Viva Carlos Blog Hop: What's In Your Name?

Or, I have lots of thoughts about eventing.

Blog hop courtesy of Viva Carlos!

I came up with the name of this blog -- The Longest Format -- a year ago almost exactly.  I had decided to switch barns and knew where we were going but not what we were going to do when we got there; I was excited but also very much at sea.  And then -- actually, let me just copy-paste the email that I sent to Amanda and Jen, because that's how I test-drive all my best crazy ideas:

Subject header: So I am thinking

that if I'm not going to let myself event this year, maybe I will try to do the baby-step endurance riding thing for real this season.  My favorite eventing venue, GMHA, holds a couple that I think would be good prospects -- very hilly, but I know the property well and they have stabling, so the ridecamp learning curve would be minimally steep -- and it feels like a good way to keep my hand in and a project in front of me without being totally overwhelming...I hope?

We'll see.  Trying not to let myself get too excited and one-track-minded.  But I have a name for a potential eventer-tries-endurance blog -- The Longest Format -- and that's a critical step in any decision-making process, right?

...right?

They said, Right!  And starting picking out my future neon biothane tack.  And here we are today!

So, why The Longest Format: a crash course for non-eventers.  (I assume the eventers are mostly already nodding along.)

Back in the allegedly good old days before all those kids got on various long-time eventers' lawns, there was this thing called a three-day event.  Dressage (first), show jumping (last), and in the middle not (only) cross-country but endurance day, which incorporated the XC test that we still use now but also a steeplechase and two phases of (jumpless) "roads and tracks" that functioned as a warm-up for the 'chase and then a cool-down from it before entering the ten-minute box.  That's right: eventing used to have a mid-phase hold and vet check, too.  Then and only then did you head out on the cross-country course.

Baby's first Training at Huntington Farm in the rain.  A horse trial, not a three-day event.  Photo used with photographer's permission.

 There was also this thing called a horse trial or a one-day event; I believe there are differences between the two but I don't know off the top of my head what they are.  That's just about all of everything that you see today: dressage, XC, and stadium, not necessarily in that order.  But the big-deal international events (and some others) were three-days, and three-days?  Are what we also refer to as "the long format."

(We also now call it the "classic format," which is fair, and sometimes the "original format," which is not.  The realio-trulio original format was waaaaaaay different, although it certainly did include endurance day, to the tune of 30+ miles.)

Long format events do still exist, mostly under the auspices of a Smartpak-sponsored series at the Novice, Training, and Preliminary levels.  There seems to be a lot (a lot!) of verbal and written support for the things, but actual entries?  Unfortunately not so much.  There are many reasons for this and I have lots of opinions about it, but I have a feeling this post is going to be long enough as is, so we will soldier on and save that for another day!  Likewise we'll save my detailed thoughts about the evolution of modern eventing in general...

I always thought the light in this picture made it look a little old-school.  Just me?  Used with photographer's permission.

But the short version is relevant.  Basically: said evolution 1) is very understandable and probably inevitable, 2) in some ways super-positive, and 3) apparently headed in a direction that just isn't as interesting or appealing to me as the sport that I dreamed about as a tiny!Hannah.

Because a lot of what I love about eventing is inextricable from the long format.  The time and effort poured into one horse, the tension between related but distinct and in some ways conflicting phases, the intensity of planning and preparation and building a season, a career, a life around specific dreams and then coping also with everything else.  And the search for and operation at one's limits and those of one's horse, and the deep engagement with the chewy-gooey ethical stuff involved in all that.  And I mean, clearly this is my own relationship to and understanding of the sport, right?  I don't for a minute believe that everybody eventing does it my way now or did it my way then, and I am okay with that.  And I am really happy that eventing exists in current form for the people and horses who love and thrive in that current form.  I look forward to seeing what it turns into in the future.  I don't rule out the possibility that maybe I'll get back to it one of these days.

May 2013 at UNH, keeping our hand in.  Used with photographer's permission.

 For me, though, that's just not where it's at.  Tucker and I did one long format, the Training Level Three-Day at GMHA in 2011.  That week at GMHA was maybe the best week of my life to date, and that season was the best of my riding career, not because everything went smoothly but because everything didn't.  That was the summer that I feel like I became an eventer and a horseman for real, no fooling, and that summer is why I still think of myself as, like the sidebar says, an eventer gone astray rather than a distance rider.  That may change in years to come; I guess we'll see.

The second jog-up of our T3D.  Photo used with permission of photographer.

But that's the sport that I want to be a part of.  It's not about the long format itself so much as about what the long format means to me and how it shapes -- or doesn't -- everything else about eventing, which is part of why I've chosen (not without ambivalence, though I'm constantly surprised that I don't miss it more) to walk away for a while rather than continuing on and just doing my own thing in-eventing as I see fit.

Naming this blog The Longest Format?  Was nine parts pure wordplay for my own amusement -- I love a good (bad?) pun -- to one part hope that I'd find in endurance what I feel like eventing has (for me) kind of lost.

Not to be all sentimental, but so far, so good.

ECTRA CTR at GMHA, August 2013, photo used with permission.