The Road Not Taken

As I begin my first real foray into the career I hope to have when I graduate, I find myself reflecting more and more on the past several years, and the choices that have led me to where I am today. Driving in traffic for two or more hours every day has given me a chance to reflect about how the choices we make become who we are. At the same time, it is so easy to look back, second guess yourself, and regret.

I will never be a professional horseman. From the age of nine, I was positive that I would be a jockey and win the Triple Crown. I geared my entire life towards that goal, including attending U of Kentucky for college, locating myself in the horse capital of the world. Finally, at the age of nineteen, I accepted what had been staring me in the face for years. I was just too big to be a jockey. In order to make weight, I'd have had to reduce my eating habits to unhealthy levels.

At this point, I came to the first fork in the road. Should I sacrifice my health in order to achieve my dream? The cost (and self discipline) was too much. I gave up my dream.

For a while, I had no new dream. I toyed with the idea of being a bloodstock agent or an equine lawyer. Then, just as I graduated, I was able to purchase my first horse. Suddenly, I had direction. We won our first event at Beginner Novice two weeks after I graduated and I decided to give a career of eventing a go.

I became a working student. That was an enlightening experience. For all those young hopefuls out there, if you truly think you want to be a professional eventer, go be a working student. It was the most exhausting, yet edifying experience of my life.

Generally, working students tend to either love it and never want to leave, or turn sour on horses after too much exposure. The former are those who tend to end up successful in a career in horses. The latter become resentful of the whole situation, mentally depressed, and burned out on horses. I was the latter.

I hated horses, I hated working with horses, I even hated spending time with my own horse. This wasn't the way I wanted to spend my life, burned out and resenting the animals I had once loved. I thought hard about my future career paths at that point. I had to make a decision. Would I have lots of time to work with horses, but no money, no life, no guarantee of success at some point, and miserable the entire time? Or would I go back to college, get another, more useful degree, and eventually become an amateur who has to juggle riding her one horse with a full time job? Each path had its pros and cons, but ultimately, I chose the path that would allow me to always enjoy horses. I chose to become an amateur.

Now I'm poised on the edge of actually emerging out into the world and having to balance all the elements of my life. Up until now, balancing college with competing has been a relatively painless and almost pleasant experience. Next year, I will be working 8-5 (or hopefully 7-4), then commuting to the barn in the evenings to ride every day. I will fall into bed each night exhausted from a long day and do it all over again the next. I will have the money to pursue the sport though, and I will have the joy of seeing my lovely horse each day.

Obviously, not everyone burns out the way I do. My friend, Jessica Pye of Pye Equestrian, is at the same stage of life as me, but has chosen the other fork in the road. No matter how tough it is, between injuries and lack of money, she never tires of seeing her horse's face peek out from his stall. We are reflections of the choices that each young aspiring rider must make.

I will never ride in the Olympics, or represent my country. I will never win Rolex, and probably never compete at even Burghley or Badminton. I mostly aspire to ride around Rolex, and complete. Dressage is a constant struggle for us, and show jumping is tricky for me. I will never have the time to ride five horses a day and practice my dressage so much that it becomes world class. I hope to improve with every ride, but some days I slide backwards. I only have time for one horse, so when he is on vacation, so am I. This makes it tougher to start up again for the next season, because we are both out of shape.

These are all the negatives about being a working amateur. The positive? Every day, when I see my horse's face, I am filled with content. After all, who could frown at a nose like this?

The Amateur Side

Well, Dante is on vacation until the end of June, which leaves me at loose ends...on the horsey side of my life anyways.

In the summer, Dante and riding generally get put on the back burner because one of these days, I need to get a real career (instead of that of prolonged scholarship). In order to obtain this career, I have to do internships in the summer while I'm in school, which means working 7:30a to 5:30p Mon-Thurs, with a half day on Fridays. Now, eventually I don't foresee this being a problem, I will ride late at night. My s/o is in med school, so he won't exactly be mad at me for being super busy.

However, here in Texas, riding in the evening during the summer is unpleasant. Actually, let me rephrase that. RIDING in the summer is unpleasant. Riding is least unpleasant from the hours of 6am to 9am, when the temperature is a mere ninety degrees. Riding is incredibly unpleasant from 3 pm to 8 pm, when the temperatures hit one hundred and more.

Guess what time I'm available to ride during this internship?

