17 – Timing and Riding at the North Island champs
The test run of my new timing computer programme at AWEC had gone fairly well, I’m sure there must have been things to adjust and change, but I don’t remember specifically.
Our club were running the North Island Champs, so this was it, we would be doing vet gate timing and results on the computer. Even now, many years later, one of the hardest things about doing vetgate at a Championship event is that the 160 is always the first event. Fair enough they want to run it first so that the horses get to rest an extra day before everyone heads home, the vets get to keep an eye on them the day after the ride. All good, but it sure adds to the pressure for officials, no time to iron out any problems, that first vetting is the one with the most pressure of the entire event… the biggest, most prestigious race usually with a large portion of the field all arriving within a few minutes and all trying to gain a few seconds by vetting ahead of their rivals. And it’s usually at around 3:30 in the morning!
After the advice from the vet at the Performance camp I was not now doing the 160 at the North Island Champs, Lace and I were in the 100km which was not until Monday. Lisa was riding Jasper in that also. We all needed to be there on Friday for the 160 start at 1 am, Kerry and I were on vetgate, Lisa was crewing for Mark with Class Act, they were expected to be competitve… however none of us needed our horses there that early, so the plan was for Jasper to be at my place, I would go home on Saturday evening and bring the horses back Sunday morning. Nicola was riding Phoenix in the 80 on Sunday, so I would miss some of that which was a shame, but would hopefully be there before the finish.
And then George banged his eye, and did a really good job of it, very swollen, very sore. He was going to need drops put in it at least twice a day, and I wasn’t going to be home much – thanks George! So Richard talked to the Ground Jury and they agreed that we could make a paddock for George over by the yards. So George got to go to the North Islands!
Doing the vetgate was a bit hectic… the programme was very different to the one I use now, in fact I basically started a new version from scratch not long after this based on what we learnt there, but we managed. I learnt first-hand just how challenging it can be to be at a job from the wee hours of the morning on through morning and into the afternoon. At one point I got so hungry I just couldn’t cope and nearly lost the plot while going over to start finish to get times. No one’s fault just over-tired and hungry. I know – and recognise now – that I’ll be doing something and be busy, busy and fine, and then it goes to custard and I just want to cry or explode – blood sugar? – and I need to just go away and sit or lie down for a bit or I’ll end up sobbing in a corner for no real reason! The things you learn when under a bit of pressure. It doesn’t happen when I’m riding so could well be related to blood sugar levels as on a ride you’re always eating non-stop every hold!
Mark won the 160, but not a fast time, he was the only one to make a qualifying time. This was of course the beginning of the build up for Kentucky so people were aiming to get themselves and their horses qualified. Yay Lisa, winning strapper! Waikato copped a lot of flak for the course, there was a lot of work in it – especially daunting was a large hill at the end of each loop. How come no one there was talking about the “real endurance courses” of “the good old days.” ??
One of the officials found a fault with the programme, it would sometimes be one second out from the hand calculated times. This was due to Excel showing you whole seconds but actually counting down to many portions of seconds and then when you add two together it would sometimes end up rounding up and adding an extra second – no major drama actually but just another stress I didn’t need. In the next version of the programme I forced it to use only full seconds, let’s face it our timing methods are not accurate enough to worry about split seconds!
So off home I went to get the horses. No problems, turn up at base with Lace and Jasper. Unfortunately this just happened to coincide with George’s new friend, a stallion in the yards, going off to pre-ride vet, so George was calling out to him. Lace got off the float and said “That’s George!” Calm pony gone, neurotic idiot time! Pre-ride vetting she’s in a complete state, “we’ll call it 64” for heart rate! And then she nearly flattened the vet at the end of her trot up. Saddle up for a ride, very nearly launched into bucking, some stern words were said! Although in her defense it turns out I was having saddle issues.
By this stage Nicola had finished her ride – qualified! – and was taking Phoenix home. Thankfully she offered to take George back to her place and do his eye drops for the next couple of days – awesome friend! There was no way Lace was going to be able to do anything sensible during the ride with George on base.
The ride the next day was great. Yes it was a hard course, but there were also some lovely flat bits too. It wasn’t until you rode across the hay fields – the amazing land owner had let a quad bike mark a track through the middle for us! – that you realised just how hard the ground was everywhere else. It was a dry summer and it was great to have a cushion of flatten grass for a couple of paddocks. Quite early in the ride one rider made a break on the rest of us by cantering up a couple of hills and then kept that lead for the rest of the ride – clever move – but Lace and I had pulled ahead of the rest and were sitting in second. Then on the last loop as we were going through a gate, and feeling a bit tired, we spied Daryl cantering across the paddock towards us on Dan. Daryl still laughs about it to this day, both Lace and I were horrified and we were off! Once more up the hill – looking back constantly – and second was ours! Second in our second North Islands.
It was the last page in Lace’s first logbook, we had done just over 1400km of qualified endurance rides.
