Race of a Lifetime, Part One

I have been extremely lucky to be selected to ride in a charity flat race at Cheltenham, on April 20th 2017. I was one of over 600 applicants and so I feel very privileged to have been chosen.

The race is to raise money for two wonderful charities, The Bob Champion Cancer Trust and the Willberry Wonder Pony Charity.

I decided to enter immediately after seeing the race advertised, mainly because I haven’t entered anything big for charity in the last few years and I thought this was a perfect opportunity and a once in a lifetime experience. I have to say I slightly questioned my sanity at my first ever training session but 5 weeks in I am enjoying it a little more!

My training regime is pretty much 6.30am riding 3-5 lots in Lambourn with the amazing Jamie Osborne! I now work from Lambourn on Friday and stay there Friday evening and ride another 3-5 lots on Saturday morning. I am usually finished by 9.30am which means I am back home by mid-morning so I can work my own horse!

The training is definitely much harder than I ever expected. Getting up at 5am is just horrible, I have had 5 weeks of ice, snow, wind and rain! I do feel that my fitness is getting better, but I know I need to do more in terms of leg strengthening and eating a better diet! Before I took on this challenge, as a rider who has done a bit of eventing I thought this would be relatively easy. This is not the case, the horses are so much faster, the saddles and short stirrups really do take some getting used to and its actually quite frightening, especially cantering in the dark!