Thursday at 4:30pm, Lizzie and I picked Sarah up at UofM and headed to Lexington, Ky in the pouring rain! I'm thankful it's just a 5 hour drive and the girls compete there a lot during the summer so this drive is really second nature to us! Two-three Redbox movies do the trick!
Friday the girls rode and had a lesson from their trainer Aaron Vale.
Saturday morning at 5:30am the Maclay warm up class started. In this class, the rider has 90 seconds to jump the jumps in the ring. Sarah was posted to go 3rd and Lizzie 141. I looked at Aaron and said, "You'll get Sarah right?!!"
This is how Saturday morning went:
Sarah was setting her alarm for 4am so I set mine for 4:15am - just to be sure... My alarm goes off at 4:15am and as I walk to the adjoining room, it's pitch dark. Sarah's alarm didn't go off. Ok, not a tragedy but now I'm standing in the room waiting.... not sure for what but of course I can't go back to sleep because in my mind, she won't actually make it out the door.... (remember, she is in college and as far as I know, she does make it to her classes!) She leaves, I go back to bed. Now it's 4:30am and my mind on the fact that I will have an hour and a half to sleep. Lizzie needs to be there at 7am, setting my alarm for 6:15am. Sarah comes back to the hotel, Aaron texts and says 7:30am for Lizzie. I wake Lizzie up and she informs me that Aaron text her and said 7:45am. I compare texts and the one he sent me was sent last so I'm certain we have to be there at 7:30am. We arrive at the Horse Park at 7:30am. Lizzie gets on, Aaron and I head to the Indoor only to find out we are 50 out.... that is over an hour away... we head back to the barn.
I'm not certain what time we finished but Aaron said for the girls to be back around 1:30pm for another lesson. We head back to the hotel to get some rest!
Back out at 1:30pm for lessons, watch some jumpers and head to Malone's for a wonderful steak dinner!
Sunday: The Maclay finals class started at 7am. Lizzie is scheduled to go 8th and Sarah 146. There were 148 riders in the class! As we said, they might as well have been first and last!! We had to be there at 6am for the 6:15am course walk.
Lizzie ended up placing in the top 30 which was very exciting!! Sarah had a really good round and didn't get called back to flat. The heartache and excitement for both girls was a bit overwhelming. So happy for one and so sad for the other. This is the nature of the sport. One of them does well, one doesn't, there are times they both do great in the same class, there are times they both bomb. This is a very humbling sport and I know that life lessons happen at every show!
Sarah has one more year left of her Junior year and has said that she will most likely not do Equitation but do Hunters and Jumpers this next show season. With being in college and trying to get the points needed for Indoors, she thinks she will close the Equitation door. If she just wants to do Hunters and Jumpers, we will support her decision. This needs to be fun so we will see how it plays out!
We will take the rest of November and December off and gear up for the 2014 show season!
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