However, I'm actually very excited for this internship, which will be for an international engineering company (although I am staying in Dallas) designing and building HVAC systems. Eventually I would like to work in green construction and LEED certification, and I think this is a great first step towards this.

To make matters more complicated, I am also taking a summer class. I normally wouldn't try and do this, but the class is not being offered during the school year, is taught by my favorite teacher, is a fun computer class, and satisfies an important requirement for my degree. However, this means that for five weeks, I have class on Mon-Wed from 6:30p to 9:00p. This class ends in the second week of July, so at least I only have to do this for a couple of weeks while trying also to ride Dante.

Speaking of Dante, he should start under saddle again the first weekend of July. I'll only be able to ride Thurs-Sun, but it will be fine. Then in late July, we'll get back to riding full time, in August we'll gear up and start fitness work, and at the end of August we'll head up to Richland where we'll run Intermediate.

I've been thinking a lot lately how I'm going to balance riding and work once I graduate, and I have a preliminary plan thought out in my head. It might change, it might not, but I always feel better when I have a plan.

Back to the Basics

Sometimes, things don't turn out the way you pictured them in your thoughts.

This is basically the summary of what happened to us at Jersey Fresh.

All season long, I was gearing to Jersey. Our dressage was improving at home and our show jumping was in sync. We'd had three amazing cross country runs in a row, and I felt that it wasn't beyond our capabilities to finish in the top ten or even the top five if things went extremely well.

Mostly though, I just wanted to get around and get a qualifying run.

Our problems began about two weeks prior. I noticed that Dante's lateral work was stiffer and less willing on his part. Dante has a weak right SI ligament, and while he usually begins the season with beautiful lateral work (for him), it tends to weaken throughout the season. I was hoping to make it through Jersey without it getting sore, but unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. So our lateral work went quite downhill literally the week we were in Jersey until I mainly thought to get through the right-handed lateral work. Lovely. (It doesn't affect his left lateral work at all interestingly enough. However, I had refrained from doing any lateral work in the previous week or two and so the left lateral work suffered from lack of practice.)

However, both my vet and I discussed at length and concurred that the ligament did not bother him at all for jumping, cantering, galloping, and most trot work save right-handed lateral work. We decided to go and let the chips fall where they may.

Sure enough, we got through the dressage test. That was about it. I had hoped to make up some points in the canter work, but we were both tense and the canter-walk-canters became canter-halt-canters which scored very badly. The scores were running quite high throughout the day, which didn't help my case any, and I definitely felt that the score was a few points higher than it should have been. However, I squeaked out a barely qualifying score, so at least there was that. I was through the first phase.

Onto cross country. Dante was amazing out on course, other than spooking a little at the second jump and the trakehner. Every other jump he just attacked and jumped as if he had been doing this level his entire life. It was a touch course, with riders like Phillip Dutton and Kim Severson falling off and retiring. Dante ate it up like it was a Novice course and we cruised in twelve seconds under time, no problem. It was amazing. So now we were up to four awesome cross country runs in a row.

After cross country, I iced Dante in the ice boots twice and jogged him up for Mike. Mike and Heather both thought he looked great and I thought so too, from what I could see while running next to him. We just jogged him up in stabling, not on the roads outside of stabling, but he looked great.

The next morning I got to the stabling at 6 am and jogged up Dante. So far as I could tell, he still looked good. Heather and Mike saw him job around 7 am and also thought he looked good. However, when we got out on the asphalt right before the jog, Dante took a few slightly funny steps. We got held, and the vet said he was a little short on his left front but couldn't find any soreness at all. We reinspected and I thought Dante looked a lot better on reinspection, but unfortunately, the decision didn't go our way.

Looking back, I think Dante was affected by the hard ground, but only a tiny bit...enough to be sound on the (very) slightly softer ground in stabling, but bothered by the hard asphalt in the jog area. If I had iced Dante that morning, I believe he would have passed with no problems. From now on, Dante will get iced in the morning before the jog, since he does seem to be affected by hard ground just a bit. I'll also make sure to jog him on the hardest surface available to make absolutely sure that he's sound.

Dante's had a long season, and he's on a long vacation now. I'll be working and in summer school throughout June, so he'll start back up in July. For the fall, we'll keep it as short as possible and only do three shows, Richland, Poplar, and Fair Hill CCI**, with Galway CCI** as back up. The vet will come out every two weeks to check out Dante and make sure he's on track too.

