Boston '14, horses, long runs, rambling....

I have had a jam packed week.

The big news, and one that I know I was not alone in waiting for is that my squeaker time is good enough for Boston '14!!
I was very excited. I checked my email every hour on the hour starting bright and early and finally had to give up around 1:00. At 1:24 Eric updated the BAA page, saw my name, and literally RAN to the arena where I was riding with the good news! I knew it could be tough getting in this year, my qualifying time from last year would not have made the cut, so I'm pleased, relieved and excited to have another go at my favorite race!

Phew. That's about all I could say.

I had a successful 20 miler the day after Lobsterman which I found encouraging. My long runs over 19 miles have essentially failed for the past few months. Now that I think about it, my last decent 19 plus run was at Boston- jeesh.... This was a pretty good confidence booster for me and I felt good throughout- good enough to throw in a mile at marathon goal pace from 18-19. I like to know that I have legs that late in a run and I did (on that day, anyway!)


I was out of town for last week, at Regional Championships (for the horse end of things!) I had one of my young rider students along for her first time at such a big show and she did very well, placing no worse than 7th in her open classes, winning a big class on a high score, taking 5th overall high score young rider and coming home with a stack of ribbons to be very proud of. She had a rough go in her championship class but part of learning to compete is developing the skills to gracefully handle a less than stellar ride and figuring out what to do better next time.
I was a rather fine example for this skill as my Championship class scored much lower than I felt was appropriate. Disappointing, but in the end it was only 12 minutes of my life and knowing that it was actually a solid effort makes it a bit better! A prime example of the truly subjective nature of the sport, which doesn't take away from my dedication to it but makes me glad that I have I purely objective sport to enjoy as well!
And yes, we took some silly pictures to commemorate the event. We are VERY serious dressage queens...

The awkward faces make no sense.
You can tell it was the end of a long day!

Hahaha! This one makes me laugh every time!

I'm getting around to tapering for Smuttynose. I'm feeling good so far, pretty relaxed, I do have expectations for this race (I'd love a PR!) but also plan to run according to how I feel on the day. Given the debacle at GCI I also am planning to run the first half a little under pace. Bonking at mile 15 is NOT part of my grand plan.

Oh! My athlete profile made it up onto the Oiselle page last weekend. Look at ME!!! I'm loving it, funky typo and all (hmmmm instead of  reading "Pump up song" Thunderstruck is amusingly listed as my 13.1 PR?) I should probably point that out to someone but it made me laugh so I'm enjoying the cut-and-paste error for the time being!


 That's it for now. October is going to be a HUGE and busy month so get ready for much excitement around here!