That Guilty Feeling

I feel so guilty. After years of a thoroughly beautiful relationship, I’ve abandoned one of my best ever friends. Replaced in the mere wink of an eye all for the sake of vanity. I feel awful about it. Morning aren’t the same, afternoons are even worse, and evenings leave me so low and glum. “Coffee, I love you, come back, life isn’t the same without you.”

Why would I do this?  Well, over these last few months I’ve been preparing my old weary body for a new challenge which will be revealed later. Part of this change and challenge you may have gathered from my last few blogs. It is working with the superb Susan Mitchell of “Elite Fitness” on nutrition and training. First thing on the list, remove the coffee. It dehydrates, it’s diuretic, and it also increase your metabolism -- so naturally thin guys like me, breaking their hearts in the gym every day trying to add muscle, certainly should not be on it. Oh, but I only remember the good things.  The highs, the good times. Like looking back on your childhood fondly, I look back on my latte.

As you can imagine I’m loudly struggling along without my daily intake of caffeine and letting everyone know about it. Grumpy would be an ambitious term for how I’m behaving. It harkens me back to my childhood, to my pre coffee days, when my family nickname was “briar arse”. Enough said.

So bearing in mind how little coffee I’m having now and how horrible decaf coffee tastes, I’m amazed I get anything done out in the stable-yard, let alone what we’ve been getting done. This last month saw me talking to American clinicians for talks on future training seminars.

All of my horses would be only to delighted with a change-up of routine. Believe it or not I’ve even started hacking some of them again. It’s not quite what most people would consider hacking since it’s just around the bounds of the paddocks but for me it’s practically outer Borneo. There’s stacks of little shorts-cuts and maze-like tracks, and a great whopping hill in the middle that I was valiant enough to let Rex gallop up. It took us about four strides to make it to the top. That was plenty for me. The other boys are still getting used to the fact that there seems to be a waiting pheasant or lurking bunny on every corner, so it’s a quick trip after work in the arena when we’re not quite so volatile.

I’m also sorting a German trainer for coaching sessions. The hulking horse is wholly stepping up his game everyday, but we need some help making sure that I can control all that ricocheting energy and make it collect more, engage more from behind. We’re blending the days up with lunge work, pole work for all you jumping enthusiasts and light hacking before and after training sessions. It’s a endeavor keeping him improving and making sure he doesn’t ball up into a bunch of knots. It’s enough that his rider gets his knickers in a knot over training.

There's been a succession of talks back and forth to Ireland to organize our next clinic, a judging seminar with Marion Greene. Marion is a dear friend from Ireland who has known me through my dressage career, right from my first horse to the full string of ponies that I ride today. Marion has on occasion helped me with one or two of the horses and she’s especially great at finding a more tactful way of keeping our old Grand Prix schoolmaster in order.

Our last clinician Sue Rotheram, the fabulous Alexander Technician is coming back, but this time I won’t be worked upon in front of an audience or curious onlookers all giggling as I try to find my seat bones! Hopefully, Sue will set me on the path toward proper alignment and more graceful riding. I’ll be blaming my tight muscles on Susan and the new gym routine, as I’m back lifting heavier weights again working on what they call bulking rather than definition. Now before anyone gets excited, my version of bulking up is far from whatever rotund image is springing to mind. I’m naturally very lean so bulking up just means I look a lot less like a thin 19th century immigrant these days.

Speaking of heavier weights. I always vowed not to be a meathead in the gym, grunting and groaning like I’m either passing a gall stone or a twelve pound baby. But as I was training legs, working on my “quad sweep”, I added some more weight as instructed.  Then some more.  And then some more again.  And much to my surprise, half way up through a squat, I let out the most audible, guttural grunt, making the poor woman opposite jump.  We both laughed and all was hilarious until I realized that I was so busy laughing that I couldn’t get the weights back up. Whatever shred of credibility as a serious gym rat was shot to hell in that one noisy moment.

All this lifting, carrying and throwing big heavy bits of iron around the gym did prepare me last week for the fastest dash I’ve had to make in a long time. Early morning to the airport, quick flight to Oxford, pop up on a horse, and flat-out like a lunatic back to the airport to make the return afternoon flight to the Isle of Man. I’d like to think I looked like an Olympic sprinter as I bounded through the check-in and across the tarmac. It’s more likely I looked like a runaway convict. But at least those thunderous squats are doing their job, and I was able to soar up the steps just in time before everyone on board got too disgruntled with the late passenger. You’d think they’d have a coffee and calm down.