I’m thrilled to introduce Kristi Nunnink as EN’s newest guest blogger. We really want to add more West Coast flavor on EN, and Kristi is a wonderful addition to the EN family. As one of the World Class pairs on the High Performance Summer/Fall Training Lists, Kristi and her rockstar mare R-Star spent last weekend training with David O’Connor at Woodside. Take it away, Kristi!
Kristi Nunnink and R-Star at the training sessions at Woodside. Photo courtesy of the USEF Eventing High Performance Facebook Page.
From Kristi:
We had another amazing training session with David O’Connor. He was quite pleased with the progress that everyone had made from the first time he had worked with us until now. We did dressage on Thursday, show jumping on Friday and then some cross-country type questions on Saturday, and some of us actually went out on course sat.
R-Star was quite good all three days, and David was pleased with her. Our main goal in dressage is to make her more rideable, which actually seems like our goal in all three phases. It was wonderful having three training sessions at Woodside, which is only 3 hours away from my house. I was able to bring extra horses and students for some cross-country schooling. The temperature never got above 87 degrees, which is lovely for July in California.
Now that we’re back home and the temps are more around 95 or more, we face a final grueling week of getting prepared for Rebecca Farm. Getting to the show is a modest 21-hour drive for me. I will be taking R-Star to compete at the 3* level and Astro to do his first CCI2*. Today we will do our second to last gallop with both horses in Lincoln, Calif., which is a 45-minute drive from my house.
We will leave next Sunday night to drive to Montana so that we can get through the Nevada desert at night when the temperatures will be lower. We will drive straight through to the event and get there Monday evening. I believe David is coming early, and we will spend Tuesday and Wednesday of next week working with him. Best of luck to all riders heading to Rebecca Farm!
