Obviously, I told a major porky pie when I said I would get to the cross country part of my recap on Wednesday. Instead, Thursday morning I was emitting many four letter words in attempts to get the actual live feed of LRKY on USEF.org…. Instead, I could only access Sparrow Nio’s dressage test on repeat. It was rather distracting, and left no brain cells left for writing about cross country.

Now that my apology is out of the way, onto XC.

In all honesty, the course was not a difficult one in terms of size or complexity, unless your horse was spooky. What made that the difference were the multiple approaches to fences that required skimming other fences, landscaping, or even maneuvering between other level’s combinations in order to get in a decent jump. But the jumps themselves were fair and if anything, on the smaller side.

What I didn’t realize is that apparently folks were having trouble in between fences from 2-3, which required you to ride from the infield to outside the steeplechase course. This path was lined with white fencing (the kind you see on the perimeter of a steeplechase racetrack), and apparently the wind blowing plants behind it was crushing major problems. Two people got ejected before making it to fence 3.

Jack, for his part, somehow didn’t see what the fuss was about- at least not there. Fences 1-4 rode just fine. 5AB was a nice bending line combination over two log stacks, and while our in was beautiful, we got to the B element on a half stride, and as the photos show, the out was hella ugly. The funky lines for us really started at fence 10, which required getting really close to a training fence on our left in order to line up to a roll top with a downhill descent. Jack did not care for getting up close and personal to the other fence, was distracted by the flowers for it, and was a bit surprised when we got to our allotted obstacle.

11 was another tricky place, having to literally weave through an angled training combination to reach it, and 12 was a max skinny that required getting right on top of another fence to get the line correct. I won’t say those were particularly pretty fences either, but we got it done.

We got rolling up the hill and had a lovely jump over the max yellow house, up the tiny bank and out over the B element, and then I overshot our line to the boat before the water, but we jumped it and went into the water as planned.

The jump coming out was small, but had a terrifying bush positioned in the center of it that required the rider to choose a side a la a skinny. Jack saw the bush, spooked, then flailed over the center of it anyways. You’ll hear in the video my laughing- he tries, bless his heart, but lord smooth sailing is NOT our MO.

With one more fence on course, we ran through the finish flags more than 30 seconds under time. It was my first time in almost two decades using studs, and I was really pleased with how Jack felt- he wasn’t nearly as out of breath as I had expected, he felt confident and happy despite being spastic just moments before.

Of course the tough part about being first going into showjumping is that it’s yours to lose. I promise not to be so derelict in writing that up soon!