my first love

I started this blog post several weeks ago and never finished it. Couldn't connect 2 sentences together for some reason but today I'm going to try it again..

I am a recent triathlon convert. Before triathlon it was strictly running, and before running it was horses.

Horseback riding is probably my favorite thing to do in the entire world. I have been riding since I was 10 and I have owned my horse Cherry since I was 11. I've dabbled in a lot of disciplines. For most of my childhood I was a barrel racer, and then for a few years I was a 3 day eventer. I did all of this on my crazy pony, Cherry. Now, Cherry has been retired from horse shows and for the past year I did not ride at all. I'm slowly trying to resurrect my riding because I miss it. It's hard to balance with triathlon. I don't think it's possible to excel at one thing when you're trying to do too many activities, and because of that I let my riding fall by the wayside.

I've ridden Cherry twice in the past 2 months, which is better than nothing but still not enough. The last time I hopped on her I automatically went to start my Garmin (which I was not wearing). Apparently just straddling something (although it was a fat horse and not a bike) was enough to make me think I had to keep track of what I was doing!

I see photos of friends jumping cross country courses or I catch some of the Rolex Kentucky 3 day event on TV and it honestly makes me ache, because that is how much I miss it. You have no idea what a rush of adrenaline feels like until you're galloping a horse across a field and jumping over shit, BIG shit and you know that if that horse decided that it didn't want to jump, you'd be screwed. But let me tell you, owning a horse is ridiculous and I already own one. I'd have to get ANOTHER horse if I wanted to event again.. just won't happen.