I have to say in the week leading up to this competition, I wasn’t hugely enthused…It hasn’t stopped raining for what feels like weeks, with ground flooding all over, although I’ve seen MANY worse photos for fields, stable blocks and even houses, so I won’t complain too much! As it turned out, luck was on our side as it didn’t all day & we were even able to enjoy some blue sky and sunshine at some points…But that wasn’t all that was great about the day.
I’d had a bit of a shakey (to say the least!) training session with Cathy on Monday night. Anyone who follows us will have seen that not only is negativity banned, so is perfectionist Sophie also now not permitted at our winter training! I explained it all in
my training update blog post, so have a read if you haven’t seen it already. However, the best thing I did was to watch the videos Andrew had taken during the session. Not only did I realise that the work we did go wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it was during the session, but also Cathy repeatedly said to ‘stop speeding’ which I couldn’t grasp at all. I didn’t feel like we were going fast at all! Watching back, it was speedy at the start of the video and towards the end, when we remembered, it was a much steadier rhythm with good engagement and activity.
This was my goal for the competition – correct rhythm without losing the key ingredients of activity, engagement and impulsion.