Natalie Povey - March 2012 Blog

During March we focused on our training in preparation for Moorsele CPEDI*** as well as attending a World Class Development Squad Session and a competition at the BD Festival of Para Dressage. Unfortunately the other competition which we had planned to compete at was cancelled.

Fizz has been working really well and seems to be coming on leaps and bounds. We have been focusing on riding the movements within our three tests working on preparation for the movement, accuracy as well as how I am riding the movement to help Fizz. We have worked on each of the movements before putting them altogether in a test. We have also been taking advantage of the finer weather riding outside as much as possible.

On the 10th March we competed at our first competition of the season at the BD Festival of Para Dressage at Vale View Equestrian Centre. This competition was a qualifier for the BD Para Dressage National Championships at Hickstead, which will be held later this year. I also decided to enter the freestyle class as a warm up before competing at Moorsele CPEDI*** as it was a great opportunity to ride our freestyle in a competition environment without it being an international competition. We arrived in plenty of time so that Fizz could do the arena walk in the morning, as she was going to be doing three tests that were quite spread out I wanted her to have time just to stretch her legs without any pressure as well as taking in the surroundings. Fizz warmed up very well for all three tests but with it being our first outing of the year we decided to aim to ride a calm and steady first test as Fizz can get a little excited which paid off, although the score wasn't great we were really pleased that she listened and kept her rhythm all the way through the test. For the Grade 1b Team test we achieved a score of 66.82% and second place. For the next two tests we put a little more pressure on in the warm up to get her more together and in front of the leg which really paid off. In the Grade 1b Individual Championship Test we achieved 73.91% and 2nd place and in Grade 1b Freestyle to Music we achieved 71.50%, 2nd and 4th overall in the freestyle class.

Our next outing was to a World Class Development Squad Session, which went very well and everyone was pleased with the way Fizz was working and what we had been working on. On the first day we had a training session and on the second day we did test riding. We also had sessions on both days with World Class Development staff such as the vet, farrier, lifestyle management and saddle analysis. I also had my six monthly review which I felt went well and I have lots of new goals to work towards in the next six months.