More chaos part 2?

Went a touch radio silent due to a lot of different factors all colliding at once, unfortunately:

Man, bring me back to this!

Major stress at work/burnout

Bad flareup of my chronic disease, ruinining an entire week of my life again

Oats went lame and I had a total meltdown over it

Gidget had a really bad flare up of her reverse sneezing and went into dog-shock for a few days. It was really hard to see 😦

So yeah…It was a very challenging period of weeks for me, Oats and the family.

Some bright sides: Oats lameness was temporary! He had a small abscess (in the same spot as his 2018 big abscess that summer) and now he is good to go. We even had a working equitation lesson on Sunday and he was a champ though I definitely felt quite rusty.

Work is ok for now and I am counting down the days until I am off on holidays!

My disease is back in remission until the next flare-up, and Gidget has a vet appointment today to figure out our next plan of attack. I don’t really expect that they will have any answers but…We made it over 3 weeks ago when we desperately needed it, so I still am hoping for some kind of solution or treatment for her symptoms.

I guess even through the blackest days, there is still hope?!

Also a bummer, but one I really knew was going to happen: My jump trainer who I have been with for over a decade (?!!) is not travelling to coach us anymore. I totally get it, no issue from me but it’s also a bit sad to see the end of an era.

I’ve reassessed mine and Oats relationships after his serious injury and jumping for competitions just doesn’t seem that worth it anymore? We’ve shown for so many years and it’s not always about ‘higher/faster/stronger’ for me– it’s about enjoying the journey and our relationship these days. I still love horse showing, but it’s not all what it’s cracked up to be, you know?

And history repeats itself

Well, it wouldn’t be a pandemic year without more disaster, right? To cope with many of the stressors I picked up during this weird and terrible time, I started running more at lunch. Like, a lot more. In normal times, I’d run about 5 days a week, and I went to 7 with the odd day off here and there. Fine right? Yep no prob.

And then I started adding in 1 day of hills, and 1 day of speed work (gradually over the past 6 months) and everything was great! I bumped up my daily run amount and kept the intensity. All was going well until…Tuesday. I ran the hills, and it was extremely tough due to 5 days of severe windstorms this week. I finished a bit short, and must have aggravated my stress fracture from 2019, because when I ran on Wednesday, my calf felt tight and then on Thur? BOOM. No go. Limping. 😦

Yeah really don’t want to go through this again. Damn

So, that’s where I am right now. Forced time off and time to re-evaluate my injury protocl. And of course after two weeks of miserable weather, it’s sunny and not too cold out. Eff my life! Wah wah. I know I did this to myself, but I also know that I probably can’t make myself stop, either.

Post-Shockwave. Eight sessions on this bad boy. REALLY don’t want to experience that pain again. 😦

So who knows what the future holds for my bad leg AND the hot spot on the bone is the same stress fracture spot as in 2019 (got them in both legs last time, fun fun…). EFF. 😦 Can’t catch a break eh? At least Oaty was golden last night. Three weeks to go!

Good race, bad run: MEC Race #5 Halloween run!

I usually really like this one, if the weather is good there’s nothing better! But that was before I got injured 😦 I immediately knew I’d have to scrap the half-marathon, I was way too hurt to run that. Realistically, I was too hurt to race much of anything at this point and still today…But I got stubborn, my friends were racing too and dammit I wanted to! (Ok so now I’ve been injured for a solid month. It sucks, friends, it sucks).

So it poured rain all night, we went to a Halloween party and played it safe due to the race, enduring SOME razzing from friends, “It’s only a 5k!” What are you going home early for!” Ha.

I met up with my friends at the start of the race- in the bathroom lineup- of course. It was nice weather, the sun was starting to peek out and the clouds were blown away. I was even wearing shorts! Yes!!

We did a brief warm-up and the results were not promising. Shooting pain through my pelvis and back. Lovely. I correctly figured that this was gonna hurt. And it did. And it hurt even more to run fast, go figure haha.

Then we were off and I tried valiantly to cling to some sort of pace, but yeeeahhh…It didn’t happen. My km’s were slow, I felt like I was gasping for breath and had just shooting pain through my pelvis and lower back. It was slippery with the recent mud/rain and dead leaves, and just kind of up-down-all-around race. In other days I would have really enjoyed the variety haha. More of a true trail race than the half is, actually.

I did miss doing the half though.

I was kind of chugging along, feeling annoyed that I was so injured and it felt really hard. I was glad to see the finish line, and I wound up in 2nd place? Wha? Let’s put it this way- my time was not competitive. Ah well!

Best of all? My buddies were there to run with me, and one of them even placed 3rd! Whoo hoo! I just liked having friends there with me 🙂

And I am still injured and getting therapies on my abdomen to hopefully figure out wtf is going on. A month down…Hopefully that’s all it is going to be. My fingers are crossed!!

A challenge

I went quiet last week, partly due to a large amount of stress at work, but also due to horse stress.  Yep, they both happened on the same day…Don’t you just love it? After all the shenanigans Oats has gone through lately (stopping at fences, being a dick at horse shows, stopping again at fences, me falling off in a bad 7-day period…) things got even worse. Not for riding–that’s been fine.

Photo courtesy of Lindsay F.

Oats is all ‘me be a dink?’ That’s unpossible…instead of impossible.

He banged into the stable manager when she was taking him out of the field, and she fell into a stump. On her back. Cue a hospital visit and now she’s off horses/stable work for a good two weeks, maybe up to six now. I felt terrible when I heard about this.

Jesus. First, my horse is an asshole to jump. Now he is an asshole to handle?

I was SO OVER THE HORSE THING. All of it. All of it was putting me in a really bad mood. I felt so sorry for her, and like, just…GAHHH. Last week and hell, most of the ENTIRE month of May, my horse had no redeeming qualities. NONE.

I was furious at him, angry and so pissed off.

I rode Thursday and it was actually a fairly productive ride, but I found myself chasing him to the pole exercise I was working on…So maybe I wasn’t good at letting things go. By Saturday, I had a good long time to stew in my misery and unhappiness. When my lesson time finally rolled around, I had worked myself into a frenzy of tension. Full of ‘I don’t wannas.’

So yeah, perfect to have a lesson, right?

WRONG.

This time I verbalized what was going on in my head to my instructor, who totally got it. I’m going through some stuff right now with Oats, and I’m not feeling comfortable at all. I needed to take a step back and re-evaluate and see where things are.

And I am pleased to say I did not lose my temper at Oats in my lesson, we didn’t push my boundaries with jumps- we did a small ‘x’ and a small vertical that I quite frankly could jump in my sleep- and worked on jumping those in combination with a leg-yielding pattern. It was interesting, I was very sweaty when we finished, and I didn’t at all feel keyed up, nervous, anxious or anything.

Ending on a good note. I was pleased with how it went.

Sunday, I set up the pole exercise in the outdoor and went to practice my ‘eye’- short distance, long distance, right distance. I deliberately pushed for the long distance and actually was able to ride it- wow! And I ‘collected’ sort of held for a short distance, and was able to make it.

It was a good ride, very comprehensive. I had a small jump set up, but it wasn’t calling to me yesterday, so I left it alone. Our lateral work sucked, but what else is new? Haha. Oh and Oats had a hissy fit about a car parked behind the arena- something NEW?! Gasp! But we managed just fine.

I finished feeling pretty calm and competent. I need the practice, apparently, on making decisions. I will keep on it until I feel like I can make the right decision!

I also felt awful about the stable manager so I sent her a Starbucks gift card as a ‘get well’ gesture. That made me feel a tiny bit better.