I won my amateur class!

OMG I am soo tired and so wound up. I hope that by writing a little bit it will help me crash. So yesterday I had my very first horse show on my new horse. The night beofer Adam got online and we talked until 4:30 AM. I had to get up at 8:30 AM to meet Leon and get going. So I drag myself out of bed in the morning and grab a shower and drink all my energy drinks take some advil (we had gone out to dinner and I had wine and then chased it with coffee and I had a dehydration headache). So I pack some stuff I know I will need and force down some breakfast. I was pretty uneasy about the stuff Adam and I had talked about and knew I was too tired to ride my best and I was worried that I had blown it and why hadn't gone to bed yadda yadda.

So I am worrying all the way to the ranch and I trying to focus on the task at hand and wake up and it is not coming together. So I get to the ranch and we are going to ride a little and practice before we go to the show. So I warm up, put my best foot forward a get out there, and we do ok, I work one and Leon works one and the other people working with Leon work one and pretty soon we are tuned up and ready to go. We untack(de-saddle) and load up. We leave by noon so we can make some of the afternoon classes as the show started at 8. OK every contestant gets 2.5 minutes of working time. There were about 12 classes. Between each class is a 20-30 minute cattle change, where they change them out and drag the arena (10 minutes) and settle the cattle (20-30). Well it was really cold so the cattle were fresh and frisky so it took longer to settle them. We got there about 1 PM and they were through class number 4, class number 5 had 2 working sets, IE two groups of 15 with a cattle change in between, so instead of changing the cattle once, they changed them twice because there were so many people. Well classes 5, 6, 7, 8 all had two working sets, as you can see we picked up and extra 2 hours in cattle changes there. So we get there, watch for a while, and we have a while to wait ugh, so we each nap in the car about 2 hours.... until 5 pm or soo... still not our time to even tack up our horses. 7 pm rolls around, now its time to get our horses and tack them up. Then begins the long process of warming up with takes abou an hour. Still waiting for my class, I am first in the class around 8 / 8:30 PM . I score a 68; scores run from 60 (horrid or penalty score) to 80 (I have never heard of someone scoring above a 77). People with 74's and 73's. I was a little bummed, but I still had another 2 classes.

The temp in the arena is probably around 35 degrees and the horses have a short coat for showing. But we don't want them to get cold so we are walking in circles in the warm up pen. So my poor horse walked in circles for about 3 hours. But we got it done,

Next class I was so tired, you know that tired when you are driving and its hard to see the road. I was horseback riding like that. Its 19 degrees outside, I am freezing (we were inside but the main "garage" door is open. Its midnight. So I go to my class very sleepy. I get up to the herd and Leon starts telling me what to do. My mind is so numb that I do exactly what he tells me to. The runs just kind of comes together. The horse cuts and we are perfect. I got the 74, only 2 or 3 people scored higher then me that day. So I was happy. Thats a run down of the show. I think for my first show I did pretty darn good.