Cox

[enismirdal]

I am wet and dripping and soggy.

I went coxing for the first time in weeks, and the canal was as high as I've ever seen it and it rained a lot, and I found out that my coat is not waterproof. Still, I was only out for 2 hours - some of them had been out from 8:30am to 12pm! The other cox was shivering and looked close to hypothermia.

Was pleased I can still steer in a straight line, despite lack of practice. Only scraped the wall once. Woohoo!

Just for the record: I AM NOT A BOATIE!

Went riding last night - haven't done that for ages either. Fortunately, they gave me a not-too-difficult horse, Platinum. And we got a nice fast canter, and I wasn't scared, which has got to be a good thing. But I got annoyed by the person behind me, who was way too close and was just asking for Platinum to kick her horse.

Comments

[tienelle.livejournal.com]

Of *course* you aren't a boatie. You just happen to take pride in your boat-related skills. Wow, that sentence wasn't actually sarcastic. Must try harder.

From the number of times I hear the rant about people riding too close behind, I'm beginning to think some kind of competence test should be required before getting on a horse. This applies particularly to those people who, despite being on a 26-mile ride (and therefore presumably at least a little seasoned), seem to think the red ribbons in a horse's tail are purely decorative.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Red ribbons?

I don't think that's a universal custom - does it mean, "Keep your distance; this gorse kicks!"? Normally, the riding instructor just says, "JoeBloggs, make sure you don't get too close to Millie cos she kicks." Ribbons actually make a lot of sense.

But then, so does sticking red gaffer tape on your gi in places where you have injuries, when doing martial arts. Trouble is, not enough clubs do it.

[tienelle.livejournal.com]

I believe so; I think it's a (formal, written-down) standard in the EHPS, who were running the ride at which I was ranted about. I might have been confused - the horse in question also had green ribbons. One meant "inexperienced horse", the other meant "kicks"; it would be logical to indicate lack of experience with green, but that's no guarantee of, well, anything.

At least in principle, the riders at these kinds of things are meant not to need instructors. Certainly there aren't many about.

That's not a bad plan if you're going to go about hitting people. I'm not sure I can think of any injuries that are severe enough to worry about, but not so severe they wouldn't keep you from training altogether.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...recurrent wrist injuries which make wristlocks a painful affair; shoulder injuries which mean you can train, but can't take hard falls on that side, that kind of thing.

I find it's easier to train with a slight injury and just warn my partner to be careful than stop training altogether, which tends to result in the muscles around the injury seizing up and me losing all the flexibility I ever had in that joint. I suppose it depends on how the people in the club train. Sometimes, I've ended up doing junior techniques on seniors because of their miscellaneous injuries.