Fun with trot poles!

After I got home from work last night I went on a 3 mile run. Mostly hills, it felt pretty good. After the run I was ready to ride. Tacked up for jumping-with the weather this weekend (stormy) I figured that it would the only night that I could go through some grids outside.

Then I grabbed the Jimmy Wofford gymnastics book and went to work carrying all of my poles down to the outdoor and with my trusty measuring tape, set up the first gymnastic exercise in the book. My new jump blocks came in handy too. Right before I started to warm up, Karen called and when she found out we set up the gymnastic outside she drove over to help. I'm glad she did. We accomplished alot more with her there than I would have by myself. So we warmed up with stretching and riding in two point until my legs were burning. Montana was just lugging around, I really had to push her. We trotted through the grid and Karen was able to get the spacing right for her. I originally set the poles at 4' 6" apart but Karen reset them at roughly 4'1". After a few times through, Karen raised the fifth pole and we jumped over that a few times. By then Montana was pretty tired and after she blew through the jump once, we sent over it one more time cleanly, and then quit. Karen went home to do her barn work, and I took Montana out for a short jaunt through the woods. All in all, a very good ride.

BTW- the gymnastic was set up like this:

4 trot poles 4'1" apart, then another pole at 9' and another pole at 19'. The pole at 9' was the pole that we raised to 18' for our jump.