Riding

Well I'm pretty pent up with a mixture of excitement and nervousness today since I've got my first riding lesson in 15 years at 2pm - I've no idea how I'll do and it feels like I'm waiting for an exam all morning until we have to get off to the riding stables.

To fill the time a bit in the AM I go to the gym. I know it's probably not the best idea in the world considering the inevitable pain I'm going to be putting myself through later, but it's a scheduled day for exercise so really I should go and get on with it. The exercise goes well, and luckily for me Mr X isn't there so I don't have to put my guard up. Also because I go earlier in the morning than usual it's cooler weather wise and I have a much more efficient session. The heart rate monitor and wrist receiver I have are very handy to monitor this, the only thing is that you have to make sure you're weight is kept up to date in its memory banks. So, since I've lost 3 stone now I need to adjust it (I usually do it every stone or so) and it usually changes my results quite a lot. What I'm noticing now is that I have to work a lot harder to burn off the same amount of calories that I was previously. I guess this is because I weigh less and my heart rate is much lower now during exercise than before. This is all good news I suppose but does mean I need to push my regime up a notch, which in itself isn't such good news! :) So the gym goes fine and I make my way home to get ready to go riding.

I also finally get to speak to the head girl of a local stables who I've been playing telephone tag with for the past week and we had a chat about the part time job they've got on offer. It sounds interesting and so we've arranged to meet up tomorrow morning to have a more face to face talk. I hope it goes well, but we'll just have to wait and see.

When we get to the stables the instructor has been caught in traffic on the m25 so we have to wait around for an hour and while we do that I show Phil around the stables - I don't think he's been around horses before so it's all a bit novel for him, and finally the instructor turns up and quickly after that I'm standing on a mounting block ready to get on Bolero, who is my stead for the next 45 mins.

I have to say it felt very unnatural for the first 10 minutes though slowly the old feelings came back. My session was on the lunge rope this time since I haven't ridden for so long (a lunge rope is like a big lead that the horse is attached to while the instructor hangs onto the other end so he has an amount of control over the horse as well as the rider) and we started off with the basics of riding position, balance etc all at walking pace. Once I felt more comfy we then went onto trotting which was a bit more difficult - trying to remember to rise from the knee, squeezing with my legs, getting the rhythm right and all of that, and it was hard work too, so it was almost a relief to get onto the cantering which I immediately got the hang off as if I'd never stopped doing it. Luckily my horse had a very comfortable deep seated canter so it was easy to relax into. In fact the instructor was quite impressed with me saying that it was a better canter than one of his other students who he'd been teaching for years!

After 45 minutes of doing the above I'm knackered and so is the horse so its a little bit of a relief to dismount (I'd forgotten how far down it is from the back of a 16.3 hh horse!) and when my feet hit the concrete my legs turn to jelly! I could hardly walk! I was so crippled in fact Phil had to drive home because I was in no condition to do so :)

Despite that though I had a great time and it was fantastic to be back in the saddle, I can't wait to go again!

When we get home, I get changed and try to recover a little bit and then we head on out again to the bed store to buy a new mattress. We've decided on getting one of those memory foam beds as we've tried them out before and both agree they are quite nice. They are not cheap though and after a bit of haggling, well to be honest we don't get anywhere because it turns out if we get a discount we don't get the option to return the mattress within a month if we're unhappy with it - and for the amount of money they were offering off the bed it wasn't worth it. Never mind, it's ordered now and we're expecting delivery of it next week. It will be nice to be able to turn over in bed without the springs groaning :)

Anyway, as you can imagine after such a busy day the evening is left to do absolutely nothing other than eat dinner. Phil is so tired he goes to bed at 7.30 pm and I just mooch around until it's time to take Rupert out for his walk and then to put him to bed for the night.

Posted by Abi on the July 28, 2006 9:09 PM