Hopefully, we'll be good to go in the fall.

Fresh Starts

Wow, today has been a whirlwind of activity.

It began at 3:30 am, when my alarm kindly woke me up so I could catch my 6 am flight. I'm relatively certain that this is the first time I have ever seen 3:30 am from the getting up side of things, although to be fair, I knew of its existence thanks to sporadic all-nighters and the occasional party during college.

Still, 3:30am is incredibly early to wake up. Especially when your final exam didn't end until 7 pm the night before and you didn't get to sleep until midnight.

Okay, enough with the whining. I was able to catch a few extra Z's on the plane and ate some Poptarts for breakfast. The breakfast of champions!....Or not. After the plane landed, I managed to somehow end up with not only a lovely Toyota Camry as my rental car, but also a soft pretzel that the Enterprise counter was handing out. Yay lunch!

The Camry and I zipped up I-95 because we were on a deadline. Bafflingly, it appears that PA and NJ think you should be driving only 55 on the highway. Luckily, the other drivers on the highway agreed with my withering assessment of the speed limits and I was able to make good time and arrive at the Horse Park of New Jersey just before noon.

Since the jog was in two hours, I got straight to work. Heather and Bonner had kindly already bathed him for me, so all I had to do was braid him, groom him, wrap his tail, add quartermarks, touch up his clip job, and polish his hooves before the jog at two. Oh, and I had to look cute myself. No problem!

Then comes the part where I'm dumb and I arrive at jog 20 minutes early and have to walk in so many circles that my feet get blisters from the shoes I purposely bought one size too small so that I could jog in them. Go me.

Luckily Dante jogged up quite well. Dante's not the best behaved at jogs, but not in the way most horses are bad. He jogs readily enough, but really wants to stay a half pace behind me the whole way down the lane. So I tap him with my in hand whip, and he happily speeds up....and then I can't stop him. It's not as if he's running away with me or anything, but he just blithely ignores the eggbutt snaffle in his mouth and tries to keep trotting into eternity. Thanks horse.

But we looked damn good. No photos yet though, the parentals don't arrive until tomorrow. Bonner's mom got a few and of course the show photographers were there so I hope to end up with a couple nice ones.

After the jog, I hopped on (after changing out of my dress). I was just planning on giving him a light work, but it took us longer to get in sync than I thought it would. The heat got to me a bit, and since my ride time is 4:10 on Friday, I need to get used to it. Finally, at the end I got over the heat bump and he got over the 'I don't want to flex today' thing and we got ourselves nicely in sync. Hopefully we will have a bit better time of it tomorrow, having refreshed ourselves of the concept of dressage today.

Now, I could have waited until tomorrow to walk the cross country course, but that's one of my favorite things of the weekend. I love the discovery of new things to jump and the anticipation of cross country day. So I set out to walk the 9 minute, 14 second course.

Wow, it's long.

It's also lovely, set primarily in a beautiful emerald field. I can see why spectators like this event, as you can see the majority of the action from one vantage point. The course winds back and forth at least 4 times through this field. Now, this also makes it difficult to figure out which jump is yours and where you're going after. I definitely accidentally walked the first three jumps of the CIC** before realizing my mistake. I also got lost at least twice trying to find a jump, became confused due to some roping, and almost gave up while climbing a steep hill at the end. But an hour later I finally finished and I am so glad to be here.

(The fields of the Horse Park of New Jersey.)

I'm going to try and get a coursewalk up at some point, but that is not tonight. I will say that I am very excited about jumping the bank complex, the coffin, the brush fence, the trakehner, and most of all, the keyhole! The course looks great with lots of galloping room. My main concern right now is that the ground is pretty harder, and there is no longer any forecast for rain. I really hope they aerovate the ground.

Tomorrow will begin with our coursewalk at 8 am with Mike. At 2 pm, my parents arrive so I'll go pick them up and then from 4:30 to 5:30 is ring desensitization, so I'll go ride then.

Down to the Wire

Whew.

It's been a whirlwind of a week, but it's almost over now.

The horses are currently en route to New Jersey. Heather stopped overnight in Illinois and texted us that they each had huge 20 x 24 stalls to stretch their legs in, so that's great. They left yesterday morning, so it's a very long drive. Dante will probably lose some weight on the trip, but I planned for that and we managed to actually make him slightly over on his condition. He left Texas probably a 4.75 and he'll probably arrive in Jersey as a 4.25, all muscle and no fat. Perfect for carting my butt around a nine minute course.

