Ouch says the ground

Zoom, zoom ... ouch.

Finally one of the coolest days is here. Sunny, blue skies, low humidity and temps in mid-twenties. Perfect riding weather. Particularly after our surprise storm on Wednesday that left tons of debris and fallen trees and branches on the trails.

Surprise storm brewing a few days ago.

Within a few minutes, there were huge circular gusts of wind, almost like a Tornado.

The next day volunteer crews were out removing the fallen trees. But some trails still have significant debris.

I was heading out with trail buddy C and her azteca mare to explore section 5. I told her I needed some media for my summer challenge. She was happy to oblige not quite knowing what other objectives I had in mind.

Most of the trail was lovely and I even tackled the jump trail, with a series of cross-country log jumps, for the first time. Q was just simply amazing, leading sometimes or in the back sometimes. The two horses have a trot that is simply in stride with no effort and C is just the most upbeat and relaxed trail buddy I have ever had. But when we get to the canter, well, we have some work to do.

C's mare has a strong and long canter stride that I need to hand gallop to keep up. I haven't done any galloping on Q, so she usually just trots while I canter. But I was on a mission. I found a great gallop trail, took the lead, and moved out. I was moving fast, and she was cantering behind. Success!

Ever since my trip to Hungary and London, I have had a very specific objective of doing faster work with Q, that I titled "zoom, zoom zoom". I noticed a few months ago that I needed to work on brakes at the faster pace, and I've been improving every since. But this day was the fastest I had every gone.

We had to drop to a walk shortly after because some riders were up ahead and were calling out to us. Nervous riders, or horses, or both. Anyways I guess they could hear us thundering up the trail from a mile away and we could hear them squeaking at us. It sounded like 5 year olds. Turns out it was a bunch of adults.

We kept trying to avoid them by taking other trails, but kept catching up to them. When we finally did, they gave us a cute laminated postcard with a copy of the trail map of that section, and we used it to discover new trails. We did that for a bit, me taking some pictures along the way.

And then we got to our next gallop trail. As we were crossing the field and I asked C to trot, she said we shouldn't because there was wild turkeys about and she didn't want to spook the horses. She didn't want me to fall.

I then went on to tell her that I wasn't afraid of falling (only of getting dragged or my Q running away and crossing busy streets in a panic). I told her about the two times I fell off him, and that falling didn't always have to be a big deal.

We then get to our next gallop stretch. It was glorious! I was going faster on Q then I had ever been on any horse in my life. He was strong, and controlled as I brought him back to a canter for a short downhill stretch. We then picked up the uphill and I let him drive forward.

And then I hear C say "watch out for the tree". I look through the shade and see some branches across the trail. After the cross-country log jumps we had done earlier, I felt he would easily clear these and sail over them. He decided to abort the plan, slam on the breaks and did a 180 spin back to C, leaving me in the dust.

The fall happened so fast. One second I was butt in the saddle, next second I was butt on the ground. I don't even remember the sequence of motions that bridged those two seconds. I thought I fell to the left, and he turned to the left, but I needed C to confirm that was true.

Oh well, with a sore ass that felt like it was burning, I got back on and we made it back to the barn within an hour, trotting some of the way. When I parted ways with C, I practiced some canter departs and stops going home and Q was a bit flustered and anxious. Something I will have to work on next week.

No doubt that there was absolutely no malicious intent on Q's part. We had never jumped anything faster than a trot, and he probably didn't feel confident that I could follow him at such a strong gallop over these branches. I probably was perched up in my saddle which is why I got so easily unseated and Ill have to keep practicing sitting back (which is hard to do when galloping), or at least learn a more eventing-style galloping position with more centered perch.

Before I went home, I took a detour to my favorite ice cream shop "Chocolats Favoris" that has unusual soft serve flavours with the most amazing chocolate dips. Yesterday I tried key lime pie ice cream coated in chocolate hazelnut. For a few minutes, I felt better.

The coating is pure chocolate, thick and warm for the first few minutes.

Key Lime was not my favorite but it was unusual. Fav so far is rasberry sherbert.

Now Im home, and am alternating between ice packs, alleve and epsom salt baths. Im also resting, and my husband is home taking care of me, while I binge on netflix (Heartland anyone?). Ill be back in the saddle in a few days, no doubt practicing our canter transitions. And our whoa (without spins).