It’s been a hot minute since I’ve sat down to detail my post-injury riding progress. You can thank the usual culprits for that — my job, laundry, errands, real life, exhaustion.
In an effort to sum up the last three months in less than 8,000 words, here are the top 6 milestones of recovery.
- No more pricey 5-minute chats with the doc!* Can I get a “hell yeah!”? Both my PT and orthopedic doctor closed out my case and sent me on my way.
*thanks American healthcare!
1a. My range of motion is back! There is still some stickiness in the upper ends of the range, but what’s important is that IT’S THERE! Stretching and loosening is the easy part. - The exercise routine I built for myself in the last blog entry has not been effective. I think it didn’t work for me because there were too many exercises that didn’t feel impactful enough for the time I was investing in it. That said, I’m finding time for yoga, stretching, and a heck of a lot of riding.
- I jumped again! It was terrifying, and exhilarating, and wonderful all at the same time. Truthfully, I’m not sure adrenaline has ever pumped through my veins in such quantities. I was straight jittery.
4. I fell off again. Truthfully, I’m not sure fear has ever pumped through my veins in such quantities.
It was a rough day. We were jumping again for only the second time back, and I fell off at the same damn fence as the last time. Pale purple rails, light colored flowers, white box. Apparently there’s something about that jump.
Shaken, I hopped back on. It was a fluke, bad luck, I just need to sit back and we’ll get over it this time, I thought.
Nope.
He refused again. I stayed on, but my confidence said see ya and took the rest of the afternoon off.
Cuvée did not make the rest of the ride easy for me. He refused three more fences, he balked, he bobbled. He didn’t believe we could do it and neither did his rider. What a fabulous combination… Somehow through shallow breathing, shaking, and watery eyes, we finished the ride. My shoulder, by the way, was fine, but I began to question whether I wanted to ever jump again. We had a show coming up in three weeks, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready.
With the benefit of hindsight, I now know that I learned an important lesson that day — I have a voice, and I should use it.
On that awful, nerve-racking day, the war cry “WE’RE GOING OVER IT!” was born. I yelled this to Cuvée as he slightly balked at a fence, but truly, I think I was yelling it at myself as well.
5. I started down the road of real recovery.
I knew going into the first jump back that I was going to be nervous. That was normal. What I didn’t know was that overcoming fear was going to be a journey. When my first day back went off without a hitch, I thought that was it. Great job folks, we did it, congrats all around, let’s go back to jumping 3 feet, yep no problem at all, see, I’m fine.
When that didn’t prove to be the case, I asked my trainer for a confidence boost. The show was days away, and I desperately needed to prove to myself that I could jump something higher than a crossrail. That is how scared I felt. A CROSSRAIL WAS ALL I WAS COMFORTABLE WITH!
Thankfully, this day was a success. 🙏 And we did, in fact, jump higher than a crossrail.
6. I competed in the show and was one point away from reserve champion!
This is truly a topic that deserves its own entry (she types as a way to keep herself accountable), but I’ll try my best to sum it up for the purposes of this blog.
First and foremost, I competed at 2'3", a height that gave me nervous butterflies at the beginning of the weekend, and felt small and manageable by the end.
But the show did not go off without a hitch because of course it didn’t.
I’ll give you one guess as to what went wrong.
Did you guess that Cuvée got scared of a jump, refused, and I came off because I wasn’t sitting back? Cuz if so, you’re right. 🙃 The breakthrough came the moment I got back on. Instead of tensing up in fear, I felt frustrated, annoyed, and ready to conquer that stupid jump. Doubt never entered my mind. Damnit horse, WE’RE GOING OVER IT!
I’m happy to report that we did go over it. Seven more times that weekend, in fact.
I couldn’t be more pleased with how the show went. I faced my fears, overcame them, and renewed my passion for jumping. Again, this deserves its own entry, so for now, I will close this one out with some highlights from the event.
