my leg the day before our third novice (with a fourth already on the calendar). Then facing the dissolution of my competitive partnership with Isabel. And more recently, all those nagging minuscule lamenesses with Charlie ultimately preceding his surgery and the forfeiture of our fall plans. 

But that's mostly an attitude thing, I think. And my answer to broken plans must be to just... ya know, make a new plan in light of new circumstances lol. And so the cycle repeats!

tranquility in june

I had pretty grand plans for this year, too. Hard to say whether they were called for or not. Realistic or delusional. Idk. They were ambitious tho, for sure. 

The general scaffolding of my plan for Charlie's first year as an event horse was basically in two parts. Only Part 1 was mostly fleshed out going into the year, with the expectation to build out Part 2 after a "summer recess."

Part 1:

March: We introduced Charlie to the sport through an 18" CT at Loch Moy. This went off without a hitch, and we probably could have gotten through the xc phase had I been inclined to push it. 

April: We returned to Loch Moy for the full three phases at 2'3. The height was easy and while Charlie was green, he was a very very good boy.

May: This month saw us kick into high gear. Charlie ran another full HT at Fair Hill, this time at 18" since the 2'3 course included elements we hadn't schooled yet. But then we got our money's worth with what amounted to a modified BN course at Jenny Camp, and finished the month with a way-too-easy cruise around Loch Moy's 2'3 again.

June: Charlie faced his first BN at Tranquility. The jumps (which were not as soft as I anticipated) posed no problems, but water was still unreliable and needed schooling.

July: We concluded Part 1 of the season with another 2'3 run at Fair Hill. This would be Charlie's final sub-BN event. He had by this point fully demonstrated an understanding of all three phases, including questions like ditches and water on xc. 

fair hill in september

A brief summer "recess" provided us the opportunity to review and evaluate how Charlie was doing in his training. Verdict? Homeboy was doing well. 

If anything, Part 1 of my Grand Plan was probably more conservative than it needed to be. But I was adamant: we were all about building confidence and laying the foundation so that the horse had, in some form or another, seen much of what low level eventing has to offer. And that it felt easy and unimpressive to him. That he could get the answers right even when I messed up.

Because. Where Part 1 was conservative and maybe unnecessarily slow paced in moving the horse up, Part 2 was gonna be straight up balls to the wall. Obvi we only got through our first event of this plan tho so.... Ya know. It didn't go down the way I wanted. But here's the plan anyway, in all it's glory:

fair hill in september

Part 2:

September: Back to Fair Hill for their BN course. I expected and hoped for a meaty beefy chunky monkey course and.... it ended up being a lot softer than anything I'd ever seen at this venue before. Le sigh. The course also rode a little greener than I expected due to time off leading up to the event. 

Right away, the wheels on my PLAN had gotten a little wonky. They then immediately came all the way off and Charlie had surgery. Womp womp womp. 

Had that not happened tho, we would have proceeded as such:

Also September: Another BN run at our home barn, where I hoped to school some of the N while I was at it, considering I didn't care much about competing against my barn mates and would have been fine with the TE if it meant getting competition mileage over N elements.

October: BN at Loch Moy, whose BN courses I had been eyeing longingly all season. I went to this show anyway to groom for Brita and Rachael and was admittedly pretty blue when I saw just how awesome the BN course looked too. It would have been perfect -- actually, much of the N looked pretty freakin great too. 

November: Novice at Loch Moy. Yep. 

That had been the plan since.... well, June, actually. And as of September, we felt so close. So close. Alas. 'Twasn't to be!

In hindsight, knowing how the season ended, I honestly feel a twinge of regret at taking things so slowly with the horse when he was so clearly capable of more. I console myself tho by saying this slow, careful and systematic approach was instrumental in developing Charlie into the uncomplicated partner he is today. 

He is green, yes. But he also honestly knows his job at a fundamental level. And the fact that N felt attainable and within reach just one year after restarting him from the track... Well. Obviously we didn't actually get there. 

But it's still heartening when looking forward to next year and beyond.

And so. I keep planning.

***

Are you likewise a planner? Do you like to have a clear sense of how an event or series of events might unfold? Do you like to sketch out the bones of a season or time frame in advance, or create a road map of sorts about where you're going and how, exactly, you'll get there?

Or are you the opposite -- choosing instead to take each day as a new day, come what may? Perhaps your longer (or shorter!) term goals are less reliant on tangible outcomes such as competitive results? Like maybe your goals are more about enjoying the time spent with your horse? And any sort of rigid structure creates more stress or pressure than you feel is warranted?

Maybe you fall somewhere in between? Depending on time of year or where you are in your relationship with your horse? Or maybe you think I'm way overthinking this whole thing and should probably just chill the F out and enjoy the moment?? lol...