Many thanks to Olivia for taking pictures! As an aside–I tried using her (extremely fancy) camera to get pictures of her on her horse. Sports photography is hard.

Keeping the same pace for an entire course is a skill beneficial in all three rings. For Eli specifically, he is definitely partial to not having to speed up or lengthen his stride at the last minute to get to a jump from a reasonable distance. For me, every time I come out of a turn I see a move-up distance and speed up a bit. This is a habit I must break myself of.

We have cadence at the trot pretty much wrapped up at least.

Another thing I wasn’t as disciplined about as I should have been on Saturday were lead changes. I think I should have committed to doing simple changes as needed instead of occasionally trying a lead change when I felt like it. Eli prefers consistency so I need to give him that in our rides.

I kind of like the effect in this picture, whether intended or not.

But, the good parts look good and the bad parts are fixable.

saturday course from patentlybay on Vimeo.