Now, I did ok in the dressage test (won my class, though have a lot to improve if I actually tried training more!) and we did well in the cones course too (again, won it for our class) but um, we had a bit of a mishap from there.... lol!
Ok so because it's a speed event, a lot of the time I'm galloping Ed through it, and coming up to the finish line I lined him up and basically let him run FAST to get a good time through the finish line, woooohooo (SO fun!) except instead of then being able to pull Ed up (like we always can do fine) he went UP a gear, and
bolted. We were heading for a fence and deep ditch that angled back to our right, so I opted to steer him a fairly sharp left around a gate into an open paddock so I could get some *space* and sort him out rather than race into a fence... Except while trying to turn him when he was flat out bolting away, one of the shafts of the cart (the long shafts the horse stands between) *snapped*!!! We got through the gate and I basically then started puling him around a bit to slow him up a bit (You CANNOT take a sharp turn to bring him back to himself in a 2 wheel cart or you'll tip the whole lot!) then I realised at some point the second shaft had snapped too, and I was basically being dragged weirdly, the cart was tipped on the ground and I suddenly freaked that it'd go *backwards* (with no shafts attached, it could have gone in either direction!) so I basically did a forward roll out of the cart onto the ground to my left (by that time I think I was already pulling him around to the left, so left was 'inside'!) I at some point must have let go of the right rein in my dive, so I held onto the left rein, laying on the ground essentially hauling him into a circle around me. Let go of the rein and he'd have been galloping free with the shattered cart behind him and could have quite likely gotten caught up in the harness too.
I didn't let go though, so he galloped around me a couple of times before stopping, both of us still fine, just a bit shaken and weird feeling. I had to unstrap his harness standing there in the paddock to get him free of the cart, stepped him out and we walked back. I had to go back and retrieve the broken cart with the harness dangling about.
*sigh*
So I could have gone on, borrowed another cart and done the hazards, but when I don't really know why Ed bolted in the first place (perhaps the harness pinched? Perhaps he was just being an ass with the wind in his hair!!), I don't want to put him back into a position where we'll be galloping racing about again within hours of all this, so we opted to scratch from the afternoon of hazards. Pity, cos the placings are only done 'overall' (Dressage + cones + hazards = overall placings) and having won the dressage and cones already, I was in for a good placing if we didn't screw up anything much in the hazards! But ahh well, I guess health and safety is probably better than a placing, though to be honest it was all rather fun too. LOL! I will put him back into the cart later in the week and work him a bit, might get his teeth etc checked out to see if something was up there that made him go too... we'll see.
Anyway, so I wasn't driving in the hazards, so I was roped into stewarding for one instead! As a result I only got pics of the one hazard I was stewarding for and not any of the others, but it was still cool!
Basically the way the hazards work (there were 7 of them) is there is A, B, C, D, E and sometimes F, that you have to go through in order (again, red on the right) if you go through the wrong way or out of order, you get eliminated (though once you've been through each one, you can go *back* through them in any order or direction to get to others) The trick is, that the gaps can be cones like I was at, fences, gates, metal drums, drain pipes, brush jumps etc etc.
So all in all, a fun weekend, even with smashing the cart and coming out (lol, am I strange that I think that bit was fun too?) I had a weird twinge in my thigh after coming out of the cart (I realised later that the cart has sides on it, I must have rolled over it... lol) but now, 10 hours later, I realise my legs are absolutely aching all over, my feet and everything are
sore and I'm totally pooped. I'm sun burned (again, ooops) and didn't sleep well last night, so the whole adrenaline thing has suddenly worn off and I'm about ready to crash for the night now!!
There's always next year!!!
*edited to add* there are some more pics here too:
http://s80.photobucket.com/albums/j162/flyingduster2/OMHCDC 2010 DOD/
