Jumping and a Challenge

Ok, challenge first.  L and Hilary are running a twopointober contest and today I joined in the fun and pains and got my baseline.  Drumroll please: 12:02!!!!  12 minutes, I think sprinklerbandit got bored timing, I even tried mixing it up with walk/trot/canter transitions and some leg yeilds.  I will be bringing an actual watch for future timing so that the smartphone doesn't have to be held in one's hand for so long.  My only worry is if I will be able to improve very much on it, prize for longest baseline anyone?

Yeah for time spent galloping the racehorses

Ok on to the jump lesson as promised.  It. Was. So. Fun.  I rode an older mare that I have actually taught some pony club kids on before, but never ridden.  She was a total blast.  She started out behind the leg which the intrepid instructor warned me about so I did some forward and back in the canter and worked on getting a feel for her gaits.

Looking for our line

We started over two gates with flowers two strides apart.  The second time through I remembered that I could in fact sit up, steer, and keep my leg on.  Then we moved on to a forward five stride bending line.  After that it was a two to a two, and another two stride elsewhere in the ring.  Then we put it all together in a fun course with some tight turns.  Corvi (the mare) was a champ.  I had a few lines where she was still behind my leg and we would muddle through, but we would come back around with more pace and fly through.

Too much pace here, flying!

Ready to go attack a cross country course

The biggest challenge for me was trusting her to jump and being confident about our take off and striding.  After riding greenies and dishonest horses for so long it was really a challenge to ride forward to the jump with out getting defensive.  We worked on it and talked about it and came out the other side.  Seriously couldn't stop grinning.  The last jump was bigger than I've jumped in quite some time (+ side of 3'3") squee!

The big finish

Yahoo!

 Sprinklerbandit even took a video of our last line (thank you!).

As I started out I was worried that I would be sloppy in my form, but over all it felt good.  Steph was impressed with my riding and after my last jumping lesson it was the confidence boost I needed.  I am going to try and make this a regular occurrence.