(Dante shows off his fancy new earnet during our last trot set.)

He was pretty good last week, but we weren't quite clicking in the dressage on the final day. That's okay; everyone has off days. Hopefully we had our off day and now we will be completely on for Friday's dressage test. He was awesome jumping (although I made a few mistakes) but I'm confident that we will have a great show jumping round. The goal is to finally have a clear round at this level! Then, on the track on Saturday, we did sprints down the long side of the track. He was okay for the first couple sprints of each set, but every time Maisie crept up on his side, he'd get mad and grab the bit and haul off with me. By the end, he was genuinely running away with me down the long sides, which was a new experience for me (with this horse anyways). I'm thinking that in the future it would be a better idea for us to do sprints by ourselves..... Silly thoroughbreds.

After the gallop on Saturday morning, the vets came out and Dr. Anderson watched Dante jog up. He loved his condition, said it was the best he'd ever looked, and pronounced his front end sounder than ever. (We've had problems with Dante's feet before.) The hind end, while completely sound, seemed to have some stiffness, so we decided to have Dr. Willard perform acupuncture. That's a new one for Dante and me and I was fascinate as the wires were hooked up all over them. Dante seemed to fall asleep in the crossties during his session, so I know he was enjoying it! When I get to Jersey, I'm going to find the masseuse and Dante will get daily massages to keep that hind end loose. I've also got my Back on Track sheet ready to use, and Heather brought the Equissager and the magnetic therapy blanket, so Dante will get a turn in all of those.

(The lad falls asleep during the acupuncture session. The vet's assistant was joking about how 'crazy' he was.)

On the home front, I've merely got four finals until I am boarding a plane for Jersey early Wednesday morning. Two today (Monday) and two tomorrow, then I'm done! I still need to do laundry, pack, and dye my hair on top of studying, but it'll all happen. I'd rather take a final than study for it, so most of the painful parts are over now. Then my flight leaves DFW at 6 am, meaning I'll probably have to wake up at about 3:30 am to go to the airport, but I arrive in Philadelphia at 10:30 am and it's only a quick 1 hour drive to the horse park!

Jersey Fresh, here comes Area V. Are you ready?

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

This week has gone by in a bit of a blur, though part of that may be lack of sleep. With Mike and Heather gone to Rolex (more on that later), Dante and I were on our own. I think we had a pretty good week, with a 2 x 30 trot set on Thursday, two dressage schoolings on Wednesday and Friday, a jump school and a 1 x 20 trot set on Saturday, and a wonderful 3 x 8 gallop this morning in the only rain-free hour of the day we have had here. Seriously, it has been raining all the live long day. Not just raining, but monsooning and hailing. We need the rain desperately though. While it rained quite a lot last Sunday and Monday, by yesterday the ground was hard again. Then it rained again overnight and stopped right when I woke up this morning and we got a good gallop in on perfect ground before the lightning came back.

(The best weather that Gold Chip saw all day.)

And of course, I have spent the last four days watching Rolex and it has been awesome. I am so awed by the talent of the Brits; seems like they are out for a lark instead of winning a four star. Tiana's test was lovely, and although she had an unfortunate test cross country, I thought that they were the mistakes of a green pair, and definitely looked capable of tackling another four star course. I have no doubt we'll see them again next year, probably winning the whole thing this time. I was in love with Hannah Sue's cross country ride on St. Barths, who made easy work of the deceivingly difficult course. And I nearly cried along with Sinead (and probably everyone watching) after her clear show jumping round that moved her up to the podium at her first Rolex. So proud of our young up-and-comers!

And of course, I am incredibly happy for my assistant trainer Heather Morris, who completed her first Rolex this weekend with the talented Slate River. Her dressage test was poised, Roe looked like a machine on cross country, and her show jumping round was perfect. Go Heather and Roe!

