Not even close

Have you ever gone on a rollercoaster so many times that, when you went to bed, it still felt like you were on that rollercoaster? Maybe that just happens to me.. Anyway, that's how I felt during the first few nights of the Derby. I would lay down on my mat at night, close my eyes and would still feel like I was gallopping on the steppe. Every once in a while, it would even feel like my horse tripped in a marmot hole and I would jolt awake again. One morning it felt like I'd dreamed about riding all night. I woke up feeling exhausted but I dragged myself out of bed (at 5 am..) to get ready for more. You would think I'd be sick of riding by now? Nope, not even close.


If you followed my dot during the race (apparantly dot-watchers is the proper term for you guys) you may have noticed I never camped out. I normally am such a huge fan of camping but during the Derby it just seemed like too much to add that to the mix as well. I remember very well how annoying it is when you wake up to your horse being gone. Everyone who was at cowcamp that night knows what I'm talking about. 'We lost the horses' was a much used phrase those three weeks.. Anyways, you basically have three options during the Derby: stay at a horse station, wave around your probably poorly translated Mongolian note explaining what on earth you're doing in the middle of nowhere to a local family and stay with them, or put down your sleeping bag next to whatever marmot hole you ended up at before cut-off time. The good thing about being at a horse station is, you get to hand your horse to a herder and crawl into a ger to pass out for the night. When you camp out, you're responsible for making sure your mount gets water, food and, most importantly, is still there when you wake up in the morning. I'm sad I missed out on the awesome stories you get from camping, but staying with the families at the horse stations was a lot easier, even though it might make me sound 'boring'.


Back to the race! They say day three is the hardest and while I am not sure that's true, it definitely wasn't an easy day. Of course it was still raining when we got up. Charles told us it might rain till Monday (it was only Friday) so that really boosted morale.. There was quite a large group of riders staying at HS5 so we all rode off together. The group split up pretty quickly when people disagreed on which direction to take. I went with Tag and Francis, joined by Catherine, Katie, Anne, Mike, Molly and Ava while Esther, Sally, Rendell and Ella went the other way. We eventually ran into Sally and Esther again but we later heard that Rendell and Ella had retired. The first leg of the day took us through a beautiful mountain pass. Unfortunately we couldn't see much because of all the clouds and rain but I remember a herd of mares and foals suddenly gallopping out of the trees right next to us and taking off into the mist, it was pretty magical.

At the next station, I got a beautiful black horse. We were still riding in the big group. The route we took led us through the hills to a valley surrounded by rocky cliffs. The scenery was breathtaking, especially since it had finally stopped raining and started to clear up a bit. That was the first time I really got to enjoy the beautiful landscape we were speeding through. My horse was amazing and super fast. When Francis' horse bolted, mine could easily keep up and ran after him. It was a little scary at first when he just took off like that without much control on my part but I soon realised he was very sure-footed and then it was just a lot of fun! Unfortunately my stomach cramps got pretty bad again during this leg.. I couldn't keep up with the pace some of the others' were going at so we decided to split up the group. Thankfully I didn't have to go alone! We decided to only canter and walk as trotting was just too bouncy. We also opted to stay on the road rather than go cross country in a straight line to the station. This turned out to be a good decision as we made good time and got to the station just a few minutes after the other group did.

The last leg of the day was stressful. The sky had cleared and the sun was beating down on us. The weather had completely turned and it was suddenly really warm. We had a few hold-ups on the way with falls and slow horses and it took a little while to find a path through the bog. We had to push pretty hard as we didn't have a lot of time left. The last few kilometres, our horses were really tired so we had to walk for quite a while. It was getting close to 8 pm. We decided to risk the riding-late penalty as none of us really wanted to spend the night outside, there were no gers in sight. We made it, with only a small time penalty. But apparantly when you survive day three, you'll make it to the finish. I was feeling pretty hopeful when I settled into the ger that night!