Hannah Burnett and Harbour Pilot “William” are part of the US Pan American Games squad preparing at the Ocala, FL training session this week. Hannah is a long time EN blogger and has kindly agreed to keep us posted on her weekend. Thanks for writing this Hannah and thank you for reading.
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From Hannah:
When I imagined my first team training camp, I envisioned a very intense and uptight week of preparation for team competition. Luckily, this past week has been anything but uptight. Everyone on the team is really fun and easy going which makes for a great atmosphere to prepare mentally and get our horses ready for Mexico. When we arrived, my groom and good friend, Sara McKenna and I went straight to Walmart for USA decorating supplies. After parousing through the entire Ocala Walmart, (which is something that cannot be explained without personally experiencing it) we came upon the smorgasbord of American flags of all sizes and, to my delight, Statue of Liberty face cut-outs!! Needless to say, the American barn is fully decked-out in flags. There is no question that we’re American and proud of it!! Sara (aka Irish) should have gotten her American Citizenship this week because of her dedication to American patriotism!
During this week I have also learned a lot. Including but not limited to a great nick-name for Sara Ike…SIKE! As you can tell it’s been all business for us Americans…but in all seriousness it has been a great week. The lessons have been fantastic, we’ve been keeping tabs on the Canadians (don’t tell them I’ve been spying…) and everyone’s feeling fit and ready for the upcoming week in Mexico. I can’t believe we fly out on Saturday!! I have to admit one of the things I’m looking forward to the most is our Team Processing in Houston on Saturday afternoon. Apparently the riders get a shopping cart and get to go into a big room full of USA gear and pick out stuff for themselves and their grooms!
I should probably tell you how William is doing, since this is all about him! We had jump lesson with Mark Tuesday, working through a grid and getting him listening and jumping well. Wednesday, we ran through our dressage test. It was definitely the best lesson I’ve had with Mark. We worked through every movement until it was as close to perfect as possible. I tend to stop riding in the tests and just try to avoid any issues with my horses instead of riding them through and keeping them on the aids. We worked on this a lot and I was happy with the end result. William is such a joy to ride and so well trained (thanks David :). Today, we had our final gallop. We just did a few sprints up the hill and were all in pairs. I galloped with Shannon on Mango. It has been really fun to get to know her since she was the only one on the team I hadn’t spent much time with. Our whole team is so much fun and I’m really looking forward to some more team bonding on the plane on Saturday and Sunday. We’re going to be on our best behavior and try not to pick on the Canadians too much…but no promises 😉
Next time I write will hopefully be from Mexicooooo!!
-HSB