Of course, now I get to compete against Heather's two star ride, Sportsfield Maisie Grey at Jersey. :-)

Oh, and up next: the week from hell. I have one week of classes left and two days of finals. Here's my to-do list, for both packing and classes:

1. Machine Design test tomorrow
2. 20 page Machine Design group paper due tomorrow
3. Machine Design presentation on Wed
4. Two Heat Transfer homeworks due
5. Paper for Thermal Projects due
   
6. One pre-lab and one post-lab for Lab II
7. Two chapters of Machine Design to read
8. Four chapters of Marketing to read
9. Several sections of Heat Transfer to read
10. Study for four finals packed into two days
    
11. Four finals next Monday and Tuesday
12. Pack for Jersey, both horse and rider
13. Clip Dante: face, poll, feet, legs, tail
14. Go to Dover and look for new breeches and a jog chain
15. Accessorize jog outfit
16. Go to the laundromat and wash Dante's XC boots
17. Dye my hair
    

Hmmm....maybe that's not so bad now that I've written it all down....

Success Is 90% Perspiration....

Dante and I definitely put out some perspiration this past weekend at Holly Hill. After dropping into the fifties in Dallas early in the week, we were definitely a bit wilted in the 90 degree temperatures in Louisiana. It was intensely gorgeous all weekend, with blue skies and fluffy clouds, and while it was hot, breezes kept it from being unbearable. I broke out the shorts after my rides, attempting to get rid of the completely white legs that we riders always seem to have.

(The trailer leaves Gold Chip.)

We left Gold Chip around noon where is was about 55 degrees and drizzling. I arrived at Holly Hill at four. Dante arrived around five and I got on to have a pre-competition dressage ride. Dante was a little stiff on the grass at first, but he loosened up and I got some good work out of him. He felt very relaxed, which was great, even walking to and from the arena where he often gets excited. I'm hoping this will carry over to Jersey.

The next day, we had dressage at 1:30. It was quite warm, and while Dante seemed largely unaffected, it definitely made me tired quicker. I often have a hard time transitioning to the heat (needing water, Gatorade, feeling woozy) when it turns to summer, and well, Texas surprisingly hasn't made the transition yet this year. I was definitely tired after a few minutes of sitting trot, when at home I had been able to do a full 30-45 minutes no problem. The black coat doesn't help!

I was much happier with our dressage test here than at Poplar. Dante was very relaxed, although he did get a little tense when he became scared of the photographer (who was simply sitting mildly close to the ring). Really Dante? It's a MAN. A sitting man. You see those all the time! Definitely is a facepalm moment. Luckily, I had time to circle (although he promptly spooked at the photographer AGAIN), and he mostly relaxed again before going in the ring.

I was pretty pleased with Dante's test for the most part. I completely botched the second medium trot by asking Dante out of the corner instead of waiting until he was straight, and he broke pretty badly. We also jigged in the extended walk. However, I thought our walk to canter transitions were very good, and I managed to get a real medium walk before picking up our first canter, which I'm proud of because he usually jigs there. He did anticipate the medium canters, but he didn't grab the bit and listened when I asked for him to come back, so I felt they were good. Our halts were pretty square apparently. I can feel up front, but not behind yet, so I have to rely on witnesses. Overall, I felt it was a much better test, and definitely more relaxed, although he did get a bit tense at the very end of the test. I felt that the test was going to score under forty, so I was happy.

Well, it didn't. However, only two horses placed under forty. Everyone else was in the forties. We were in a three way tie for sixth after dressage with a 44.6. Everyone was very much upset about the scores being so high, but I couldn't get myself worked up about it except to feel bad for my barnmate who got a 50.4. According to all those watching, she really didn't deserve that score, and even though she made some mistakes, it also should have been a qualifying score. But since all of the other scores were jacked up high, she very much got the short end of the stick. Mike thought the scores were about six to eight points too high, which is quite a lot!

I walked cross country later on Friday afternoon and discovered it was exactly the same as last year when I moved up. While I was initially disappointed, I was glad to have a second crack at those stupid stumps! There's a line that's made up of a big tree stump, then three strides bending left to a large narrow log with a deceivingly large drop on the back side. Last year, Jessica and I actually schooled this question right before Poplar and Dante was fabulous through them. At the event, our first Intermediate, I didn't quite get Dante back enough from the gallop before hand, got him a little deep to the stump, and he couldn't quite get his legs out of the way in time. He hung a leg and we almost ate it on the backside so we had to circle before the B element. So this year I was happy to have another attempt.

