To the competition we go! Luckily Anne and I were the third and fourth riders out of us Young Riders, so we got an hours extra kip, so we were allowed to get up at 5.45, what a treat! So off we went to breakfast, managed to eat a bit of yoghurt, but I'm always rubbish at eating properly before a competition, then left for the stables at 6.15. Becky was already long gone down to the map room, and Sarah was just preparing to go. Anne went off about half an hour later, so I still had some time to kill and try to de-stress with Julia, which was surprisingly effective, however the nerves still kicked in whilst waiting outside the map room. What was also very prominent in my mind was the fact that at the judges briefing, a piece of paper with the legend on was produced for the Chef d'Equipes so that we could see what the paper was like. It turned out it was very shiny, and gel pens (which is what I use for map marking) would smudge if rubbed immediately after application, I was therefore very consciously making sure I didn't move my hand over my route, and took extra whilst checking the route again. But despite this, all was well, and after negotiating the first 100 metres or so, which is always the worst as everyone watches you leave, I was well on my way for a brilliant day out. Luckily the rain that had started whilst is was tacking up, had stopped by the time I left, and then it didn't rain heavily again all day, I was most pleased about this.
Despite the pressure of riding in the championships, I had a really great day out, with an amazing ride, I was pretty confident with how it had gone, although I knew I may have various time penalties as at one point there was a fair bit of bush-whacking to do, this always puts me off, as I'm so used to English tracks actually being on the floor when you want them to be. However I did end up coming into one of the checkpoints wrong, this was purely down to me not seeing how the route was marked properly on the master map, I rode what I had drawn, it's just a shame that I had missed a shortcut through a hair pin bend...Other than that I was pretty happy with how the day had gone, and arrived back to find everyone else back safe and sound. We did have the opportunity to ride past the main arena and receive a glass of champagne and some applause, I didn't partake in this event due to the short time frame between finishing and having to vet again.
I managed to get a bit of a sit down, and had a bit of food before heading off to the PTV to walk it again, just to get a bit more of an idea about how I would, in theory, ride it on Sunday. Then we ate some food, and mooched around waiting for provisional results, and rewarded we were, they showed good things for us, we were 5th as a team, with Becky in 4th overall, which was very impressive, we were all pretty happy with how we had done, and expected the results that were shown. Then off to check the horses, then bed for us as we were all reasonably knackered from out day out.
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