As CK has been feeling so good at home and after his results at the Regionals, I was excited to show the selectors the progress we’ve made since our rubbish performance at the last squad training session. As the training weekend was taking place in Melton Mowbray, which is four hours away from us, we travelled up to Vale View Equestrian Centre the night before along with Emily Cousins and Olivia Oakley. That night we all went out for a lovely meal and got an early night for the next day.
The Saturday consisted of a test training session with International judge Stephen Clarke. We all had to ride the team test in front of Stephen and the selectors and then we were talked through the marks we had been given. Afterwards Stephen picked out the parts he wanted to work on with us and helped us to improve those areas. Later that day we each had a session with Jon Pitts, top fitness coach and fellow Horse Hero blogger.
When warming up for my test, I stuck to my plan from the Regionals and warmed up for longer. This seemed to improve CK’s way of going again as he became so through and supple by the end of my warm up time. It also helped to take the edge off in the freezing temperatures! The test went brilliantly, I was so pleased. Usually I’m super critical as soon as I come out of a test, but for the first 
time ever I felt so positive and wouldn’t have changed a thing! (Except perhaps the walk pirouettes!!) The way of going felt fantastic - I felt like I could touch him with my leg the tiniest bit, take a really light half halt and feel as though he would react and still stay through and soft. I’ve watched the video over and over, and for once I liked what I saw! We got 65% even with two 5’s for my walk pirouettes, and had the second highest score of the Young Riders. What an improvement!
Stephen wanted to work on my walk pirouettes and made me make them a lot smaller. This was quite easy to correct so we moved on to the canter pirouettes where Stephen made me collect later I had been doing. This was so I kept the energy into the pirouette instead of collecting from the corner and finding that my canter had become too slow by the time I got to the pirouette itself. He also made me do a lot of pirouettes close together so that I could practise going in and out of them when I wanted, and not when CK felt like it. Overall, Stephen was very happy with the way we looked, and even referred to CK as ‘Mr Professor’ as he knows his job so well, haha!