More hill work. Today we went right into the heart of the woods, off the gravel track anf hit the muddy mountain bike trails. These tracks are great because they are some of the steepest in the woods, not only that but its really important that Blaze upholds her responsibilities of mainting gait, direction and to look where she is going as im having to duck and dive under low hanging branches aswell as having to slide left and right to squeeze through trees without bashing my knees.
These tracks are really muddy and so Blaze has to work 10 times harder in order to climb them. She had a really good work out today. 2 super steep slopes, both boggy, head down she powered her way up as best she could. The graidient and terrain was tough and she almost ground to a halt having lost momentum and starting to get out of breath. I urged her forwards, knowing that if she lost momentum completely its quite hard to get going again, i didnt ask her to hurry and if she really needed to stop of course id allow her to do so, i just offered her some encouragement and asked her to try to keep going, which she did. I let her stop when we reached the top but she was off again of her own accord. She really enjoys herself in the woods.
Coming back down the other side i slid off and walked with her, and it was a good job, she kept all four legs still and slide down most of it! At the bottom I found a load of branches to climb on and mounted ready to tackle slope number 2. It was a pretty long one but it zig zagged slightly and changed in gradient, some parts super steep and others not so much. I like to give Blaze some variety not only is it more interesting for her but also its good practice for negotiating different terrian and being able to pace herself, ie taking it steady and rhythmical on steep climbs or more active and changing gaits on slopes that have flatter sections.
Starting at the bottom we climbed to the top of that hill. Its almost as steep as the drop infront!
One slope was particualry tricky at it was extremely narrow (a couple of ft) slippy and rocky. I completely dropped my reins and allowed her to pick her own way through it, the last thing she needed was me getting in the way, she needs to pick a way and go for it. If i started medaling it could get dangerous, i could through her off balance or impede her forwards motion. All I had to concentrate on was staying balanced and keeping my weight over her back end so as to give that engine as much power as possible.
With the amount of rain we have had the stream is running really fast and deep (you can hear the water falling from ages away!) so we went through that too. Its somethign a little different and who knows if we'll be negotiating a river crossing this year.
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