Today was the first day of the Theodora Randolph Field Hunt Championships (formerly the North American Field Hunter Championships). The first qualifier was held at Bull Run Hunt's fixture Willow Marsh. Willow Marsh is a great mix of bean fields and woods. It has nice rolling terrain as well.
It was warm by the time we started hunting. If there was a day I could have done without a coat it was today. We hit on a run about ten minutes into the hunt. It was a good fast run and a preview of what was next to come. A little while later we hit again and it was long hard run. The hounds sounded great! It was a really good test of the competition horses. Again, shortly after that run, we were back at it again. Really fast and covering a lot of ground. The hounds hit again on our way in but this didn't amount to a whole lot. But four runs in two and a half hours is pretty damn good!
There were 29 horses out for the championships. That was a lot of great field hunters gathered in one place. I felt my horse was perfect today and we didn't get selected today for the finals. That tells you something about the quality of the horses and riders out there.
For the day we covered 9.5 miles and had a top speed of 22.3 MPH. The moving average was 5.0 MPH. That doesn't sound like much but that means that we had very little standing around. The weather was hot and the BRH hounds were even hotter.
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