Monday, August 24, 2009

Catalpa Corner Charity Horse Trials 2009

The LLEventing team headed south to Iowa City, Iowa to attend Catalpa Corner. I had never been before, but had heard great things about the show. My friend and groom, Nate and I left late on Thursday night and drove through the night to arrive at the show bright and early on Friday. We were put in one of the permanent barns, which was great. It had large stalls and a great breeze coming through. The weather was fabulous.

Later in the day Maria Filsinger and her horse Pete arrived as well as Jen Johnson and her horse Loose Cannon. We had everyone settled in, hacked and ready for dressage on Saturday. We walked the courses in the evening and had our plans of attack.

I had an early ride with Hannah, she warmed up fabulously but when we went into the ring she became a little distracted. We were sat in 2nd with a 35. We ran XC later that day, the course was great, well built and the land it was on was beautiful. We jumped a clean round and racked up a few time faults, but kept our 2nd place.

Maria also had a lovely warm up on Pete, as well as Jen and Cannon, but as with Hannah they did not like the rings and became spooky and distracted. Maria scored a 35.8 to settle her into 3rd place after dressage and Jen scored a 32.6 to put her into 6th place, tough division!

Maria had a lovely ride around the cross, she really had to get after Pete who came with quite a water issue that we are slowly but surely working through. She moved up to 1st place after the cross country, but the pressure was on going into show jumping as she didn't have a rail to spare.

Jen had an unfortunate tumble at the double down banks where Cannon lost his footing and tripped head first down the second step. Both were okay and ready to get on to the next show as soon as possible.

Show jumping was early on Sunday. Hannah was jumping fabulously and we had a clear, steady round but added 2 time penalties to our final score and that moved us into 3rd place. I was happy with her confidence throughout the weekend and knew we were definitely ready for another intermediate run!

Maria show jumped well, she did have one rail and also finished in 3rd, but overall it was a very successful weekend. We are excited for Wayne DuPage coming up in a couple weeks.

Overall we had a successful and fun weekend, always a learning experience no matter what happens!

No comments: