I-1 freestyle, and final wrap-up!!

Today was the last day of the competition!  It seems like it went really slow for the first week we were here, then all the sudden it's over.  It was quite the experience being here amongst the best Dressage riders and horses in the country. 
Monkey warmed up very well for the I-1 freestyle, much more uphill and active, but without being quite as tight in the neck and tense as he was yesterday in the warm-up.  I lost a little bit of that in the test, which was unfortunate but that's the way it goes.  Generally I was happy with the test, the tempi changes were again the highlight.  I think I got a few 7.5s for those on the bending line.  The pirouettes could have been better balanced.  I scored 68.8 and ended up in 13th place, which would also be my overall placing for the Intermediare championships.
By yesterday and today my nerves were pretty much under control.  I was pretty nervous for the PSG, but after getting that ride over with I realized that I was at (yet another) horse show and just needed to ride like that.  So the I-1 and I-1 freestyle were much better in that regard.  I drew first to go in the I-1 freestyle (again), which can be tough!  But the nice thing is that I got to watch pretty much all of the rest of the competitiors.  There were some really nice freestyles and some that were not so great.  But definitely the caliber of competition here is high! The riders are all pretty experienced, and the quality of horses here is really outstanding. It is an honor just to be here.

David Blake and Royal Prinz really pulled out all the stops in his freestyle with fantastic trot work (I didn't get to see the rest of it as I was running back to the barn to get my horse ready for the awards ceremony!) to clinch the reserve championship behind Caroline Roffman and Pie.  Steffen ended up fourth with the young horse Sundance, who is an absolute super-talent (but very green) and has a tremendous future ahead of him.
Tomorrow we fly back to California.  The truck is scheduled to pick Monk and I up in Gladstone at 5am (yuck!), from there we travel to Allentown, PA, then we fly to Ontario.  I'm going to spend a day in California, resting from the trip, then Wednesday travel back to Boise.  It'll be nice to get home and back to normalcy!  But I have another show coming up the last weekend in June, and so far I am scheduled to ride 4 or 5 horses in it.  As they say, no rest for the wicked!