Hi there everyone! I finally had a wee bit of downtime and I thought I would share with you a recap of this year's Extreme competitions. I was lucky enough this year to be able to enter and compete in all 6 of the season's competitions. That being said, this years series ended in a lovely belt buckle to the overall winner in each division. Now the divisions go from Youth, Green, Entry, Open, and then Extreme with Extreme obviously being the most challenging AND the most fun, I might add haha!
Now, how the competitions work is there are 20 or so obstacles scattered throughout a HUGE outdoor facility. The goal of the race is to A. Be the fastest through the course and get the most speed points and B. to display the best riding skills AND horsemanship at each individually judged obstacle. So ya, you might be fast, but can you ride well and will your horse willingly do what's asked? I love these competitions so much. They have so many different things they throw at you and a lot of them, you just CAN'T train for. So it really boils down to how well you can communicate to your horse and how much your horse trusts you. What cracks me up, is my little grey horse enjoys competing as much as I do. It's uncanny because he KNOWS when it's go time and he gives me everything he's got when we are racing. It doesn't matter how big the jump or how scary the obstacle, I just have to SHOW him where he needs to go and he does it. There is a re-occurring joke at the center that Smokey and I are crazy and they should open a new category just for us and call it the Kamikaze division. Kinda makes me laugh since he and I are the smallest to compete in the Extreme division. Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE these competitions, but I get SO intimidated....there aren't too many women who enter in extreme and seeing all the big time cowboys on their nice big quarter horses really is unsettling. I show up with my humble little truck and very old trailer and pull out my small $50 horse that no one wanted and it's enough to get my heart pumping a bit.
Another challenging piece of the competition is TRYING to memorize the course map. Each competitor gets a map of the course and can walk the course the night before. Now, for people that have a few more brain cells firing in their noggin, this is easy for them. Me.......ya, not so much lol! Honestly, the hardest part of these competitions is trying to remember what obstacle comes next, where I'm supposed to go, how I am supposed to do it, all while my horse is going mach 50 on the course. I will admit that I have.....ahem.....been known to totally miss entire sections of obstacles....or.....ahem.....do them in the wrong order. One of the judges joked (while me and the other competitors were doing a course walk) that they wanted to make the races challenging, not only for the horse, but for the rider as well.... So THIS year I made a big effort on really working on doing my best to memorize the course map. What has helped is that I started typing up the description of each obstacle AND making a small laminated copy of the course map. So that way, IF I forgot where to go while competing, I could hurry and pull it out and put it back in a jiffy :)
So as far as the obstacles go, there has been some real fun and a few difficult ones. My favorites are always, of course, the jumps. I swear my little horse is a stadium jumper at heart. Every picture we have of him jumping he has such great form, his ears are pricked forward, and it really looks like he is enjoying himself. Last year, they had a large log that was set OUT of a recessed water obstacle that you got 5 bonus points if you jumped OUT of the water OVER the log. It was one of the only instances I held the saddle horn and let the rein loose and told my horse "Smoke, balls in your court buddy, get us over that thing". I was so excited that one of the photographers caught us right as we were leaping over the log :) Only one other competitor attempted the log jump and his horse got high centered (both he and his horse were ok ;). There were some funny obstacles they through in as well. One was to sort ONE goat from a herd of sheep AND goats. Well, ONE of the competitors just jumped off his horse, grabbed a goat by the horn, and placed it in the correct pen. Which he got 4 points for being creative! Seeeeeee, that's why these competitions are SO fun! You can think outside of the box. Not to brag though....but Smokey and I got a SHEEP out and penned it WHILE I was still mounted hehehe. Now, the obstacle that I just couldn't master (which ALWAYS lost me points) is the pony express run. It was a spot where you got 5 balloons and while at a gallop, you had to try and hit 3 targets. Ya, ummmm I took big fat ZERO's on that one.....I didn't even come within 1 foot of the targets and most of the time clutz of the year me, would end up dropping all the balloons BEFORE I even had a chance to hit a target lol! Another obstacle that I THOUGHT would give my horse a difficult time was a freshly slaughtered animal skin. I don't hunt and Smokey has never been around anything deceased. The goal of the obstacle was to place the animal skin on the neck of your horse, gallop to a point, and drop it off. Well, they threw in a loud obnoxious coyote call RIGHT when you went to pick the skin up. Thankfully, it didn't phase Smoke one bit. Some other fun things they have done is making you hold a big bouquet of balloons while going over a bunch of scattered telephone poles. So you had to have good balance to jump over those things WHILE holding a bunch of balloons. Then another was to push a big inflated ball in between two goal posts in the water. One of my favorites was on the last competition where you had to ride bareback for a good 100 yards or more at a gallop, dismount, saddle as quickly as you could, then continue the race.
All in all it was a great year full of fun, friends, and competition. I really enjoyed getting to know the other competitors. Once we all got to know each other, it was fun to throw out some friendly banter and jabs at each other. I would joke that they were on horses slow as molasses, and they would joke about me getting lost. Oh speaking of getting lost. This is a funny story I have to share.....So the competition in September was one of Smokey and my best runs. He literally FLEW and I swear it was our fastest time. I also didn't get lost and I could remember my obstacles and the order I was supposed to do them. SOOOooooOOOOoo I do my last obstacle and Smokey and I start hauling balls to the finish line when all the competitors are yelling my name and pointing. So I freak out thinking I'm going the wrong way to the finish line. So I pull Smokey into a big circle to try and find where I'm supposed to go. Well, everyone is STILL pointing and yelling at me and I can't figure out WHERE I'm supposed to FINISH the darned race at. I literally did 4 huge circles and wasted 30 seconds of my race time trying to find the danged finish line......SO ya, after that, NO one let me forget that the ditzy blonde couldn't find the finish lol! So what's even more funny is Smokey and I STILL had the fastest time even with the 30 extra seconds lol!
So the results of this year's races? Smoke and I won the year end buckle :) We won 4 of the six, tied for second place once (since I had the slower time by 17 seconds, I took second), and came in second once. I was so proud of my little horse. He really is one of those "once in a lifetime" horses and I'm so glad I nabbed him up when no one else would. He might be small, but don't tell him that. He beats out horses double his size. It was such a fun year and Smokey and I enjoyed every bit of it. I will say, I'm glad the season is over and Smokey and I can relax....until next year that is ;)
So here are some pictures and a video of this year's races. Thanks for taking the time to read my little blog!
Chit chatting with a competitor before the race
Heading towards the next obstacle
Going over the jump and landing on a steep hill. I wish you could see how steep our landing was....this was certainly a tricky one.
Those floating milk jugs could be pretty skeeeeery ;)
Smokey launching us over a log and into the water
Coming down the "three step"
Here is another shot of us coming down the steps
Easy Smoke!
Heading towards the finish line (didn't get lost this time hahaha!)
Flying through the water obstacle :)
Ok, this picture wasn't taken THIS year, it was the crazy big jump we did last year that I mentioned earlier. I had to share it since it is pretty much the biggest obstacle/jump we have done together.
Here is the link to the video of us sorting.....or at least ATTEMPTING to sort goats hahaha!
Sorting Goats
Aaaaaaand here is dorky me with my buckle. Don't mind the pink hair, it was part of the costume from earlier ;) The last race we could all dress up :)
Lastly, the belt buckle :)
