Lesson #2: "In riding, we don't work on your strengths."

WELL THAT WAS FUN.

For some reason, what I was supposed to be doing with my legs to get Gypsy to stay on the outside of the ring clicked as soon as I got on, so there was no need for me to relinquish control. :P

Back a million years ago, I had serious trouble with sitting trots. I mean serious trouble. I'd basically bounce right off the horse. But again, now that I'm older, it's just clicking! I'm not good at sitting at a trot, by any means, but I don't feel like I'm just hanging on for the ride about to be catapulted off, either. It's awesome!!

Diagonals, however, are waaaay more difficult than I remember. I mean, right from the beginning, I could feel that I wasn't posting right. And, I mean, sure I was posting wrong consistently, but I needed to flipflop the time I was up and the time I was down.

Which, uh. I am apparently very bad at. I'd get it for a couple steps and suddenly instead of "up SLAP up SLAP up SLAP up SLAP" it turned into a smooth "UP down UP down UP down". But then I'd falter and be right back to sitting down while the horse's back was coming up.

NOT. FUN. FOR. ANYONE.

It drives me insane because I can feel just how wrong I'm doing it, and even when I didn't know what I was doing wrong I knew I was doing something wrong. But I can't figure out how to fix it. I've tried counting (1 and 2 and 3 and) and sitting down an extra beat or staying up an extra beat, but then the extra beat goes by and I'm still there going SHIT I MISSED IT and, well, it just doesn't work. And I've tried paying attention to the shoulder and going up based on that, and that just fails miserably. By the end I was just going OKAY NOW SEEMS LIKE A GOOD TIME TO START POSTING and hoping I was right.

Let's not discuss my success percentage.

I ran into my first honest-to-god you're-a-fatty problem, though. My instructor is all ">:( BRING YOUR TOES IN LINE WITH THE HORSE" which is code for "TOES IN HEELS DOWN". This is hard for me because 1) I'm the opposite of pigeon-toed, and 2) my ankles don't exactly flex that well.

Anyway, whenever I force my toes to be where they're supposed to be, my inside ankle rolls on me and I fall back into the saddle. I mean, it holds up for a good four minutes, but then WHOOMP I'm down for good.

Rinse, repeat.

By the time I got done with my lesson (by way of going "Dude, I can not trot anymore, my ankle keeps giving out") and dismounted, I had a very pronounced limp on that side. This is going to be a problem.

Thankfully, I've supposedly graduated to being allowed to ride in the outdoor ring. Just in bloody time, too. That ride kicked up so much dust that I had to stop at one point and hang off the horse to cough a lung out. A couple days later (aka, long enough for my sinuses to realize just how impacted with dust they are), I was down for the count with an epic sinus infection. I'm hoping that I'll magically be back to 100% tomorrow.