Cross country on Saturday was fabulous. Dante was very jazzed up in warm up. We were in the startbox and the starter said "5...4....3...2...1...HOLD!" Poor Dante was soooo confused, he was ready to leap forward and instead I forced him out the side of the box. I'm very glad they had caught me before letting me go though. We waited while they rebuilt the fence that had caused the fall (both rider and horse were fine by the way), jumped a warm up fence, and then were let out on course. Dante was excellent, but he was very confused as to why I wasn't letting him gallop at his pace (FAST) between the fences. I basically kept him on the same pace as I would have on my approach to the fence. He tackled the entire course with gusto, including the stumps. The most interesting jump we had was definitely the Weldon's Wall. Normally Dante jumps the Weldon's the same as any other fence. The one at Holly Hill is right off a sharp turn, immediately after that big drop from the stumps. It's hard to get the right gallopy pace coming up to the Weldon's. Dante started backing off a bit, and I got an off spot to the fence, so I thought he was going to chip, since that's what most horses do with Weldon's Walls. So I sat back and prepared for the chip. And Dante took off, and cleared the whole damn thing, untrimmed brush and all. I almost fell off on the back side, I was so surprised. I'm sure he was like "Hello, are you awake up there?!?" Luckily, the rest of the course we were totally in sync, and though slow, it was an intentional slow, as I'm saving his big run for Jersey. We came in exactly thirty seconds slow, on a course that is notoriously very tight on time (i.e. no one ever makes it).

I iced him twice and tried to walk him, but he was much more interested in grazing than walking. Then he proceeded to spook hard several times at one of the vendor's tents, so I knew he had tons of energy later. I think putting him on beet pulp was a great idea. His weight is up, his energy up, and he's not ridiculously spooky. Mostly. He has a redhead moment every now and then, but most fit horses do! I actually like that, as it shows he's still full of energy after cross country.

(Dante looking super shiny and completely uninterested in posing.)

(Gold Chip gathering between Heather's trailer and the Fletchers' Big Bertha.)

The next morning we show jumped early in the morning. I've got to say I love many things about Holly Hill. The tiny stadium ring is not one of them. Even Mike's ring is bigger, and I think Mike has a pretty small ring. The stadium courses always seem a bit wonky to me too, but I think much of that is because of the tiny ring. I would LOVE to see them make a change and put the Sunday show jumping in the large grass ring that they use for dressage on Friday and Saturday. Greenwood does this, and it works great. The problem I find with the tiny ring is that it's hard to make tight turn after tight turn to these jumps with no let up and no chance to find the correct pace before the jump. For instance, we started with a line across the diagonal, tight turn right to an oxer on the end of the arena, tight turn right to an oxer on the beginning of the next long side, bending right six strides to a one stride double across the diagonal, rollback left to a vertical on the opposite diagonal, bending line to a liverpool, around the short end (which might as well be a rollback), a triple combination across the diagonal and bending right six strides to a skinny (which buried you in the corner), sharp right turn to an oxer on the end, and then another right turn to a final oxer on the other long side.

So yeah, a LOT of tight turns. And Dante was a wild man in the ring. He was fabulous in warm up, but the warm up was a lot bigger. In the ring, I just couldn't see my distance every time, and missed quite badly, burying us on both oxers at the ends of the rings, the vertical off the rollback, and missed mildly coming into the triple combination. Of course, Dante jumps out of his skin and saves us each time, but has a rail by brushing the first of the triple combination. I was initially very concerned about how not well I rode, but the more I thought about it, the more I think it was a product of the tiny ring. Obviously I need to get better, but I think I need to make a mental adjustment in my riding if the ring is small. Dante needs a good pace to jump Intermediate show jumps, and I need to make sure he maintains that pace through the turns in these small rings, as well doesn't cut corners. Luckily Jersey will be show jumping in a large ring, and I believe I will be much better in there. The course did prove to be tough, as only one horse (one of the most careful jumpers of the group) jumped clear.

We finished up fourth, which I was pretty pleased with, considering we went so slow and had a rail. I wouldn't have finished higher than fourth without the rail, but would have finished first with no time on cross country.

In any case, I really think we did some good practice at Holly Hill this weekend. My goals for this week is to basically maintain what we have. Mike and Heather will both be at Rolex all week, so I'm on my own. I plan on riding mostly in the afternoon to get us (especially me) used to some heat. I'm easing off the lateral work to make sure he maintains his soundness through the next three weeks. We've had some monster thunderstorms yesterday and today, so I have hopes that the field will be good to gallop on Sunday. If not, we'll go to the track.